S & M = Synopsis and Manuscripts so get your mind out of the gutter!
Today I’ll discuss the dreaded synopsis. Writers fear them.Agents devour them.Editors require them.
There’s no getting away from the fact that you will have to condense your four hundred pages into just a couple if you want to make a submission to the powers that be. And, yes, I said a COUPLE pages. As in two.
You may have heard some people say a synopsis should be six to eight pages. Or ten. I’ve heard some authors like to send in a hefty twenty page synopsis. That might be more appealing to you because it’s easier to chip away at your hundreds of pages and narrow it down to twenty. Two might seem crazy impossible.
Is it harder to do it my way? Yes. Then why the hell should you do it my way? Because I told you so. Sorry, I was channeling my mom there.
I have only one reason for suggesting a two-page synopsis and that’s because it worked for me. Maybe a ten or twenty page synopsis was good for somebody else but here on my blog I can only say what works for me because I just can’t speak for anybody else.
So how can you boil down 100,000 words to 500? First of all, you need to re-think the purpose of the synopsis. The reason you write a synopsis is to whet the appetite of the reader so they’ll read the book. You want them intrigued, fascinated and entertained and DYING to dig into the rest of the story. When you’re submitting to a potential agent and/or editor do you want them slogging through a long, tedious synopsis until they’re too tired or, heaven forbid BORED, to read your wonderful chapters that follow? I didn’t think so.
Yes, it’s true that some published authors get away with selling on a mere smidge and hint of a synopsis: “Joe and Jane are fighting crime and then some really cool things happen and everyone lives happily ever after.” Probably you won’t sell anything based on a sentence like that until you’ve reached NYT stardom. Until then, you need to do it the old fashioned way. Steal from others.
Okay, I don’t exactly mean steal. It’s more like borrowing. Go to your own bookshelves which are, hopefully, heavy with novels. Pickup a few of your favorites and read the descriptions on the back. That, my friends, is a great way to describe a book and it’ll set the tone you need to write your own synopsis. Make it leap off the page. Make it so that when they reach the bottom of page two the reader eagerly picks up chapter one because they can’t wait to read more.
Do I hear you crying out, “Prove it! Dammit, Wendy, why can’t I see YOUR two-page synopsis as an example?!”
Okay, you don’t have to whine … but you do need to jump through a couple hoops.
Until the end of the month, if you “like” my author page on Facebook and/or follow me on twitter (see the side bar for both) then I will email you a copy of my two-page synopsis for Remains of the Dead. You’ll also have to email me (wendy at wendyroberts dot com) and put “synopsis” in the subject.
First of all, the Oprah ship has sailed so forget that.
Okay, let’s assume you finished your book. You gave it to friends to read and they all told you it was wonderful because they’re your friends and didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Or maybe it IS wonderful. Who am I to judge? My first book was a convoluted story about a cup of flour’s journey to be a birthday cake (seriously).
So what’s your next step?
You need to edit.
“Hold on just a damn minute, Wendy, I’ve already edited this thing a gazillion times!”
Yeah? Well then one more won’t kill you.
“So what if there are a few mistakes? If an editor loves it, won’t they be glad to fix it?”
Maybe. But the world of publishing is highly competitive. Given a hundred manuscripts arriving in her email query box every week, do you think an editor or agent is gonna say, “Wow this one is great AND it needs work so I’ll be sure to pick this manuscript over the ten others that don’t need repair!”?
So now that I’ve convinced you to edit, don’t do it.
First, take a step back and work on something else, hopefully, an entirely different book. Give your brain a rest from those weary characters and that tired old premise and start something fresh. Then come back to your story in a couple weeks or a couple months. You thought you caught all the grammar errors and plot holes the first few times? I’m betting you’ll find even more this go round.
What about critique groups? They can be great. If you can, you should join RWA, MWA and any other writing organization that gives you access to like minded individuals and wonderful critique groups. But if you join a critique group, go in with your eyes, ears and mind wide open. If a lot of people take issue with something in your story, you should probably take a look at it but, in the end, it’s YOUR story and you need to decide what goes and what stays.
So NOW can I send it out to agents, editors and Oprah?
How about one more tip? Read your dialogue out loud. At least some of it. Why? Because that’s the best way to tell if your characters actually sound like real people -- people you know and hang out with -- or if they are stiff and formal like they’ve just stepped out of Ms. Hatty’s Haughty Finishing School.
Okay, I’m off to ready some dialogue. Out loud. To my dog. Nothing like a captive audience!
Since it’s been a while, let’s briefly recap how I’m writing my stupid books and notes from previous posts:
TIP 1: was all about BICHOKing.
TIP 2: Ideas
TIP 3: plotting and pantsing
TIP 4: internal editors
All caught up? Good.
Today’s post is about names.
The name of your book.
The names of your characters.
I know writers who obsess about these things. I know writers who truly can’t write a single word until they have THE PERFECT TITLE. They bounce the ideas off their friends and they make lists upon lists. If this is holding you up, let me tell you the secret to the perfect title: LET SOMEONE ELSE COME UP WITH IT.
I'm not kidding.
Confession Time. I am title-challenged. My first published book was called Dating Can Be Deadly. Did I come up with this? No. I called it Cat’s Pajamas. Yup.Regardless that there were no cats who wore pajamas in the entire story, that was my title. I don’t even know why I ever thought it was a good idea.
The good news is, they bought it anyway and wiser people than yours truly were charged with the job of coming up with a title. This is true for all of my books. I come up with something to place in the header just so I don’t have to refer to it as BOOK-I-HOPE-SELLS. But if/when it sells, I know the powers that be will work their asses off to find the perfect title. And, yes, they’ll consult me when they narrow it down so it’s not like I’m totally out of the loop.
A bad title will NOT stop an editor or agent from reading your work. Well, unless you called it "Shit". Then maybe. But if you’re wrapped up in the struggle to come up with that perfect title you need to let it go and realize your main job is to write the other 100,000 words. It’s okay to let someone else come up with the few on the cover.
Character names. Sigh. This is a bit more touchy and personal. I know you want to feel that connection to your characters and, yes, names are important. You sure as hell don’t want to name your protagonist Jane if Jane was the bitch who harassed and bullied you all through middle school, right? But. Again. Unless you name your character Pissypot Craphead, I’ve never heard of an editor or agent turning down a book because they didn’t like the character’s moniker. If they were truly bugged about it, hey, they would just ask you to change it.
I like to use Random Name Generator or an ancient baby book that helped me choose the names for my children. Sometimes I use the White Pages to choose a last name.
Then I write the damn book.
Often and, yes, I mean frequently, I change the names later. After the first draft, once I’ve gotten to know my characters, I might find myself thinking “Ugh. Why the hell did I name the antagonist Jarvis?” Then I simply hit global replace in Word and I replace all the Jarvis’s with another name. Simple. Easy peasy.
Do not get hung up with the deep, dark meanings and origins of a name. That’ll drag you through two weeks of hell. Just give it a title and if it’s not great, so what? And give that character a name, and if it’s not perfect, so what?
Just write the book. Agonizing over the name is just a form of procrastination.
Off to write my stupid book and pondering the name of Iesha Elefritz as an antagonist.
