We hates them, precious
Jan. 19th, 2004 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanThat might be the title of a political post, but in fact it is not.
I finished the plot synopsis for the Hills/Whim sequel over the weekend. It's better, I think, than the Liavek one. At least it's shorter. But oh, how I do hate to write those things. I am past the point where I fret over how stupid any book sounds when compressed; I know that such a document cannot do justice to even a written book, let alone an unwritten one that is full of Schroedinger boxes. But I still hate writing plot synopses. Some people find the process useful; some people find it fun and interesting, a game, a form of gaming the system, a cute little exercise that is less agonizing than much of the actual writing process. And some people naturally produce synopses as part of producing a finished book. To me, however, they are orthogonal to the creative process and cause a mental case of hives. The only thing I can say for them is that sometimes they fling up thematic patterns. This one did so very strongly. That's nice, but books themselves do that as well. I'd like to think that this book will turn out better because I have these patterns in my head already; but, you know, probably it won't. There isn't any way to tell, anyway.
The next step is to take the inchoate mass I have been calling "the sample chapters" and smack it into a form that looks as if it might be the opening of a book, preferably the book described in the synopsis. Then I can take this faked-up, gimcrack, penny-ante object, this pitiful standin for a real book, and get it out of my house and go back to actually writing. I try to remind myself that at least I do get to do the actual writing. When I had day jobs, sometimes I enjoyed them and sometimes I hated them, but the entire set of activities I performed in them, the only things I was paid for, felt from beginning to end and all through exactly like writing a plot synopsis. And there wasn't even a book written later.
Pamela
I finished the plot synopsis for the Hills/Whim sequel over the weekend. It's better, I think, than the Liavek one. At least it's shorter. But oh, how I do hate to write those things. I am past the point where I fret over how stupid any book sounds when compressed; I know that such a document cannot do justice to even a written book, let alone an unwritten one that is full of Schroedinger boxes. But I still hate writing plot synopses. Some people find the process useful; some people find it fun and interesting, a game, a form of gaming the system, a cute little exercise that is less agonizing than much of the actual writing process. And some people naturally produce synopses as part of producing a finished book. To me, however, they are orthogonal to the creative process and cause a mental case of hives. The only thing I can say for them is that sometimes they fling up thematic patterns. This one did so very strongly. That's nice, but books themselves do that as well. I'd like to think that this book will turn out better because I have these patterns in my head already; but, you know, probably it won't. There isn't any way to tell, anyway.
The next step is to take the inchoate mass I have been calling "the sample chapters" and smack it into a form that looks as if it might be the opening of a book, preferably the book described in the synopsis. Then I can take this faked-up, gimcrack, penny-ante object, this pitiful standin for a real book, and get it out of my house and go back to actually writing. I try to remind myself that at least I do get to do the actual writing. When I had day jobs, sometimes I enjoyed them and sometimes I hated them, but the entire set of activities I performed in them, the only things I was paid for, felt from beginning to end and all through exactly like writing a plot synopsis. And there wasn't even a book written later.
Pamela
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-19 10:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-19 12:37 pm (UTC)Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-01-19 01:40 pm (UTC)At the risk of sounding like one of those tiresome people who tells writers "I couldn't find your book anywhere," it is really lovely to have the new editions so available in even chain bookstores now. And I needed to buy the new ones anyway, because mine were....um....didn't have that lovely cover art on them. There!
A friend of mine once said his plot synopses were entertaining pieces of fiction that had nothing to do with the actual books he was writing whatsoever, and once he could think of them that way, it was a bit easier to do them.
moi
no subject
Date: 2004-01-19 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-19 10:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-19 12:39 pm (UTC)Pamela
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Date: 2004-01-20 11:04 am (UTC)Oh, thank you, it's so good to hear all this from a "real writer"; I managed to get something vaguely resembling a synopsis written for the first-novel manuscript I'm currently flogging around, but I felt like it was going to break my brain a couple times while I was trying to write it, and I have no idea whether it's any good or not. And then there's the @!##$ attendant paperwork... I am now in my 7th week of trying to craft a coherent cover-letter so I can send the darn thing to an agent and I am beginning to get this mental picture of that piece of paper taking longer to write than the actual manuscript. (Well, OK, it doesn't exactly help matters that my apartment's been infested with workmen all month, but still.) Much easier to write fiction than describe it!
no subject
Date: 2004-01-19 10:50 am (UTC)I'm not doing it any more.
I'm awfully bad at it, and it can kill a project, and they don't need it for anything useful, and in fact I am more likely to stall out on a book where I've broken it by writing a synopsis than if I haven't.
So I'm not doing it any more, and I'm saying I don't write synopses the way people say they don't eat eggs.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-19 10:56 am (UTC)I can't afford not to do it at the moment; I need to sell unwritten books, the sooner the better.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-01-19 12:58 pm (UTC)Can you not write a meta-commentary around the Schroedinger boxes?
I cannot say anything to what your editors might require to convince their particular set of bean counters, but your name on the most ruminative, vague description of where you are trying to go would have me interested, and compelled to buy the book as soon as I saw it on a shelf.