Synopsis: I Did It!

Well. At least I think I did it. Knowing me, I'll continue to peck at it, snipping out this word or that phrase.

I wrote the book. That was hard. I wrote the query letter. That was harder. I wrote the synopsis. That was the hardest.

Why makes synopsis writing so difficult? In the first place, it's a challenge to write tight, tight, tighter while retaining the essence of your style and the tone of the work. Throughout the writing of the novel, we are adjured, "Show; don't tell." Suddenly it becomes, "Tell; don't show," because there's no room for the latter. Beloved similies and images end up on the surgery room floor, bleeding and mangled. Even some alliteration is left lying lifeless alongside the other carnage.

Secondly, advice contradicts advice. Some say single space; others, double. (So I compromised with 1.5 line spacing.) Some say the synopsis should be written in present tense, regardless of the tense of the tale; others say past. (The former gets the most votes, and that's the way one normally writes about literature, so I went with present tense.) It seems that every "expert" has his own way of formatting the first page.

One thing that most agree on is the importance of the synopsis. The majority of editors and agents require one. A critique partner who makes a habit of placing highly in prestigious writing competitions says that the value of the synopsis is that it allows the powers that be to see if the writer has a strong plot line to hold the story together.

My conclusion, after perusing many articles and guidelines, is this:

• If the agent or editor to whom one wishes to submit gives specific guidelines, follow them to the letter. Heed the jots and tittles.
• Do your homework. Read guidelines and advice columns, realizing that they will contradict one another. Adapt what you learn to make it work for you.
• Write tight. Then revise it to make it tighter. 
• Format it so that it reflects the professionalism of the writer.

Here are some links to jump-start your research:

• "How to Write a Synopsis" by Marg Gilks
• "Writing a Novel Synopsis"; Fiction Writer's Connection
• "How to Write a Novel Synopsis" by Chuck Sambuchino, Guide to Literary Agents (Editor's Blog)
• "Mastering the Dreaded Synopsis: Condensing Your Novel" by Lee Masterson, Fiction Factor

Visit the blogs I list in the right column, also, since several of them discuss synopses.

Fellow writers, editors, and agents, if you happen to do me the honor of a visit to this blog, would you be so kind as to click on "Comments" and leave some of your own advice for those of us who struggle with the dreaded synopsis writing? Have you gleaned some jewel from a conference, workshop, or article? Please share. (By the way, I've never heard anyone say, "Synopsis? Piece o' cake!")

Write on!

Taking a Breather--Well, Not Really

I haven't posted anything for a few days, but I've been busy with writerly work, nonetheless. Even though my first manuscript was "complete," I gave it one more perusal before hitting the "Send" button, making a tweak-tweak here and a tweak-tweak there. Of course I continue to write on my WIP, and I'm getting ready to lead  "The Essential Five-Paragraph Essay" workshop for a group of home educators and their students. (I always ask that the parent who teaches English attend and participate in this one.)

Recently, I read my first ARC, and I plan to write a review for it this week. Please stop back to read that. After today's trip to the library, I have three middle-grade novels to read: Ruby Holler by Sharon Creech (Joanna Cotler Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers); Sweet By and By by Patricia Hermes (HarperCollins); and North by Night by Katherine Ayres (Delacorte Press).  Can't wait to start turning those pages!

Write on!

A Sense of Place

My friends live in my house. Actually, they own and live in the home that is the model for Aunt Becky's house in my work-in-progress. I've tweaked the layout a little to conform to the needs of the story, since, as far as they or I know, there are no hidden passageways in their house. Further, in my story, the summer kitchen is still standing, whereas the one that once stood behind the c. 1840s Federal-style brick home was destroyed by a storm years ago, long before my friends bought the place.

With much love and care, these friends of mine have created garden spaces around the property, places to 'light 'n' tie, dream, imagine, and contemplate the beauty of God's Creation, so as I altered the house to suit my WIP, those lovely gardens worked their way into the story.

As important as it is for me to thoroughly know my characters (see blog entry for Sunday, Feb. 14), I should also know the setting inside and out. If I don't have an actual house to reference, I sketch rough house or building layouts and maps of the landscape. Though I'm no artist, I sometimes draw a scene, as well. If I cannot see it, hear it, feel it, smell it, and sometimes taste it--experience it--then I probably will not be able to make it real to my readers. Taking such measures in the pre-writing process helps to keep things straight. In the case of my WIP, the library is on the west side of the house that faces north. I dare not forget that and put it where the parlor is.

Like historical romance writer Ramona K. Cecil, if at all possible, I go to the location that I'm researching--or one similar to it if it is fictiional--and walk the area, listen to the birds sing, smell the air, study the physical features, and feel the earth of that place beneath my feet. Early in my writing, I heard that if western writer Louis L'Amour said that a particular boulder stood at a certain fork in the road, it was there, unless someone had moved it since he visited the place. He ascertained that he knew his setting well. He conveyed that to his readers. Even if the setting is a total fiction, I should be as familiar with it as Tolkien was with Middle Earth and Lewis was with Narnia.

Fellow scribes, to what lengths do you go to know your setting? Click on "Comments" below to share.

By the way, my friends are the proprietors of New Creation Daylilies, located at the heart of a triangle formed by Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Louisville. Click the link embedded in this paragraph to learn more. I thank them for granting me permission to post some of the photos above. 

"Dear Lucky Agent" Contest at Guide to Literary Agents

MG and YA writers, get ready. . .get set . . .submit! Hurry because you only have 13 days left to enter as of this writing. Come St. Valentine's Day, it's over! Done! Finished! So run, lope, gallop, trot, scurry, race, canter, sprint, jog, dash, rush, bound, clip, bolt, hotfoot it, scramble, hustle, skedaddle, or just click over to www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog to enter. Mine will be on it's way in about three minutes.

Writing Reflections

I love being a member of Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Southern Indiana Writers' Salon, and American Christian Fiction Writers. Writing is a solitary enterprise, for the most part, so belonging to such groups is essential. We need the objective feedback of others.

As part of ACFW's large general loop and a small critique group, I've learned much about my craft. The loop boasts membership that includes editors, agents, reviewers, professors who teach writing, and writers at all stages in their careers, from the rank beginner to the oft-pubbed author. Thanks to a critiquer who was part of my first small group (and remains a friend and critique partner), my writing is tighter, more precise. I still can be wordy, but I'm improving.

However, if writers were to try to conform to all of the tidbits of advice given--through a loop or any other source--we would all sound alike.  Consider the great writers of American literature for a moment. One can read the short, crisp sentences of Hemingway and recognize his style immediately. He wrote simply and directly. What he lacked in syntax and diction, according to critic Harry Levin, he made up for in action. Faulkner, on the other hand, wrote in a very different style, constructing long, convoluted sentences that painted vivid pictures in the imagination of the reader. Yet, Hemingway and Faulkner were contemporaries. Like them, each writer should have his or her own voice and style.

Good writing applies common sense and survives the trends of the day, giving it a long shelf life. "Lose the tags," we're told. "Introduce lines of dialog with action beats." That's reasonable advice, though it's not really new. The terminology may have changed, but the idea stays the same. If two people are talking back and forth, the writer can omit most of the he said/she saids. Action beats (what actors might call "business") help to eliminate "talking heads" and serve to develop characters and scenes.

These days, we also hear a lot about deep point of view or penetration point of view--same thing. This form of third-person writing sees and understands the scene through the character's eyes, giving the motivation behind the action. It falls just shy of being first-person, showing the attitude at the moment, not in memory or flashback. As with any strategy, it has its faults. It is no more reliable than first-person because of its subjectivity. The character may misunderstand or misinterpret events (which can be exactly what the writer intends). Because it can be very intense, it has the potential to wear on the reader, if carried on too long, so the writer should be discriminating in its usage.

"Show. Don't tell." How many time have we heard that? It is good advice to new writers, who tend to want to tell or describe everything in long, boring paragraphs. But there are times when the narrator needs to tell, to describe, times when some details need to be conveyed to the reader efficiently. Careful revision can eliminate many so-called narrator intrusions, but not all should be cut or changed.

I recently joined a new small critique group through ACFW, and I am so excited. We are beginning a new adventure together on the brink of a new year. I want them to be tough on me. They can rest assured that I will be on them. In the months since I joined ACFW, I have developed a tough skin. I can take it. I will consider each suggestion, though I may disagree, and I may not make all the revisions each one suggests. I'm the writer of my work, so that call is mine to make.

As I pray before each writing session, I also want to remember to pray before I begin reading their critiques, that God will keep me teachable, helping me to discern what needs to be changed and what can stay as it is. I pray that we become a cohesive team while maintaining our individuality--we four and the Lord.

Christmas Reflections: The Christ of Christmas

The Christ of Christmas
The house is quiet in this predawn hour. Soon my grandsons will come bounding down the stairs and into my room. "It's Christmas, Gran'ma! Merry Christmas," they'll shout. The day will get busier from that moment, so I am snatching this brief time to write the final entry in the "Christmas Reflections" series.

This posting should have been finished by now, but I couldn't find direction. As a writer and storyteller, I had no trouble putting myself in Mary's place. I could imagine her, propped up against the rough boards of a stall, still perspiring from the labor of giving birth, cradling her newborn son in her arms while she examined every wrinkle and pore of His face--the face of God. I could see her bending to drink in His sweet scent and kiss the hollow at the bridge of His nose. I envisioned her slipping aside her robe just enough to put Him to her breast, giving sustenance to the One Who had created her. No doubt she pondered the words of the angel Gabriel, who told her, "He shall be great."

But this was no ordinary baby. With the conception of Jesus, Almighty God condescended from His position to take on human flesh and enter the world of man. The details of His coming were foretold by God Himself, as He escorted Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and through His prophets throughout the Old Testament. I love Luke 4:16-22, which says:

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. and as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

The Christ did not come to be a cute, giggling, wriggling baby for everyone to coo over. The manger stood in the shadow of the cross. The captives? The blind? The oppressed? That's mankind. Me. You. We are held captive by sin. We are willfully blind to His truth. We are oppressed by our own wickedness. Jesus was born to die on the cross to take away the sin of all who repent and believe in Him. He then conquered Death and Hell by resurrecting from the tomb.

Two millennia ago, a baby was born under humble circumstances to a peasant girl, a virgin until after His birth. That baby is the King of kings, and his prophesied return is imminent. Indeed, the King is coming!

Bringing the Dead to Life

Pictured above: The working images I've chosen for Trevor, Johannah, and Leah.
Fellow writer and good friend Ramona K. Cecil suggests that fiction writers "interview" their protagonists and principal characters before beginning a new manuscript. I wish that I had done that with Camie in Up the Rutted Road, but instead I got to know her the hard way: word by page by chapter by triumph by danger.

The Second Cellar will be different. Though I've written 104 pages, I've learned so much during the revision of Rutted Road that I know I must begin again. But first, I'm taking Ramona's advice; I've interviewing Leah, my protagonist, as well as Trevor (Leah's neighbor for the summer) and Johannah (Leah's nineteenth-century friend). I may also interview Leah's father, Byron, the English professor.

It's amazing what a writer can learn from character interviews. All right. I can hear you asking, "Since you invented the characters, don't you already know them?" No. There is much to be discovered in an interview. For example, I had no idea that Leah's middle name was Bright. Nor did I know that she went for two weeks after birth without a middle name. Until Trevor's interview, I didn't know that he and his mother lived with his paternal grandmother, Fern. Further, his father died a hero while serving in Iraq; he threw himself on a grenade to save his buddies. Who knew?

I join Ramona in advising writers to talk to your characters. Get to really know them before you write their stories. Know their back-stories, as well. Don't be shy about prying into private matters. If they blush, let them blush. If they fidget, make note of that. Once you know them, you can write about them authentically.

First Manscript Finished!

How long can it take to write a first novel? Is 15 years too long? I think not, considering that the writer has to allow time spent honing her craft.

I've written most of my life. In fifth grade, I rewrote Longfellow's epic poem "Song of Hiawatha" into a play that my class presented on the radio. That was fun, and it got me out of math. Throughout my school career, I entered about every writing contest that came along and usually did fairly well. Then, after a nine-year stint as a newspaper journalist (winning a couple of awards there, too), college (English major), and ten years as a classroom teacher, I returned to my first love: writing fiction.

Originally, Up the Rutted Road was to be a picture book, but when an editor with Farrar, Straus & Giroux asked me to expand it into a middle-grade novel, I agreed. Now, I cannot imagine it as a picture book. FS&G didn't take the manuscript, but good rejection letters can be an education in themselves. I began to seriously study my craft to discover what URR needed. I also joined an excellent critique group through ACFW and continued to grow my writing. I interviewed people from the area of my setting (southeastern Kentucky), attended a major writers' conference and several smaller workshops, read books, studied on-line sources, and sought the wisdom of published writers.

Today I embark on another journey: a quest to find a publisher and/or an agent that would be a good fit. For some time now, I've been scoping out "possibles," noticing especially those who consider middle-grade novels, but now I'm looking for more.

Meanwhile, I'm also putting together a proposal. The chapter synopses are done. Now for the dreaded query letter. Fortunately, I have some excellent blog and website links right here to the left and down. Several of them address query and cover letters.

I am praying that God will lead me to the right agent and/or publisher early in my quest, since I have another manuscript waiting not so patiently in the wings.

What if I don't find either an agent or a publisher? Of course, that's a possibility. At least I have completed the manuscript and learned a lot along the way--about patience, about persistence, about writing fiction, and about how God works in our writing.

Oh, and by the way, in case you are a novice writer, Gentle Reader, please know from the beginning that the process of becoming does not end. A writer never fully arrives as long as she draws breath. We continue to read, to learn, to hone this precious gift that our Creator entrusted to us.

The Old-Timey House

In an earlier post, I wrote about my search for Elsie Blue, the blue-tick coon hound in my manuscript Up the Rutted Road (working title). As I sought a dog I could describe, I also needed to find a picture of Uncle Glen's weathered, old-timey house. The house pictured above was the home of master storyteller Ray Hicks, who has "passed on over." It was hiding in plain sight, because I have the picture among my collected research about Appalachian oral tradition.

Each October, Ray, a tall string bean of a man, would come down off Beech Mountain--along with his family and a load of sassafras root to sell--to hold court at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. He was an icon of that event. Wherever he stopped to roost, a crowd would gather to hear him tell a Jack Tale in his unique, mesmerizing mountain drawl. He took his time with each word, rolling it around in his mouth, breaking it into as many syllables as possible.

It saddens me that I never got to hear him in person, though I do have a VHS tape of him which I procured at AppalShop in Whitesburg, Kentucky, during a research trip. I hope he won't mind if I borrow his house for my book. I promise not to do it harm. I love it too much.

Giant Steps on the Journey

Within the past couple of weeks, I have taken what I consider to be some giant steps toward expanding my career as a writer. Friend and fellow writer Ramona K. Cecil began encouraging me to join American Christian Fiction Writers a couple years ago, and finally I acted on her suggestion.

When I commit to something, I jump in with both feet, so I also joined a couple of ACFW's listserves. Further, I am the fourth in a quartet of critiquing writers. What an opportunity to grow, first, as I write, knowing that my work will be carefully scrutinized before an agent or editor has opportunity to do that, and second, as a critiquer, which is a skill unto itself. I look forward to our growing into a cohesive unit.

I thought Up a Rutted Road was progressing just fine. One editor with a major publishing house had looked at it and liked it. "But our middle-grade list is already too full," she wrote in the rejection letter.

Another editor was excited about the proposal. "I want to see the full manuscript when it is finished," she said. Unfortunately, she went on an extended medical leave before she could see the completed project.

Then I sent it to an agent with whom I had chatted at a conference. "It lacks a sense of place," he said. How dare he attack my opus, my firstborn! (One tends to mix metaphors when one is upset.)

Initial reaction aside, I began to ponder what the agent had said. Could he be right? I read it through and realized that he was. And so began the laborious revision, still in process.

Up a Rutted Road tells the story of Camie, who spends her tenth summer in the southeastern mountains of Kentucky on the hardscrabble farm of her Uncle Glen and Aunt Charlene. Before summer's end, she must confront death and her own feelings of guilt.

"It lacks a sense of place," the agent had said. How could I correct that? I had to become more familiar with certain elements in the story so that I could accurately show them to the reader.

Elsie Blue, for example. I knew from the beginning that she was a blue-tick coon hound. I knew her by yowl, but where were her spots? What exactly was her coloring? I only needed to do a quick search of the web to find her! Now, I keep her picture before me whenever she's in a scene.

I also went in search of Uncle Glen and Aunt Charlene's "old-timey" house, its siding weathered to an ashen gray. Once I found it, I drew the interior layout. Finally, I had a house I could accurately describe.

The next step was to interview a close friend and fellow storyteller who grew up in southeastern Kentucky. He told me about the coming together of the highlanders in the gloaming, to meet on a neighbor's porch and sing or play various folk instruments-- fiddles, home-made banjos, Jew's harps, mountain dulcimers, etc.--sending the music bouncing around from one mountainside to another and down in the hollows. That luscious story will find its way into the pages of Up a Rutted Road.

Finally, I reached deep down into my own fear, returned to my childhood, and looked out of the window of my father's car to where a mountain road appeared to drop away, leaving nothing but air between the car and the fast-flowing creek far below. I gave my churning stomach and my dizzy head to Camie for a moment in Chapter One, as she looks over just such a cliff.

Writers love that first passionate awen that produces the initial draft of a manuscript. Beginning writers resent and reject the various revisions that are necessary to arrive at a polished work fit for submission. They have not yet learned the value of an agent, an editor, or a critiquer who dares to say, "You need..." or "It lacks..." I have come to the point where I invite such comments and actually enjoy the edits and revisions, because the story is worth it.