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| Thanks to www.lucasthorn.com |
The reason I dreaded writing the synopsis for my novel is
that it is much too much like work, and not enough like writing. I love finding
time to write, sitting down and letting the creating juices flow, or if I’m at
the revising the revision stage as I have been lately, letting my nit-picking
instincts ... well, pick nits. In my day job as a book editor, I love editing
books but huff, puff and procrastinate when I need to write marketing copy.
This reluctance stems from a similar root to my synopsis writing anxiety – the worry
is that, if the book you are editing or the novel you are writing doesn’t come
out sounding lip-smackingly irresistible, it may be because there is something
lacking in the product itself – and you really don’t want to be discovering
this at the copy-writing stage, when you have already invested a lot of hard
work. This is why many novelists write a synopsis at an early stage, and revise
it as they go along; and it’s why as book publishers, we write marketing copy
when a new book is being proposed, then refine the vision for the book at an
acquisitions meeting, and finally create a book to fit the glowing write-up
with which we started.
When I sent an earlier draft of my novel, Unspeakable Things, to a consultant, one
of the first things she asked for was a synopsis, and her strong recommendation
was to access the free downloadable workshop on synopsis writing from Mslexia Magazine. I could not agree
more; there are several great workshops here, and when I could put off synopsis
writing no longer, I turned to this one:
The workshop explains exactly what the synopsis is for, who
will be reading it and when. There is great advice on layout, structure and
contents. What’s really good, though, is that the workshop takes you through an
unthreatening series of exercises, and when you have completed them all,
declares – there you go, put that together with that, add these bits where
needed, and you’ve got a workable draft for your synopsis.
I launched in and soon found myself writing a 25 word ‘elevator
pitch’ or summary paragraph for Sleeping Beauty,
Pride and Prejudice, and a film of my
choice. Here’s what I wrote – you have to guess what film is is (it’s my
favourite – answer at the end of this post).
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| Thanks to: www.binarymoon.co.uk |
Here’s what I wrote:
- ‘A princess is cursed by a bad fairy to sleep for 100 years until a lover awakes her with a kiss.’
- ‘A lively, intelligent woman is annoyed by a fascinating man, but his pride and her family’s shame keep them apart, until a crisis unites them.’
- ‘A kind psychiatrist has failed a suicidal man and must redeem himself by helping a sensitive boy who is constantly terrified by visions of ghosts.’
I then had to write a 25 word summary for my own novel,
including, if possible, the main character, his or her main quest of challenge,
his or her main obstacle and the main setting. This was probably the biggest
challenge, but the warm-up exercise had got me thinking hard about what the key
elements of a story are, and made me assess my novel in a useful, summarising
way. My summary paragraph went through at least six drafts as I worked out what
was the really central dilemma driving my main character and plot. I settled
on:
- ‘Pregnant editor Sarah is told her dead mother suffered hereditary madness after childbirth, but is her uncle’s story true? Is the family secret darker still?’
When I had completed the draft of the
synopsis, I had a few words to spare, so went back and refined it further to:
- ‘Pregnant editor, SARAH, is told her dead mother suffered hereditary madness after childbirth, but is her uncle’s story true? Sarah must discover the family’s dark secret before her baby is born.’
Having
dreaded writing the synopsis, I found myself enjoying it, fascinated by the
process of cutting through to the very essence of the story and laying it bare.
I hope the synopsis will be needed because I’m hoping that the judges of the Mslexia Novel Competition will want to
see it, along with the whole novel. If not – gulp – I’ll at least have a strong synopsis to send
out to agents. And I’ll be looking up Mslexia’s
advice on writing the opening pages, and the query letter...
With all this
going on, I also agreed to read and assess a friend’s combined query letter/synopsis
for her first novel – yes, can you imagine, she has been advised that US agents
want the query letter and synopsis squashed into one page! Have they no
attention span?! It was when reading my friend’s writing credits that I became
distracted by what I can only call query letter envy. My friend has writing
credits. She has had short stories and essays published in a Hong Kong-based
anthology, and in a book about expat women in Asia. Having written for most of
my life, novels and screenplays and poetry (as a teenager), for the most part
my writing hours – weeks, well let’s be
honest, years – have been spent crafting long, much rewritten works that have
not seen the publishing light of day.
I realise that I have to put this right. I was
asked to write an article for a counselling organisation’s magazine, but never
quite got round to it – well, I have written it now, and hope they still want
it. I have written an article on coping with OCD in the family – I’ll be
looking for a support website to send that to. A screenplay I wrote would make
a good short story. I will pitch an article to Mslexia Magazine, and write a poem for their latest theme, Troubled
Minds. My mind is buzzing with ideas – that workshop helped me get my synopsis
out there, now my query letter needs to sparkle like my friend’s!
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| With thanks to derekwinnert.com |
The answer to the film synopsis quiz was of course, The Sixth Sense.
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