Sample Deliverable

Genre: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller

Tropes: Female Main Character, Crime, Revenge Arc, Detective

Setting: Crescent Ridge, California. (Fictitious town south of Sacramento)

Elevator Pitch: Wendy Winstrom. Typical high-school junior, focused on parties and boys. Returns from a party she snuck out to and finds her parents murdered. The killer, she suddenly realizes is in the house. He gives chase but she escapes.

Cut to twenty years later. Wendy has changed her name. She is trained as a cold case expert for the FBI but just before entering service, she fails hy psychological review. Instead she ventures out on her own and sets up a private consultancy helping law enforcement solve cold cases. No one knows of her past except for her psychiatrist and one of her instructors at Quantico.

Wendy specializes in cold cases for two reasons. She wants to find the man who killed her parents, and she wants to help other victims find closure.

Chapter: Prologue

Sixteen-year-old Wendy Winstrom cons her parents and escapes to a party to meet a boy, Greg Hoff. Wendy has a crush on him but knows her parents won’t approve. She returns home at 2 a.m. Once inside her home, and still a bit drunk, she quietly heads to the kitchen for a snack when she hears footsteps on the second floor.. Fearing that her parents are awake, she tries to return to her bedroom without making a sound but notices her parents’ bedroom door is wide open.

[insert unsettling atmosphere of the quiet house with an intruder inside] 

She dares to look inside and freezes. They are both dead in their bed. She hears a noise coming from her bedroom. Wendy’s blood runs cold as she realizes the killer is still in the house. She runs for her life and hears him chasing her outside. She never saw his face as it was hooded.

[describe running scene with the killer close behind]

1st Cliffhanger: Wendy runs in the woods behind her house as the killer draws near until she trips and realizes she is going to die.