Synopses are not our friends

I think the title pretty much speaks for itself. It is my own humble opinion that writing synopses suck.

It continually amazes me that I can write a 380+ page manuscript with seemingly little effort, yet when it comes to a 5-7 page synopsis, I'm ready to pull my hair out. Okay, that was a big fat lie. None of the books I've written have been seemingly effortless, it only seems that way since I'm not currently bogged down in the mire of a story. Give me a few weeks and I'll have rants about the stupid book that's giving me fits.

The fact still remains that synopsis writing is hard, hard, HARD work. At least it is for me.

For the past week, I've printed down every synopsis-writing worksheet I could find on the fabulous Charlotte Dillon website (http://www.charlottedillon.com/), and have gone through all of my old handouts from past RWA conferences. I have the entire story laid out scene-by-scene with color-coded index cards. I have sticky notes stuck to my wall. I am organized to the nth degree.

But, do I have a synopsis? Ummm...no.

Every time I attempt to write one of those buggers, I try to tell myself this time will be different. I sit down with a fresh cup of coffee, clean white paper, and a Uni-ball, and convince myself that I'm going to kick out that synopsis in an hour. No problem. Then, I promptly forget everything about the book (yes, the same book I wrote), and end up staring at the blank paper for an hour. It's just not fun!

I've resigned myself to the fact that I will never like writing synopses. They are a necessary evil (yes, they are evil, evil, evil), but what can you do?

Labels: Reading, Synopsis, Writing

posted by Farrah Rochon @ 2:29 PM Comments: 5