Customer Reviews

I Have This Nifty Idea: ...Now What Do I Do with It?

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When a new writer is ready to submit a completed novel, he or she frequently agonizes over how to boil down a 150K-word novel into a synopsis.

Most of us learned to write essays by reading essays, fiction by reading fiction, and specifically genre fiction by reading in our chosen genre. What better way to learn to write a synopsis than to read a pile of real synopses and the comments of the authors who wrote them?

The synopses demonstrate the plain, direct language of a synopsis (as opposed to the artful language of fiction prose). And they show that the length of a synopsis will vary considerably depending on the structure of the book it synopsizes. If you happen to have read one of the novels, you can compare the level of detail in the synopsis with the full story, and begin to understand just what qualifies as "nonessential."

While this book is probably most useful for science fiction and fantasy writers, it can be a valuable tool for writers of all genres. This is not a "read for fun" kind of nonfiction. Reading a pile of synopses is *not* a lot of fun. I would rather read the full novels. But pay attention to the language, the level of detail, and the structure of the synopses; writing your own will become a lot easier.