Synopsis hacking
Jan. 9th, 2009 02:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vcmwOh, and I'm happy to say that I finally have something that reads like a workable draft of a synopsis. Ugly and graceless, but a synopsis rather than a series of actions.
Now that I've written it, it's making me itch to go do a 3rd rewrite on the novel to draw out some of the character conflicts and arcs more clearly, which I think is a sign that it worked.
Basically, I finally stopped thinking of a synopsis as describing a series of events and started thinking of it as describing a series of escalating conflicts.
Thanks to the many agent and publishing blogs whose generous writing made that insight possible.
Cause, y'know, it turns out the story had lots of character conflict that built towards a resolution in escalating stages. Three of 'em, just like a three act play and all. Who knew? Characters had initial conflicts, escalating conflicts, and final conflicts. At least, the characters who you would identify as "important" had all three. And then it was easy to see who wasn't so central to the story (even though their actions might be central to plot scenes) because they had, at most, one or two such conflicts, which didn't really build over the course of the story. While the main 3 characters had 3 sets of conflicts to deal with, and the main 5 had two, and the two main sub-plot-groups of characters had three conflict stages as a group.
Now that I've written it, it's making me itch to go do a 3rd rewrite on the novel to draw out some of the character conflicts and arcs more clearly, which I think is a sign that it worked.
Basically, I finally stopped thinking of a synopsis as describing a series of events and started thinking of it as describing a series of escalating conflicts.
Thanks to the many agent and publishing blogs whose generous writing made that insight possible.
Cause, y'know, it turns out the story had lots of character conflict that built towards a resolution in escalating stages. Three of 'em, just like a three act play and all. Who knew? Characters had initial conflicts, escalating conflicts, and final conflicts. At least, the characters who you would identify as "important" had all three. And then it was easy to see who wasn't so central to the story (even though their actions might be central to plot scenes) because they had, at most, one or two such conflicts, which didn't really build over the course of the story. While the main 3 characters had 3 sets of conflicts to deal with, and the main 5 had two, and the two main sub-plot-groups of characters had three conflict stages as a group.
