until i go back in at 11. gotta work a grocery store trip in somewhere...
i continued to drive myself nuts with my synopsis last night into this morning, and i just decided that it's a waste of time to worry. granted, i haven't written a book report in about...oooooh, almost 10 years *and suddenly i feel old*, but that's essentially what a synopsis is, at least in my view. *eureka!*
think about it:
depending on page length, you're merely hitting the high points of the novel, granted, with a little more finesse than the standard listing of events. there has to be a little personality involved, which is probably not a big deal for most writers b/c they write with personality anyway (me, not so much). they have an innate sense for writing entertainingly, throwing in a few quips here and there, and making the story come alive. i do not. that is where my problem lies. on paper, apart from the actual novel, i have no personality. so i shall work on that.
but continuing... i remember in school when we'd have to write one-two page book reports, especially in eighth grade English. i never put a whole lot of thought into them then, but i still managed to cram what i needed to into the length. i got the gist of the story, important things that happened, and the ending. and that, my friends, from what i've gotten out of hours of reading, is what a synopsis is. a book report. with feeling and personality. crammed into one-three pages depending on the chosen agent.
i feel like i've cracked the Da Vinci code. this may not help anyone else, but it certainly makes me feel better. and i haven't even been up an hour yet.
2 comments:
I agreed with all your book choices on the Bransford Blog. I wandered over, as you can see!
When I read The Vampire Lestat, et al, and the Mayfair Witches, it was a bad time for me - sleep was mostly hypothetical as I saw the sun rise - reading, for weeks :) A friend of mine who read one recently tried to insist they could have benefitted from a little editing - and ex-friend!
haha, i'm glad that someone else has such good taste! when i read lestat, i was in an odd place, too. and somehow, as crazy and narcissistic as he is, lestat made me feel a little better.
when i finished that and got to 'tale of the body thief', one of my friends described it as "vampire porn." i've never forgotten that, and it still cracks me up...
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