lizvogel

So in trying yet again to hack my synopsis down to one page, I went browsing through my substantial collection of how-to links. By far the most useful in this case was Susan Dennard's How To Write A 1-Page Synopsis. It uses a property that might just be familiar for an example, and applies a standard set of questions to reduce it to a pithy and short synopsis.

The questions per se didn't work for me, as such questions never do, because one of the first ones is always "Who is the main character and what does she want?" And for HoM, the "what does she want" part pulls the capstone off the Pit of Backstory, which cannot be explained in one sentence in any way that doesn't sound moronic. And without the backstory, there's no story, so a substantial part of my available wordcount always gets eaten by the stuff that happens before the novel actually starts.

However, the link is still an excellent example in general, and of a particular principle in specific: You don't have to tell the truth in a synopsis. Oh, you need to be somewhere in general alignment with the truth; you don't, for example, want an explosion-packed action-adventure synopsis for a gentle romance novel. But it's entirely okay to fudge some details, even to the point of outright inaccuracy.

To wit:

Luke Skywalker, a naïve farm boy with a knack for robotics, dreams of one day escaping his desert homeland. When he buys two robots, he finds one has a message on it – a message from a princess begging for help. She has plans to defeat the Empire, and she begs someone to deliver these plans to a distant planet. Luke goes to his friend and mentor, the loner Ben Kenobi, for help.

Note the bit about Ben being his friend and mentor -- which is not true at that point in the movie. It's been a while since I've watched the source, but if I recall correctly, they'd never even met before then; they certainly didn't have an established trust relationship. (And come to think of it, the princess doesn't ask anyone to deliver the plans; the robot's supposed to do that itself. Double inaccuracy!)

However, the way it's written works fine in the synopsis. It conveys a sequence of events that functions the same way as the actual events; it serves the same dramatic purpose, in a way that's close enough that anyone reading the synopsis is unlikely to be heartbroken when a particular detail turns out to be different. And because Ben does become Luke's friend and mentor in the course of the story, the technically-inaccurate description doesn't set the synopsis-reader up for disappointment when they get to the real thing. It's not a bait-and-switch.

And that's the key. As long as the synopsis sets the reader up to expect the kind of things the story provides, it's okay if some of the details don't match up. It is in fact perfectly okay to leave out major secondary-arc developments, and even some primary-arc, as long as you can stitch the other side of the hole together in a coherent manner. And if that means, for example, that the SC decides to embrace a plan instead of being gung-ho for it all along, well, as long as it doesn't cascade-change too much else, that's just fine.

(I noted, in my passionate fit of rewriting, that that last bit could be recast as She has plans to defeat the Empire, and she begs someone to deliver them to the mysterious hermit, Ben Kenobi. -- which would be both more accurate and shorter. However, the principle still stands: You can lie in a synopsis.)

So my key phrase for the next time I go synopsizing is his friend and mentor, Ben. Because that's not the story that's told, but nobody who bought the story based on that would be upset if what they got was Star Wars.

Once, just once, I would like to dive back into querying and not get brick-walled by some piece of documentation I don't have.

A one-page synopsis. How the *bleep* am I supposed to distill a novel's worth of grey-shades backstory and complex characterization down to one page, and still have it make any sense?

So, I'm back from Capricon, and almost recovered. (Exhausted doesn't even begin to cover it.) On balance, it was fun, although both the consuite and the (lack of) writing track were disappointing. Gophered my legs off. Highlights were probably hanging out with people representing other cons, specifically the Cafe Capricon/MuseCon folks and the Minneapolis in 2073 bid.

Capricon was a goal-deadline, so let's see how I did:

- Finish rough draft of Kitchen Sink: done. It has an end. I tied up the dangling scenes that weren't related to the subplot-to-be-added, and made a start on de-bracketing.

- Revise "Off The Map": done. I had the interesting experience of going over all the workshop feedback and realizing almost all of it was wrong. Or rather, I don't think the things people were suggesting would have fixed the problem they were identifying. Putting in brand names, describing the kind of car, etc. was their way of asking to be grounded in the setting, but all those things would have come too late; I already had grounding-points half a page in, but by that point readers have made their own assumptions and will not be shifted. The grounding has to happen right at the beginning, before the reader has a chance to build up something else in their head. (Those suggestions would also have made it some other kind of story entirely, which is why I was kicking so hard.) I don't know if what I did instead will work (need fresh betas), but at least it's still the story I'm writing.

Status: Win!

Goal #3, which does not have a fixed deadline, is to get back on the querying horse. As happens every time I try this, I discovered I needed more prep work; the synopsis I thought was done... wasn't. Or, it is, but six bloody pages is just too long. I tried cutting it down, even got a fresh pair of eyes on it, but the result was thoroughly unsatisfactory and still too long. So I'm rewriting it again.

And out of desperation, I'm writing it backwards. I started with what I want the last line to be, then asked, "What has to happen for that to make sense?" and wrote that line. And so forth. It seems to be working; I'm at Chapter 8 of 15 (from back to front) and somewhere around the 500-word mark. (The same material was 1300 words in the previous version.) It may still run a bit over the two-page target when done, but a plot fueled by complex character motivations which are in turn fueled by deep backstory does not summarize easily.


Other than finishing the synopsis (tentative deadline = end of this month) and starting querying again, I do not currently have specific writing goals. This is a bad state for me to be in. I want to at least de-bracket Kitchen Sink before moving on; haven't decided if I should tackle the subplot as well, or rest it for a bit first. There's the Haley novel to be resurrected. Whither the writer?

I'm working on writing an after-the-fact outline for the novel. This was suggested to me as a way to get a grip on what needs to go in the synopsis: for each scene, note what happens and whether it pertains to the "relationship plot" or the "action plot". I've added "ethical plot" to the mix, since I figured out that that's really where the heart of the story lies. (And the action plot has subsets... I'm not good at this putting-in-a-box stuff.)

I'm combining this with another suggestion I picked up somewhere (possibly also Pat Wrede), of tagging each scene as to whether it advances Characterization, Plot, or Backstory. (I think the original breakdown was Character, Plot, and Setting, but that was for a fantasy novel in an invented world. And really, the backstory is the setting, for mine.) The point being that a scene must do at least one of these things, and it's better if it can do more than one.

I'm finding several things in the process, most of which are not exactly earth-shattering revelations:

- Apparently I never write a scene that doesn't have at least a little character development in it.

- I'm pretty good at multi-purpose scenes. Five chapters in, I've only found one short scene that does only one thing (characterization, of course). Many hit all three.

- The line between Character and Backstory gets really blurry, as does the line between Backstory and Plot. This is especially true if the A-plot is emotional rather than action-oriented: Does why the characters split up go under character (because it's who they are that made it a splitting-up-level issue) or backstory (because it's part of how they got to where the novel is) or plot (because getting them back together is the main plot goal, and that requires making the splitting-up reason no longer a deal-breaker)?

- Despite my fondness for what are sometimes called "jump cuts" but which I think of simply as scene breaks, I have at least two chapters that are one big uninterrupted scene. (This is not a problem; I think they work fine as is. I'm just surprised.) I'm having to tag sub-scenes for the outline.


I'm simultaneously doing a love list for the novel. It's getting self-indulgently long, but all the revision- and query-misery aside, there's still a lot in this novel that makes me really happy. And I keep getting sucked into the prose and forgetting to analyze. Yes, my own prose. That may sound arrogant, but darn it, I actually am pretty good at this stringing-words-together thing. It's good to be reminded of that, when I'm immersed in things like querying that I'm really not good at.

So last week I popped onto Amazon to add a CD to the wish list. I'd been wanting to relisten to this CD for days, and was quite surprised to discover that I did not in fact own it. (That explains why none of the tracks are in my WinAmp rotation, at least.)

While I was there, I glanced at the list, as one does, and noticed that the last three sets of The Sandbaggers were marked as "only 1 (or 2) left - order soon!" Now, I'm not at all sure that that's not a marketing gimmick on Amazon's part... but I also know that the last time I believed the "more coming soon" addendum, more never came. And there's few things worse for a completist-minded fan than having half a series....

So yeah, I bought 'em.

This is generating a post because I promised myself these discs as my reward for sending a certain number of queries. I have not sent anything like that many queries; indeed, the querying process is still bogged down in trying to create a version I'm actually happy with. Which is where the rationalization generator comes in. So one set is my reward for getting my synopsis done (at least for values of done that involve a beginning, an end, and all the bits in between), and done in time for the local writers conference this past weekend. Another set can be my reward for going to said conference. (One would think that going to a writers conference would be its own reward; one would be wrong. But that's another post.)

I'm not sure what the third set is for. Perhaps it could be a reward for finishing revisions on chapter 9b-soon-to-be-10? Mind you, I'd have to finish 'em first. But that's something I might be able to accomplish by the time the box arrives, if the shipping isn't too expeditious. Other suggestions are welcome in comments.

If only I could do queries like I can do rationalizations, I'd have an agent by now.

I also bought the CD while I was at it. Because, at that point, why not?