Swine-opsis

I have described a 109,000-word novel in a 1000-word synopsis. How did that feel, you ask? Like extracting my skeleton from my body, standing it against a wall, and -- using my boneless rubbery hands -- sketching a picture of it with a sharp rock. In thirty seconds.

People complain about writing synopses all the time. It is, without doubt, a difficult thing to take months (if not years) of planning, suffering, writing and revising; the agonies and triumphs of characters; twining subplots and symbolism ... and compress it all into a hard little pellet.

But it's necessary. Let's be realistic: two single-spaced pages is a lot of text. And sure, you may have to remove the art and the joy and all the subtlety of which you're so proud, but so what? The synopsis isn't the book.

Defying the expectations of the publishing world and refusing to write a synopsis could be the start of a brave new defiance! Brave new voice! Look, he has thwarted the litero-industrial complex and toppled the fusty paradigms!

Of course, refusing to play by the rules is also the shortest path to rejection. Second shortest path? Writing crap.

So I take my synopsis and I take my knife and I trim. And I trim. And I trim.

Sin-opsis

Writing a synopsis is ... difficult. I was going to launch into a metaphor of hammers and fingers, noting that our vital organs are all neatly packaged into our centers, rendering our extremeties ... superfluous yet still pretty dang nice to have.

But A) that's disgusting; B) it goes a bit too far; and C) why not quit thinking of metaphors for how hard things are and just get down to doing them? Honestly, if we took even part of the energy we use in talking about writing, and put it into actual writing, there would be fewer complaints of "not enough time."

Here is my challenge: the draft synopsis reads like a condensed, superficial, rushed version of the real story. Which, of course, it is. When in fact it should read like a short story treatment of the longer novel. The good news is that once the synopsis is ready, I can begin sending this to agents., so I have real motivation to work on it.

And to complain about it.