There should be a comedic monologue in this week’s topic. Remember the impressive clergyman from The Princess Bride?
Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togetheh today.
Eh. Lacks funny. Maybe because I’m in the torturous process of
trying to distill 90k words down to two or three pages. Sure. Sure. I know it’s
about the character arcs. It’s about the internal conflict and how the external
conflict feeds into that. Intellectually, I get that this is a marketing tool –
a sales tool that will give the marketing and art departments their sole
glimpse at what might be at stake in my story. As such, a dry, Reader’s Digest
Condensed version of the story isn’t going to cut it. James said it best in the
comments section of his post: Sell the sizzle, not the steak. It's all about the melodrama, people.
I know all of this but it doesn’t make the process any less
painful. And it’s necessary pain. I’ve been buried in the viscera of my story,
mucking around in the messy details, making sure all of the I’s are dotted and the
t’s crossed. With a synopsis, I have to zoom out, reduce the magnification on
my view of the story and the characters. I’ve spent months immersed in every
thought, gesture and decision, and now, in one fell fall of a ‘The End’ axe,
I’m supposed to pull way back and look at the sum of the parts. This is
entirely possible (or I would never have sold a damned thing ever) but for me, at
least, it’s a huge mental shift. I gather that all of my whining and pain comes
from the fact that I’m having to build brand new synapses in regard to the
story and how I deal with it. It really is a very different operation, writing
the story versus writing a synopsis. If you haven’t had call to think in really
broad terms about your piece of work, then this is the first call to do so and,
that generally isn’t something your brain has laid track to do.
So. Synopses.
I end up writing three or four. All of them suck. I’ll start
trying to summarize the story. Then I’ll remind myself that isn’t what a
synopsis is supposed to do. So I’ll start another one focusing on character
goals and obstacles. I’ve gone through the entire story chapter by chapter
using KAK’s GAR method. Only to find that my chapter breaks don’t fall neatly
into the GAR pattern and by about chapter 10, I’m so off kilter I’m entirely
lost. Not to mention that with a romance having two POV characters who each
have different goals, actions and reactions. My three page synopsis is
running about fourteen pages.
So then I cry and chat my fellow writers whilst bemoaning
the fact that I’m a moron and I clearly have no idea what I’m doing. The other
books were a fluke and I’ll never write again. My friends roll their eyes and
hand me a cup of tea. I drink it.
Then I’m back at the synopsis thing. The other drafts have
been thrown out. Figuratively. Cause you never know when you might want to
steal a line from one of them. I start fresh and this time, I go for daytime
soap opera melodrama. I’m still laying out the character arcs, it’s just stated
in terms that would make any villain worth his salt twirl his moustache in
delight. Right now, the first line of my working synopsis for the WIP goes
something like: Darsorin Incarri figures
being an incubus is a pretty sweet deal. All sex all the time. It almost makes
up for that dead and damned bit. Now granted, you get no clue what his goals
are yet. But I do hope that you have a glimpse of what his normal unlife is
like so when I present the inciting incident-meeting up with a woman who
doesn’t respond to his infernal seductive power-you get a vivid picture of
where the story might be going. My problem now is writing the REST of the
synopsis. I wish I had actual advice for you. But that would presuppose that I
considered myself any good at this. I don’t. In fact. Gonna go cry and then
have a cup of tea. Feel free to join me. I can, at least, brew a decent cup of tea. See
you in the trenches.
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