I’m
in synopsis hell and have decided without a doubt that I hate writing them. Those
little outline type pages that is supposed to divulge everything about your
story within a couple thousand words. I suck at them. Sure, I can write
something down about each chapter but I have never, ever done them successfully
in my mind. They always seem lacking something.
Take
today for example. I send my final synopsis to my critique group as I’m about
to send the whole packet to my agent. This is the book of my heart and is
something I’ve slaved over for years it seems like. In reality, I wrote it very
fast and it just took years to edit to my satisfaction. It is the one story I
have always felt is my breakout story if I ever had one. And when I did finally
decide to start shopping it around, I have a couple of years of personal things
that make me keep moving it to the back burner because I didn’t want to ruin
it.
Frankly,
I’m beginning to think that all those years of classes didn’t account for much
because at this moment, I feel very, very stupid. And I shouldn’t. Synopses are
hard for everyone. One of my problems is that this is part of a series. Book 1
and its synopsis is complete or so I thought. I just got back the crits and
boy, I feel down yet somehow relieved. I knew it needed work and now I see just
how much. Ugh. Yet all are simple fixes with a line here, a delete there.
Do
all writers feel this way sometimes? Do they wonder why they write when they
can’t get the story idea down in a synopsis correctly? I swear I have been
studying this for years but looking at this…I am sure I missed the boat. More
than one boat matter of fact.
So
let’s look at the anatomy of a synopsis. Again, there are definitely some
things that a synopsis needs and doesn’t need to do.
·
It needs to cover
the big parts of a story and not the little details. Matter of fact, little
details can bog it down to the point of it not being a great selling tool for your
novel.
·
It needs to be
written in third person, present tense.
·
It is the one
time where telling the story is important but does not need to be a blow by
blow detail oriented summary of every aspect of your book.
·
It needs to
introduce all your characters, their main conflict as well as their emotional
story arc.
·
There are no cliffhangers
allowed as it tells of your plot twists and the ending. It’s point is to show
that you have strategicly layered your story and that it sticks together the
way it should.
Sounds simple right? Ha! Do not fool yourself as this can
be just as hard as it was to complete the book. When writing these things I had
to have some zen moments and remind myself that I could do this. It isn’t
rocket science though there was a moment I certainly thought it was.
Now, I’m off to finish everything but I’d like to remind
you that I am promoting my latest book Night of the Blue Moon…and
it’s the last book in the Blue Moon Magic series. It has a few fans already and
is slowly getting some sales. You can find a lot of information right here on
the blog as well as the series blog at Our Blue Moon World.
And no,
I haven’t forgotten that I was going to write an article about ebook pricing,
synopses just took center stage. That topic will be covered next week!
Until
then…
Lynn
No comments:
Post a Comment