When a privileged na?ve young woman is attacked by an enraged lunatic accusing her of assassinating his wife, her sheltered world comes crashing down around her with the possibility he may be right.

Oops that was meant to be:

When she?s accused of murdering a deranged ::lunatic's occupation::?s wife, a sheltered debutante must prove her innocence. But is she?

You've created an interesting main character and antagonist, but she needs a goal!

And what are the stakes? It's bad to be attacked, but what is the danger after? Does the antagonist continue to threaten her? Will the police arrest her unless she proves her innocence?

Also keep it under 25 words.

Here's my attempt (drawing from the attempts of others):

When she's accused of murdering a deranged 's wife, a sheltered debutante must prove her innocence. But is she?

Patrockable (Judge)

Bad choice of words here. And inefficient in other parts. For example, instead of saying all of "privileged naive young woman" you could just say "debutante" or "debutante princess". Instead of labelling her attacker immediately as an "enraged lunatic", create sympathy and credibility for him by first describing him as "a man whose wife was murdered". If the reader is first told his motivation, then we will not so quickly dismiss his rage and desperation. Readers (including execs) are not interested in plain lunatics. But they WILL be interested in someone driven to 'mad' measures for a good and undestandable reason. Always treat your characters with respect. Even supporting characters.

That the debutante is in for an existence-shattering time hardly needs mentioning. You could delete all of "her sheltered world comes crashing down". Any competent reader can see that immediately.

Where more words/thought/development needs to placed is in teasing out the point about the husband having a valid reason for attacking the debutante. For example, "the enraged man beats and kidnaps her for being responsible for his wife's assassination. An outrageous accusation. Except for the fact that Sally has episodes of black outs ..." In this way the man's rage is made somewhat valid and rational while not revealing too much how the debutante is precisely responsible.

Steven Fernandez (Judge)