Writing in dog years

[pbray]

I've spent the past week working on a synopsis, which has been behaving in the way they typically do. Over this morning's coffee, I found myself considering why it was that writing a six page synopsis is so much harder than writing an entire chapter of a novel.

And then it hit me. A synopsis is to a novel as dog years are to human years. Each page of a synopsis carries the weight of fifty or more pages of story. A superdense form of prose, each paragraph of a synopsis must do the work of at least a scene, if not an entire chapter. It's as if I went to do my normal workout only to find that someone had swapped out my five pound handweights for fifty pounders. No wonder it's taking me so long to make progress.

The important thing is that I am making progress, so rather than beating myself up over having created only five good pages, I should recognize that these five pages are worth many times their weight in ordinary prose.

Now all I need is more coffee, and I'm ready to tackle that one last page.

Oh, and if someone wanted to return the hour that was stolen from me last night, I wouldn't say no to that either.

Comments

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Oh, and if someone wanted to return the hour that was stolen from me last night, I wouldn't say no to that either.

Agreed. Why couldn't they have taken it out of my work week?

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Why do they take an hour of sleep? Why can't it be an hour of powerpoint charts instead? No one would miss that.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

Dog years done doggedly.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

That's a good explanation. Now, why is it so much harder to write a synopsis of a completed novel than it was to complete the novel in the first place?

[pbray.livejournal.com]

There are no good answers. If the book is finished, it's incredibly difficult to condense down into a synopsis. But if you're working on a proposal for a book that you haven't written yet, you're deciding the shape of the story at the same time as you're building the synopsis.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

True that. Though with the working outlines I've done, key events have often changed from what I pictured.

Condensing to six pages (or fewer) is hard after the fact. I've tried using haiku to condense, and as a way to build hooks and pitches. And as far as pitches go, I've only now got an elevator pitch for Dark Winter. Now that it's out there and all.
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Highlander."

Hey, if I ever sell the hardcover rights, want to stick your name on that, and we can put it on the back cover ;-)?

[karen-w-newton.livejournal.com]

I love the simile. Or is it a metaphor? I always compared writing a synopsis to giving birth to a bowling ball: It's painful, and I'm never happy with the outcome.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

The only consolation is that the readers never see the synopsis....

On the other hand, if the synopsis sucks, the readers will never see the book either, since no editor will buy it.

[karen-w-newton.livejournal.com]

Don't tell me that!

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a huge difference between "sucks" and "I'm not 100% happy with it, but it works."

A synopsis is like a good pair of beige pants. Nothing you'd want to wear clubbing (or to accept an Oscar) but they get the job done.