Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Synopsis writing

Must confess I hate writing a synopsis, even more than I hated precis-writing exercises when I was at school.
But we writers have to do it, have to condense the blood, toil, sweat and tears that have gone into our stories into a couple of pages.
That's all Whiskey Creek want. 1-2 pages, summarising the beginning, middle and end, showing the conflict and resolution as well as character description.
Whoa! That's hard to do in 2 pages, especially when you have multiple conflicts, one piling in after another and the resolution is as complex as the conflicts have been. No word space for any dialogue or anything 'exciting'.
IMO you just have to tell the story.
I agonised over my synopsis for His Leading Lady - it was fairly bland and unexciting, but I must have done something right since they accepted it LOL

1 comment:

  1. This is my bete noir too. Just hate it, never know when too much is just that and too little is not enough! If they said summarise your story in a paragraph I would be happy.
    Besides, I hate giving the ending to anyone!
    It's gotta be done but then again if you can send three chapters, why???

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