Sunday, May 04, 2014

The Weekend Writer: The Dreaded Synopsis

I had eight books published with one of the big publishers without ever having to write a synopsis. I barely knew what a synopsis is.

I am not bragging here, folks. I am explaining why things have been so tense around Chez Gauthier the last few days. I've been writing a synopsis that was requested after I made a submission. How bad did things get? My husband tried to ask me something this afternoon, saw I was still at my laptop, and said, "Never mind. Finish that #@!! thing."

While struggling these last few days, I came upon 6 Steps for Writing a Book Synopsis at Marissa Meyer's blog. I wish I'd found it earlier in my own synopsis process. Read it now before you need it.

2 comments:

tanita✿davis said...

GAH! I share your pain. I made it through my entire undergrad without having to write an outline for a paper... grad school was A REVELATION.

I have taken to writing Beat Sheets to help me not only stay on task in terms of plot, but to help make the post-synopsis process that much easier.

Luck to you.

Gail Gauthier said...

I've heard of beats and was interested in trying them for planning/plotting prior to writing. But the explanations of how to do it were almost always more complicated than the material you linked to. I'm going to go study that right now.