More synopsis joy
I seem to post here a lot about the synopsis. There’s good reason for this.
Authors are frequently called upon to reduce their 60,000-odd word novel to a page, a paragraph, even a pithy statement.
My pithy statement for this book? Bad TV talent shows and narcolepsy, together at last.
So it is I’ve been asked to write yet another synopsis for my novel None of the Other Flies Follow My Crooked Lines. It’s probably my third or fourth attempt at this and it’s never an easy task. Hell, it took me nine words to title the damn thing.
Read MoreHere Today: The Better Synopsis
This is the redraft. I think the differences speak for themselves. Probably.
Read MoreWhen your self-esteem is shattered by harsh reality, can stories save you?
Here Today is a contemporary novel that follows a young occupational therapist’s locum stint in a Brisbane hospital. Astrid is rootless and restless in her life — unable to commit, unable to settle.
Here Today: The crapper synopsis
So here’s the synopsis written for my first novel, the older version that feels a little laboured and floppy. I think I wrote this under pressure of a deadline and it shows. It smells of desperation. Please, please, please make this novel about something, damnit!
Read MoreWhen your self-esteem is shattered by harsh reality, can stories save you?
Astrid Reinhart is set to coast through this two-week hospital job, all she has to do is turn up every morning and smile sweetly, but the ward that awaits both entices and terrifies her. Martin Finn, a successful novelist whose stroke has left him with the rare locked-in syndrome, wants Astrid to help him write his next story – one letter at a time. Leith McAuley, Astrid’s fuck-off-flatmate, through a volley of four-lettered philosophy, encourages Astrid to abandon her professional veneer and immerse herself in the worlds of her patients. Astrid remains unconvinced until a stray bite misses her lunch and takes off the end of her tongue. Unable to communicate beyond painful, barely decipherable utterances, Astrid has no choice but to listen.
On the synopsis
Well, there it is. The synopsis is now out ‘in the wild’, as they say. It seems strange to put out so much information about a novel that exists only as a manuscript on someone’s desk (not mine).
I wanted to put it up on the web site though, partly to prove to myself that I actually complete it, but also to show how the synopsis will change over time. I recently dusted off the synopsis of my first novel, which is itself making a few rounds of prospective tree killers. It astounded me how ordinary and clunky the synopsis now sounded to my ears. I promptly hacked it to pieces and came up with something snappier. I’ll post up examples of those in coming days too.
The synopsis is a difficult piece of writing. How do you summarise 60,000 words of your blood and sweat into a few pithy paragraphs that prompt the reader to want more? Which bits of the story do you emphasise over others? Do you attempt to tie it all together and hint at the conclusion or do you leave the reader hanging? Will that piss them off?
The one essential requirement for writing a good synopsis is the one thing that the author has absolutely none of: perspective. Given time and some distance from the manuscript, it is possible for the author to approximate perspective and use such approximation to good effect. But I suspect that the publisher’s requirement of an author-penned synopsis is one final joke from the industry. You’re stupid enough to write a novel? Now summarise it!
Read MoreSynopsis: NOTOFFMCL
Liberty Star Jones was a shoo-in to take out the grand finale of the MusiClash, the television talent quest that pitches itself as the only show that matters. With a truckload of talent and the singular viciousness of her uber-stage-Mum, Bunny behind the scenes, Liberty was set to coast her way into this Christmas’s number one single. America beckoned.
How did it all go so wrong?
Read MoreThe Books
