There is something terrifyingly daunting about writing and sending a succinct and compelling summary of your novel packaged in just a few pages. I had a right to be terrified. In some ways the synopsis is the hardest thing for a novelist to write. Yet it is the first thing most publishers and agents want (and have time) to see of your cherished project (aside from those sample chapters, of course). Every fiction writer who wants to sell in the current market must know how to write a synopsis because that’s what an editor wants to see first. Most editors (if they’re good) are overworked with scarce enough time to answer their phones, much less their mail.

There are several reasons to write that dreaded synopsis, and way before you finish your book, too. First of all, I’d like to dispel some common misconceptions about synopses:

A synopsis is NOT an outline. Both are useful to the writer, yet each serves a very different purpose. An outline is a tool (usually just for the writer) that sketches plot items of a book. It provides a skeleton or framework of people, places and their relationships to the storyline that permits the writer to ultimately gauge scene, setting, and character depth or even determine whether a character is required (every character must have a reason to be in the book, usually to move the plot). For writers just beginning, this is an excellent tool to keep the narrative spare and compelling and to remove superfluous characters and other things (a common beginning writer inclination). A synopsis, on the other hand, is an in-depth summary of the entire book that weaves in thematic elements with plot to portray a compelling often multi-level story arc. This is usually what an editor wants to see, although I have seen them request an outline as well. To put it basically, the outline describes what happens when and to whom, while the synopsis includes the “why” part.

There is no such thing as a “Killer Synopsis”; a synopsis that is so good it will sell the book outright. However, stories of such “fairy-tale” occurrences do continue to abound, like the myth of an “overnight success” (in which the author’s hard work in areas related are somehow overlooked). No publisher chooses to buy a book on the basis of a synopsis only. Such an event could only result from a combination of serendipitous factors, one of the most important ones being timing (luck) and what an editor is currently looking for in an imprint.

“Killer synopsis” aside, what a synopsis does (along with the sample chapters and extremely important query letter) is get your manuscript read by an editor. That’s the real purpose of a synopsis. An editor makes his/her decision to look at your manuscript based on these three items: query letter (intro to you), sample chapters, and synopsis. Ultimately, their decision resides with whether your project fits their own imprint at the time.

If that isn’t reason enough to write a synopsis of your novel, here are two others:

A synopsis of your novel goes beyond the outline to help polish elements of story arc, characterization with plot and setting with story. The synopsis can answer questions perplexing the author, stuck on a scene or plot item. It helps you weave your novel’s elements into a well-integrated story that is compelling at many levels. For this reason, it makes sense to write drafts of your synopsis as you go along in the novel; that way it’s useful to both you and to the editor and then it’s more or less written when you need to submit it along with sample chapters…and not quite as daunting a task either.

Lastly, your well-written synopsis is often used internally by the publishing house staff (e.g., by artist, copywriter, and sales department) once your novel is accepted.

Apart from having a compelling story to tell, the next important thing you need to do is tell it well. While the first part of this equation is up to your imaginative powers, the second part is easily learned and skills easily acquired. Quite simply, this is done using powerful words. Every single word counts. Period.

In an inspirational lecture some years ago, Ray Bradbury told me that everything, EVERYTHING you write is metaphor. He meant every word. Think of it. Think of how every element of your writing illuminates your story. How does your setting help illuminate your characters or their conflicts? How does a character’s speech illuminate his/her background or lifestyle? How does a description create mood or affect pace?

So, how do you do that? Make every word count?

This is accomplished in many ways. Here are ten tips on word wizarding that will help:

1. Use “power verbs”—I don’t just mean active vs. passive (e.g., stay away from was, am, is, were, being, have; is believed, was seen)…I’m talking about finding a verb that scintillates and compels, a verb that captures exactly the mood, scene, action (e.g., instead of “he put his hand in his pocket, you could say his hand dove into his pocket or dug into his pocket or slid or fumbled or…get it? This tells us so much more about HOW he felt in his action). Verbs best convey the mood and the action. Using a power verb also prevents the need for superlative modifiers (e.g., adverbs or adjectives, can almost always be replaced with a powerful verb).

2. Try to remove as many adverbs and adjectives as you can and replace with powerful verbs, particularly where you want the pace and tension to heighten.

3. Avoid weak sentence starts (e.g., nothing is going on: “He walked into the room” instead of, say, “Leisha stormed into the lounge, eyes searching for a victim”) and end each sentence with a strength (i.e., the important thing you are conveying should appear at the end of the sentence as opposed to some added on detail that often “dangles” at the end; this weakens the whole sentence).

4. Be aware of cadence and vary it and sentence length within a paragraph (reading your stuff out loud often helps).

5. Remove filler words…e.g. Jimmy paid more for (the) rent (that he accrued) because Sam hated him. Avoid unnecessary modifiers and additions (e.g., “in the case of”, “of…something”, “degree of”, “of the fact that”, etc. Less is more.

6. Watch for and remove redundancies (e.g., general consensus, on first entering, totally devoid of, first introduced, flawless perfection, etc.). Use repetition sparingly, only to make a point (when used this way it can be very effective). Check for two sentences saying the same thing (even if in a different way) in a paragraph.

7. Take out “in” phrases (e.g. “in color”, “in size”, “in shape”, etc.).

8. Look for and remove clichés.

9. Use lots of dialogue and remember to break up your text into fairly short paragraphs for reader ease.

10. Use metaphors, similes and alliteration. These help to give description a double purpose by describing something but also ascribing it a mood and quality in keeping with the POV character.

If you use any of these techniques, I guarantee that your writing will improve.

Seashore by Oleg Ershov

We have five major senses and several minor ones we aren’t even consciously aware of. The major ones include sight, hearing, smelling, touch, and taste.

In the April 2000 issue of Fiction Writer Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander, tells us that we are biologically and psychologically designed “for intense experience in a richly sensual world. But we find ourselves in a senses-depleted world, a world limited largely to visuals, and ersatz ones at that.” She suggests that our readers are starving for sensual information.

“For fiction writers, the senses are not only a window onto external reality, but also the gateway into the inner realms.”

As writers we are in a unique position (at least for now) to describe what the visual media can’t (yet). We can provide our readers with a rich spectrum of sensuality such as what a place smells like, the texture of an object, the taste of a food, as well as the nuances of light and sound. Readers don’t just “watch” a character in a book; they enter the character’s body and “feel”.

So, how do writers satisfy the reader’s need to experience the senses fully? Description, yes. But how cold is cold? What does snow really smell like? What color is that sunset? How do you describe the taste of wine to a teetotaler?

Ultimately, literal description doesn’t quite cut it. To have the sense really sink in and linger with the reader, the sense should be linked to the emotions and memories of the character experiencing it. By doing this, you are achieving several things at the same time:
· You are describing the sense as the character is experiencing it—emotionally;
· You are revealing additional information on the character through his/her reaction; and,
· You are likely creating a more compelling link for the reader’s own experience of the sense.

How is this done? There are several tools a writer may use to achieve this. Here are a few:
· Use metaphor to describe the sense
· Link the sense to memories
· Use synesthesia (cross-sensory metaphor) to describe the sense
· Link the sense psychologically to an emotion or attitude
· Relate to the sense in a different way (e.g., a visual scene from the point of view of a painter)

Metaphor

The most compelling fiction arises when “truth” is portrayed obliquely, when objects or scenes are described through “impression”, or what I call truth-interpreted, rather than through literal description. Janet Fitch recommends that you “come in at an angle, obliquely, the way you approach all things evanescent.” This is where metaphor plays an important role. Of course, it goes without saying that for this to work, the writer must use appropriate metaphors.

The use of metaphor does several things when used to describe an object or place through one or several senses: it adds a dimension of emotion, tone and direction.

Janet Fitch (in Fiction Writer, April 2000) provides a good example of use of metaphor to describe the sky. The richest, most vivid words, she says, are words that use more than one sense at a time. She compares the term “yellow sky”, which provides one sense (vision) to a “lemon sky”, which gives you not only a visual sense but suggests taste, smell and even texture. The metaphor of “lemon” suggests an emotional as well as a vivid sensual description.

Smell and Memory

While all five of our senses can be linked to memories, two of them stand out. Smell and taste let us sample the chemicals around us for information. According to the California Institute of Technology, smell is generally considered the sense tied most closely to human memory, profoundly influencing people’s ability to recall past events and experiences. “Memory lies coiled within us like a magician’s trick handkerchief, and a simple smell or taste can pluck the tiniest corner and pull out the world,” says Janet Fitch.

“Smell is different from all the other senses in a very special way. A smell from your distant past can unleash a flood of memories that are so intense and striking that they seem real,” says Dr. Karl (Kruszelnicki), author of Great Moments in Science (1984) and science host of ABC Radio (Australia). “This kind of memory, where an unexpected re-encounter with a scent from the distant past [that] brings back a rush of memories, is called a ‘Proustian Memory’ ”, based on Marcel Proust’s sensual description of the smell of a madeleine cake dipped into a lime-blossom tea in his book Swan’s Way.

The sense of smell was no doubt one of the first senses to evolve in living creatures; it told us what was safe to eat. The sense of smell also affects behavior, such as finding a mate, synchronizing menstrual cycles, and communicating with the other animals in your group. Dr. Karl tells us that “women can tell (by the smell of swabs taken from the armpit) who has been watching happy or sad movies (men are not so good at this). A breast-feeding baby can differentiate the smell of his or her mother, from any other nursing mother. Dogs and horses can smell fear in humans.”

Ironically, smell, along with taste, is often neglected in our own overt observations and in writing. By consciously attending to these two senses alone, the writer is assured of engaging the reader’s more deeply rooted sensuality.

It might be useful to list some of your favorite or most powerful smells that you can remember. Here are some that my family members and I came up with over the dinner table:
· Freshly cut grass
· My lover’s neck
· Cold snow
· The interior of a new car
· Baking bread
· Wood burning fireplace
· Forest just after a rainstorm
· Freshly shampooed hair
· My own pillow
· My cat when he just comes in from outside

Synesthesia

Synesthesia is the use of one sense to describe another. It is a powerful tool in the hands of a skillful writer and at the root of compelling and imaginative metaphor. Also called cross-sensory metaphors, examples include “loud shirt”, “bitter wind”, or “prickly laugh”.

In her article in Fiction Writer (April, 2000), Janet Fitch suggests an excellent example of synesthesia: wine reviews. I admit that I like the “foxy nose” of a King David Concord, the “crisp laughing notes” of a zinfandel, the “rich buttery bouquet” of a C Blanc du Castel, the “silky richness of caramel” and “exotic layers of burnt sugar” of a 40-year old Taylor Fladgate tawny port.

Psychology & Attitude

How a sense is interpreted by your protagonist relies on his/her emotional state, memories associated with that sense and their current attitude.

Using baby powder as an example, Fitch suggests that you can “describe it literally: sweet, chalky, talcy, dusty, sneezy; or you can use synesthesias: smells pastel, smells tender; then move to the psychological element. Take an attitude on that smell: insipid, cloying, stultifying, like diaper rash, airless. Try a different attitude: sad, lost, vulnerable, hopeless.” You get the picture; we are using a sense-impression based on a memory or emotional experience pinned on that smell to create an entire sensation. What this does, of course, is reveal a great deal about the character in a seamless and powerful way, while establishing a rich setting to the story.

Different Point of View

Again, Fitch provides some good advice on this with the example of how to view objects. She suggests “seeing” through the lens of a photographer or the palette of a painter. What this does is several things:
· It evokes the use of different vocabulary, and metaphoric language (always richer than literal description)
· It avoids the static nature of a literal physical description
· It provides additional revelation on character and tone of the scene

Fitch recommends reading books on art for vocabulary. Because light “flows”, using it to describe something visually gives motion to the description too. Light moves like water: it “streams across a room”; it “bathes a landscape in russet tones”; it “plays chiaroscuro notes on her face”. Fitch describes light metaphorically as a painter or sculptor: it strokes, it daubs, it burnishes…

This article is an excerpt from The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! (Starfire World Syndicate) by Nina Munteanu

1. Voice: This is the feel and tone that applies to the overall book (narrative voice) and to each character. The overall voice is dictated by your audience, who you’re writing for: youth, adults, etc. It’s important to give each character a distinctive “voice” (including use of distinct vernacular, use of specific expressions or phrases, etc.). This is one way a reader can identify a character and find them likeable—or not. In a manuscript I recently reviewed, I noticed that the characters spoke in a mixture of formal and casual speech. This confuses the reader and bumps them out of the “fictive dream”. Consistency is very important for readers. They will abandon a story whose writing is not consistent. So, my advice to this writer was to pick one style for each character and stick to it. Voice includes what a character says. It incorporates language (both speech and body movements), philosophy, humor. How a character looks, walks, talks, laughs, is all part of this. Let’s take laughter for instance: does your character tend to giggle, titter, chortle, guffaw, belly-laugh? Do any of your characters have conflicts with one another? Either through differences in opinions, agendas, fears, ambitions… etc. One learns so much from the kind of interaction a character has with his/her surroundings (whether it’s another character or a scene).

2. Point of View (POV): Many beginner’s novels are often told through no particular POV. Many first manuscripts often start in the omniscient POV (that of the narrator) and ever so often may lapse into one of the character’s POV briefly. This makes for very “telling vs showing” type of writing (not to mention being inconsistent again). 90% of writers do not write this way because it tends to be off-putting, it distances the reader from the characters, and is very difficult to achieve and be consistent with. Most writers prefer to use limited third person POV (told from one or a few key characters; that is, you get into the head and thoughts of only a few people: all the observations are told through their observations, what they see, feel and think). This bonds the reader to your characters and makes for much more compelling reading. I would highly suggest you adopt this style. That’s not to say that you can’t use several POVs… just not at the same time; it is the norm to use chapter or section breaks to change a POV.

3. Passive vs. Active Verbs: beginners often use a lot of passive verbs (e.g., were, was, being, etc.). Some use too may modifiers. Try to find more active verbs. Many writers fall into the pattern of using verbs that are weak and passive (and then adding a modifier to strengthen it…it doesn’t). Actively look for strong, vivid verbs. This is a key to good writing. I can’t emphasize this enough. For instance, which version is more compelling: ‘she walked quickly into the room’ or ‘she stormed into the room’?

4. Show, Don’t Tell: this is partly a function of POV and use of active verbs. Once you change to 3rd person, much of this will naturally resolve itself. An example of telling vs. showing is this: [He was in a rage and felt betrayed. "You lied, Clara," he said angrily, grabbing her hand.] instead, you could show it: [His face smoldered. "You lied, Clara," he roared, lunging for her.] Telling also includes large sections of exposition, either in dialogue or in narrative. This happens a lot in beginning writer’s stories. It takes courage and confidence to say less and let the reader figure it out. Exposition needs to be broken up and appear in the right place as part of the story. Story is paramount. “Telling” is one of the things beginning writers do most and editors will know you for one right away. Think of the story as a journey for both writer and reader. The writer makes a promise to the reader that s/he will provide a rip-roaring story and the reader comes on side, all excited. This is done through a confident tease in the beginning and slow revelation throughout the story to keep it compelling. Exposition needs to be very sparingly used, dealt out in small portions.

5. Unclutter your Writing: There is a Mennonite adage that applies to writing: “less is more”. Sentences in early works tend to be full of extra words (e.g., using “ing” verbs, add-ons like “he started to think” instead of simply “he thought”). Cut down the words in your paragraphs (often in the intro chapters) by at least 20%. Be merciless; you won’t miss them, believe me, and you will add others later in your second round of edits.

This article is an adapted excerpt from The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now!

So, I’d like to share what I’ve learned over the years (some of the very same comments that have been made of my work, I am sharing back with you). I’ll be providing you my advice in three parts: 1) characters; 2) language; and 3) structure.

Let’s start with characters, since they are in my opinion, the most important part of a novel:

Characters carry the theme of the book. Each character needs to have a role in advancing the plot and/or theme; each character needs a reason to be there. A character therefore needs to be distinctive and usually shows some character development (as story arc) from beginning to end of story. Your characters are the most important part of your book (more so than the plot or premise). Through them your book lives and breathes. Through them your premise, your plot (which is essentially just a way to create problems for your characters to live out their development) and story come alive. Through them you achieve empathy and commitment from the reader and his/her willingness to keep reading to find out what’s going to happen next: if the reader doesn’t invest in the characters, they won’t really care what happens next.

Characters need to be real. They come to life by giving them individual traits and real weaknesses and heroic qualities that are consistent and have qualities readers can recognize and empathize with. You play these against each other to achieve drama. For instance, a man who is afraid of heights but who must climb a mountain to save his love is far more compelling than one who is not; a military man who fears responsibility but must lead his team into battle; a scientist who is afraid of failure; etc.

Characters of beginning writers often suffer from lack of distinction, or purpose, and often simply clutter up a story. For a character to “come alive” their “voice” must be distinctive, unique. Give them distinctive body movements, dress, facial features and expressions that reveal character, inner feelings, emotions, fears, motivations, etc. Then keep them consistent. There are several techniques writers use to increase empathy for a character and distinctiveness. This includes use of third person POV, keeping the story with focus on fewer rather than many characters, creating character dossiers and keeping them consistent, providing each character a distinctive “voice” (figuratively), as in how they behave, say, react, etc. I’ll talk about these further down. Another way to make your characters distinct (and works to also tie into plot and theme) is to make your characters not get along. Make them argue, disagree (at least!), have suspicions, betray one another, laugh and ridicule, etc. By doing this you increase tension, conflict (two things every book requires) and you enlighten the reader into each of the characters involved. Make them fight or argue over what they believe in – or not. You need to describe your characters in effective brief but vivid language as the reader encounters them.

Here are some questions you need to ask about your characters:

1. if I can remove the character, will the book fall apart? (if not, you don’t need that character; they aren’t fulfilling a role in the book);

2. how does the character portray the major or minor theme of the book? (that’s what characters are there for)

3. what is the role of the character? (e.g., protagonist, antagonist, mentor, catalyst, etc.)

4. what is the story arc of the character? Does he or she develop, change, do they learn something by the end? If not, they will be two-dimensional and less interesting

5. what major obstacle(s) must the character overcome?

6. who are your major protagonist(s) (the main character who changes the most)?

7. who are your major antagonist(s) (those who provide trouble for your protagonists, the source of conflict, tension, the obstacle: one of their own?

8. what’s at stake: for the world (plot); for each individual (Theme) and how do these tie together? Every character has a role to fulfill in the plot and to other characters. Don’t be afraid to totally remove characters if they do not fulfill a role.

To summarize, each character is there for a purpose and this needs to be made apparent to the reader (intuitively through characterization, their failings, weaknesses, etc.). Make them bleed, hurt, cry, feel. This needs to be clear to the reader, who wants to empathize with some of them and hate others. How characters interact with their surroundings and each other creates tension, a key element to good storytelling. Tension, of course builds further with the additional conflict of protagonist with antagonists. But, in truth, it’s more fun to read about the tension from WITHIN a group that’s supposed to be together. Think of Harry Potter and what was juicy there… It wasn’t really Voldemort … it was what went on at Hogwarts between Harry and his friends and not-so-friends. That is what makes a story memorable; that is what makes a story something you can’t put down until you’ve finished it.

This is an adapted excerpt from The Alien’s Practical Guide to Cool Writing(Pixl Press), available through this site or through www.pixlpresscanada.com.

To be continued…