What’s In a Synopsis?

Copyright © 2009, Steven E. Houchin

I had the privilege this year to be a first-level judge in the 2009 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest. It was an interesting experience that I enjoyed. I saw my own start at writing five years ago in the obviously newbie manuscripts I read, and liked some of the clever plot ideas. I can’t detail them here since they’re confidential, but a few had great potential.

One thing was clear to me: the idea of a synopsis is sorely misunderstood. I’ve also run into this in a weekly writer’s workshop I attend. For the contest, it didn’t help that the PNWA posted an online document “Writing a Synopsis”, which was truly misleading. It gave the impression that a synopsis should be written in structured segments: here is the protagonist and antagonist; this is their motivation; this is the theme; here is a sentence about the plot. That doesn’t make a synopsis; those are the elements that make up a query letter to an agent/editor - a completely different thing.

I won the PNWA contest two years ago with a synopsis that simply and concisely told the story, from start to end, in two pages. In doing so, the characters and their motivations were revealed naturally within the story. That should be true whether the synopsis is 80 words or 800. Write it like the inside of a book jacket, except tell the whole story - even the surprise ending.

On the subject of word count, a local panel of agents/editors recently claimed they wanted no more than a 50-word synopsis in a query letter. They have no time for anything longer. Holy cow! I tried that with one of my books, and only got to 80. Anything less, and I don’t think the agent would understand what’s compelling about the story. So, then, what about all those agents out there who advertise that they want a query letter, a one-page synopsis, and the first 50 manuscript pages? I’ve read on some blogs that agents are getting cynical about the perfectly crafted query letters they receive because the art of querying is being “workshopped” everywhere. Poor writers are learning how to write great queries. The only way to know what is any good is to read some of the manuscript itself, and judge if a more substantial synopsis makes sense.

I wrote an article recently about proper synopsis writing for a newsletter I edit. Here are the main points:

1. Write it in present tense, even if your story is in past tense (as most are). Write, “Gretchen sees the ghost float in”, not, “Gretchen saw the ghost float in”.
2. Tell the whole story. A synopsis is not a teaser, as is the case for what you often read on a book jacket or in a book review. Give the start, middle, and ending. Subplots are usually left out.
3. Be concise. You don’t have to include everything, just the important points. An agent may specify an interest in a one-page (or less) book synopsis only. Brevity is beautiful. But, getting across the main plot points is crucial. And, you still need to hook your reader. A book jacket or book review description can be a good example of conciseness.
4. For a whole book/story synopsis, include the main characters and their motivations. Minor characters are unnamed or left out. The first time you use a character’s name, put it in all uppercase.

And ... no dialog. Just tell what happens, and make it compelling to read. You may make an exception for a just couple of spoken words, but normally there is no dialog at all.

So, what does an agent/editor really want to see? The answer seems to be “it depends”. Follow whatever guidelines that person/organization posts. If in doubt, I suppose a simple, one-page query can’t go wrong.

Oh Joy! It’s “Investment” Day!

Copyright © 2009, Steven E. Houchin

Another April 15th, and another reminder that government is out of control: overregulation, inefficiency, overspending, overtaxation, over-unionization, and crushing debt. We see it in DC with ObamaBush and the Republocrats. We see it in many of our states, where taxes are massively higher, and government pleads such poverty that they’re unable to build roads or fund fire and police.

California is a perfect example. It has an income tax of 9.3% for people making $47,000 and up (i.e. the rich). Its sales tax rate is, at minimum, 8.25%. And … the state is broke, working families are leaving, and illegal immigrants are flooding in to take advantage of the generous welfare benefits. For the first time ever, California may lose a congressional seat after the 2010 census. Tax paying families are leaving faster then illegals can pour in!

Here in Washington State, we do not have an income tax, but businesses pay a tax on their gross income. No, not the net income … they pay even if they’re losing money. Our sales tax was just jacked up, with local additions, to 9.5%. And, of course, the government always insists it is not enough. Never mind that they massively expanded government over the last 10 years. I grew up in this state. In the 1960s and 70s, we built our modern highways, built the new schools for the Baby Boomers, and funded government with a 5.5% sales tax rate. Now, we’re facing an $8 billion budget shortfall in the next two years. Like California, we have become a one-party “D” state; no checks and balances. The ruination of Washington is likely a decade or so behind California, but seems inevitable given the matching political climate.

And then there’s DC (the other Washington, as we say). To the Congress and the Administration, we are simply a credit card they can run up, a flock of sheep to be sheared. [ After all, we keep sending them back after each election. ] Special interest money to fund reelection is paramount. Doing the right thing is rare. Obama lectures us to stop using so much credit to fund our lifestyles, chides Bush for running up deficits, but fails to see that his reckless spending plans are the exact same thing. Actually, he is worse: he’s not on the hook to pay the bill. We are. And this is a credit card we can’t cut up.

A friend sent a few great quotes to me recently:

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. -- Winston Churchill

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. -- Voltaire

Oh, that’s right. It’s not overspending or reckless debt. It’s “investment”. Is this what they mean by government “going green”?

Never mind. I think I’ll go make myself some tea.

Manuscript Formatting Tips

Copyright © 2009, Steven E. Houchin

Writers often encounter frustrating manuscript editing and formatting problems when using an editor such as MS Word. Sometimes I'll see the problems in their manuscript, or they come to me (a software engineer in my other life) and ask, “How the heck do I ...?” Below, I list some of those issues and a solution. I use Office 2000, so the directions apply to that. But newer versions have analogous features.

Adding Headers and Page NumbersWhenever you pass your manuscript (or portions of it) to someone else to read, you should have title headers and page numbers on every page. In MS Word, this is done with the “Header and Footer” feature.

Headers place text at the top of each page. Footers place text at the bottom of each page. In MS Word, they are created or modified by selecting “Header and Footer” under the View menu, which pops up a little toolbar. Usually, you will want to put your name and book title at the upper left. For my novel Double Fire, I have: Houchin/DOUBLE FIRE

The page number is usually placed in the upper right, but some put it on the right in the Footer. [There is a button in the toolbar to switch between Header and Footer.] To put the page number on the right, press the Tab key in the Header until the cursor reaches the right-hand border, then press the “#” button in the toolbar. That will cause all your pages to be auto-numbered. When you’re done, press the toolbar’s Close button.

However, you’ll want your manuscript to have a title page, but won’t want a header or a page number on it. So, how do you accomplish that?

Go to your title page in the manuscript. Then, open the “Header and Footer” toolbar again, and press the little button that looks like an open book. The Page Setup screen opens. Check the “Different first page” box, then press OK. If you had any title page headers, they vanish! If you don’t have headers yet, you can now insert them on page 2.

But, a problem remains: the page after the title page is numbered 2. You’ll want it to be page 1. To fix this, select the Insert menu, then open “Page Numbers…”. On the Page Numbers screen, choose the Position and Alignment for your numbers, and clear the “Show number on first page” box. Next, press “Format…”, select the “Start At:” option and type in 0 (zero) as your first page number. Finish by pressing OK. When you add your page numbers in the Header (or Footer), the page after the title will be number 1.

Automatic Paragraph Indentation
Editors expect to see the first line of each paragraph in your manuscript indented. I’ve noticed that many writers do this by simply typing a few spaces. However, MS Word provides for automatic indentation, which should provide consistent looking paragraphs.

To enable this feature, open Word’s Format menu, then select Paragraph. Under its “Indents and Spacing” tab, look at the settings under “Indentation”. Select the “First line” value under the “Special” drop-list box. If you don’t like the default 1/2 inch indentation this provides, you can enter a different value in the “By” box.

The “Left” and “Right” settings will indent the whole paragraph from the left or right margins. This might be useful if you’re inserting a quotation or poem within a story.

Note that these settings apply only to the currently selected paragraphs (and any new one added immediately after). Unfortunately, to fix your manuscript, you must remove the spaces you manually inserted, highlight all paragraphs you wish to change, open the Paragraph menu, select the “First line” value, then click OK.

Paragraph Spacing
Have you run into the situation where blank lines appear in your manuscript between paragraphs? There they are, but you never intended to put them in; and they won’t go away.

Well, here’s the problem. Open Word’s Format menu, then select Paragraph. Under its “Indents and Spacing” tab, look at the settings under “Spacing”. The “Before” and “After” values specify how much space to add before/after the paragraph. Zero means no space between. To fix your manuscript, you must highlight the space between all incorrect paragraphs, set these “Before” and “After” values to zero, then click OK. You must do this for each paragraph that is wrong.

Unwanted Horizontal Lines
Have you ever discovered that unwanted horizontal lines have magically appeared in your manuscript? Word may create these lines automatically in response to certain things you type, such as ‘***’. It assumes you really wanted to insert a horizontal line, so it does.

First, you need to eliminate the lines that already pollute your manuscript. To do this, highlight a line of text before and after the horizontal line, then under the “Format” menu, select “Borders and Shading...”. In the pop-up window, select the “None” box and click OK. The line should go away. If you intended to insert a scene break here, replace the now-removed solid line with a blank line, then type the break characters WITHOUT PRESSING THE “ENTER” KEY AFTERWARD. You’ll need to do this for each unwanted solid line you find.

To turn off this automatic line-insertion nonsense, open the “Tools” menu and select “AutoCorrect...”. In the pop-up window, choose the “AutoFormat As You Type” tab, then uncheck the “Borders” box under “Apply as you Type”. Then click OK. You’ll have to do this for every doc file you have. After this, typing asterisks for a scene break should not mess up.

"Conflict" - Love It Or Hate It?

Copyright © 2009, Steven E. Houchin

Every time I hear someone say, "I don't see any conflict in this scene", I want to strangle them. Ahhh, yes ... now there's conflict! To me, the "conflict" criticism always comes across as formulaic, like an item on a generic checklist: flawed protagonist, check; no clichés, check; no adverbs, check; conflict, check.

I was at an author event recently where the subject of conflict came up, where it was said you must put "conflict on every page". Ugh - there it was again: the hated formula. But, as the discussion ensued - and some objections were raised - I realized that the "conflict" formula was really a misnomer. It doesn't mean that a fistfight or shouting match need break out on every page, which seems logical to qualify for conflict. Instead, it encompasses a lot of things we don't usually associate with conflict. I think the idea centers more around avoiding scenes that are nice, pleasant, pretty, and bland.

I jotted down ideas that might suffice to portray conflict in a scene:

Accident
Flirtation
Obstacle
Adversity
Foreboding
Oppression
Anger
Grief
Pursuit
Anxiety
Hate
Rage
Attack
Indecision
Revenge
Bewilderment
Injury
Reversal
Bumbling
Insecurity
Slapstick
Denial
Madness
Stress
Disappointment
Miscue
Teasing
Disbelief
Mistake
Tension
Exhaustion
Misunderstanding
Fear
Mystery

Looking through these ideas, I can see things that represent inner turmoil (denial), or an external force (attack). It can be shown through inner dialog, external dialog, body language, or action. Nods and smiles, sitting around, and mundane chitchat ("Hi, how are you?") are the enemy of conflict. Still, I don't like the term "conflict" for this concept. I think "tension" or "stress" works better for me.

Now, if I hear "conflict" one more time, I might just . . . just . . . . Well, you get the idea.

Mixed Up Persons

Copyright © 2008, Steven E. Houchin

I recently read The Mark, a suspense novel by author and editor Jason Pinter. I attended his author reading at Third Place Books a couple of months ago. As I read through the book, I discovered something surprising and unusual about the way he wrote it. To see what I mean, let's take a look at a few excerpts. *

The following is how Chapter 6 ends, which is roughly how the whole book reads up to that point:

I ducked into an alleyway, saw a homeless man sleeping under a cardboard box. My head throbbed. I couldn't run anymore. I sat down, and pulled my legs up to my knees. I heard faraway sirens, and the blackness overcame me.

Then Chapter 7 begins with the following:

Joe Mauser couldn't sleep. His torso was warm under the covers. His legs were naked, cold. He eyed the finger of scotch on the nightstand. He left one there every night. Sometimes it worked. Often it didn't. And often he found himself going for a refill.Sitting up, Mauser squeezed the sleep from his eyes and looked at the clock -- 4:27 a.m.

Later, after we hear about Joe Mauser's lousy morning, comes the start of Chapter 8:

You wake up in a sun-dappled alley. Your ribs hurt. There's a knot in the back of your head that throbs nonstop. You feel dizzy. A man wearing a cardboard box for a blanket blinks at you, his eyes adjusting to the sight of this stranger sharing his alley. ... You think it has to be a dream. There's no rational explanation. You have a bed. You live in an apartment ...

See the difference? What we have in these three passages is narration in first person, then third person, then second person. When inside FBI Agent Mauser's head, the narration is third person ("He"). When inside the head of the poor, harried main character, Henry Parker, the narration is always first person ("I") - except at the start of Chapter 8, where the narration slips temporarily into second person ("You"). At the end of Chapter 8's first page, it switches back to "I" as Parker regains his wits. The second person form seems to be a device for portraying a dream-like state of mind for the character. This is something I used in one of my novels, Linear Descent, where a lowlife character has a nightmare where he's caught by the cops. But in that case, it is an actual dream.

I can't recall ever seeing mixed narrative forms like this in a published novel, though I've heard that it has been done. If any of us wannabe-published writers dared to try this, could we get away with it and be taken seriously, or would an agent or editor see it as amateurish? It does not come across that way in The Mark; Pinter manages to make it work.

Sigh! Once you've been successfully published (or make the right inside contacts) I suppose you can break all sorts of writing rules, and everyone will say, "Dahling! You're soooo brilliant!"

---

* Excerpts reprinted with permission from Jason Pinter.

Suppose You Met an Agent ...

Copyright © 2008, Steven E. Houchin

A few months ago, I attended a reading at Third Place Books by new author and attorney Ken Isaacson. He was hawking his book, Silent Counsel. I forked over some cash for the book and, along with the author's autograph, received a free bookmark. Oh goodie! Of course, the bookmark advertised the book and included various accolades from reviewers.

Not wanting the marker to go to waste, I actually used it, but didn't really read any of it until recently. I noticed it also included a brief description of the book's plot. Much to my surprise, it looked just like an agent pitch. Its style was one I used myself at Willamette Writers a couple of years ago.

I tried to explain this pitching style, when asked to do so, at a Jessica Morrell workshop I attended earlier this year. Since my brain had long ago forgotten my own pitch, I mumbled and stumbled when explaining it. Now, there it was - that style - on Isaacson's bookmark. Here's how he presents his story:

Suppose the unimaginable: What if your child were killed in a hit-and-run? And the one person who knew the driver's identity - his lawyer - couldn't tell you his name because of a legal technicality? Suppose you were the lawyer, hired to negotiate a plea agreement with the prosecutor for that hit-and-run, but the client had directed you to not reveal his name until he's satisfied with the deal? And the court ordered your silence because the name was thus privileged information? Then the mother finds you, and she's determined to make you talk - at any cost... *

Oooh ... makes you want to know more, right?

Notice that the style isn't just a simple recitation of the plot. It doesn't even name the characters. It is presented as a series of vexing questions: "Suppose ...", "What if ...". Then, at the end is a statement, the zinger: She knows who you are and she's coming to get you!

This is the style I learned in "pitch practice" at Willamette Writers. You build curiosity by posing the book's initial premises as questions and suppositions. Then, you present the critical turning point that wreaks havoc for the main character, or causes everything to unravel.

This example is not your "five seconds in the elevator" pitch where you summarize your book in a sentence or two. Instead, this is what you'd use if you had five minutes face-to-face with an agent, and he/she says, "Tell me what it's about." The pitch doesn't necessarily have to explain the ending (as should a synopsis). If the agent likes it, he'll ask you, "Okay, what happens next?" Ahhh... music to your ears.

[ You can find more about Ken Isaacson at http://www.kenisaacson.com, and Jessica Morrell at http://thewritinglifetoo.blogspot.com. ]

* Reprinted with permission from Ken Isaacson.

Etiquette In the Old West

Copyright © 2008, Steven E. Houchin

I've recently done more research into styles, phrases, and slang from 19th Century America. I found a great book at the library tailored for this purpose: The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in the 1800s, by Marc McCutcheon (1993, Writer's Digest Books). It lists all sorts of things by category, such as Slang, Fashion, Travel, and Crime. In the section on travel, there is a great sidebar entitled "Stagecoach Etiquette", which is from an 1877 Omaha Herald article. Here is a fun excerpt from it:

"... Don't smoke a strong pipe inside especially in the morning; spit on the leeward side of the coach. If you have anything to take in a bottle, pass it around; a man who drinks by himself in such a case is lost to all human feeling. Provide stimulants before starting; ranch whiskey is not always nectar. ... Don't swear nor lop over on your neighbor when sleeping. Don't ask how far it is to the next station until you get there. ... Never attempt to fire a gun or pistol while on the road; it may frighten the team and the careless handling and cocking of the weapon makes nervous people nervous. Don't discuss politics or religion, nor point out places on the road where horrible murders have been committed, if delicate women are among the passengers. ..."