Tag: advice (page 14 of 25)

1. A Wild And Unfettered Imagination

This one goes up front: the bubbling turbid stew that comprises your brain-mind combo must possess an endless array of unexpected ideas. Your head should be an antenna receiving frequencies from the furthest-flung reaches of Known Creative Space. You want to survive, you’ve got to have an imagination that won’t lay down and die. That fucker’s like a North Korean 9-year-old: up all night, smoking cigarettes, working his fingers to the bone. He never cries. He only works to make the pretty baubles.

2. Discipline

Given that we’re creative types prone to art-o-leptic fits of imagination, if we’re given no leash we’ll just wander off into the woods to create our masterpiece. Where we are promptly eaten by bears. Imagination is the fuel, but it’s a fickle and volatile fuel. It needs a channel. It needs a furnace. It needs discipline. Discipline to wake up, to weld your shit-can to the chair, to squeeze out word-babies, to do the work.

3. Optimism

The only way you’re going to stay on target is if you believe this thing you want to do can actually happen. It can. It really can. But like with elves and Jesus, you gotta believe. Otherwise, the magic dies.

4. Realism

By the same token, realistic expectations are the order of the day. You think you’re going to walk out the door with a script and the mailman is going to buy the rights-in-perpetuity for a million bucks, you’re off your meds. A good reality check now and again keeps your optimism from messing your pants with endless squirts of premature wheejaculations.

5. Pessimism

Here’s where you say, “Wait, wuzza? Wooza? I’m supposed to be an optimist… and a realist… and a pessimist, too?” Yes. Yes! Yes. Writers without a healthy dose of pessimism will find themselves bent over an end table with a bad publishing contract rolled up and shoved deep into their colonic grotto. A little dollop of distrust in humanity will serve you well. I’m not saying to be selfish. But do protect yourself.

6. Sticktoitiveness

I’ve always said that no matter the flavor of your writing career, it’s basically you putting a bucket on your head and running full force into a brick wall. Again and again. And in the end it’s either you or the wall. Any success is going to be in part due to dangerous levels of persistence and stubbornness.

7. Honesty

Writers are liars who use those lies to tell truths. Let that boil your noodle.

8. Confidence

Put your work out there and find pride and power in what you do. Be assertive in your language, sure-footed in your prose. Why would anyone want to read anything if it has all the backbone of a cup of sun-warmed pudding? Go forth. Kick ass wearing oiled leather boots made from the rent pages of your own super-fantastic manuscript, a manuscript written on the flesh of your adversaries. It doesn’t need to be ego-fed to be confident. Though I’d rather read the work of an ego-bloated megalomaniacal Narcissist than a weak-in-the-knees ehhh-mehhh-pbbbt insecure writer-whelp. Insecurity is no pleasure to read.

9. Thick Skin

Your body shall be a road atlas of misery by the time you’re ten years into a writing career. The slings and arrows of rejections. The bullets and flying glass of editorial notes. I’m still picking metaphorical gravel out of my elbows and knees. Want to survive in this gig? Your skin better be tough as a Brooklyn phone book.

10. Humor

If you can’t laugh in this business, you’ll cry. And then you’ll evacuate fluids from all orifices. Then you’ll be kicked in the South Crotchal Region by an itinerant donkey before dying. Humor’s also good to put in your work. People like a laugh now and again. It can’t all be turbulence and pathos and frowny faces.

11. Responsibility

You will have deadlines. Someone might ask you to turn in a synopsis. Or an outline. Or an edit. Do these things. Do as they ask. Do them on time and according to parameter. Your readers, too, will want things. They will want your attention. They will ask that you provide them with quality. Give them what they ask (within reason). Know your responsibility. Fulfill that responsibility. Do not be a stinky dickwipe.

12. Appreciation

A wee touch of humility and appreciation will go a long away. Appreciate your audience. Appreciate that you can do this thing that you do without getting your hands cut off by an oppressive fundamentalist government. Appreciate the words your forebears have flung into the firmament. Appreciate the work, the opportunity, the general aura of overall pantslessness. Because seriously, pants are for jerkholes.

13. Coffee

Fuck you, coffee IS TOO a virtue. Do not deny me this. Do not dare!

14. Business Sense

Writers have all the business sense of a gin-drunk wildebeest. But it pays to know something about something when it comes to business. Know enough not to get fucked. Know enough not to fuck yourself.

15. A Critical Eye

You can’t be all wide-eyed and dopey-smiled. Your gaze must be razor-honed. Your mouth ever in an uncertain sneer. To know how to write well you know how to write poorly, which means you have to identify poor writing in yourself and in others. It’s no longer your pleasure to be entertained; it is your job to be suspicious, dubious, and ever-critical. Turn your brain off? Not likely. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage. Rage. Against the dying of quality plots, compelling characters, and magical stories.

16. A Willingness To Do Evil

Okay, settle down, sermonizers. I don’t mean in real life. But your job is one of mighty evil. Evil splashed across the page in great heaving buckets of torment and blood. You’re not a nice monkey. Not to the fictional people that gambol and preen upon your manuscript pages. It’s your job to fuck those people over and up. Your evil shall know no bounds. Your cruelty is the engine of conflict. Yes. Yessss.

17. Patience

In the time it takes for the light from a supernova star 10,000 light years away to reach our eyes here on earth, you still might not have a project pass through all the proper channels and put a paycheck in your hand. This industry often moves slower than a legless caterpillar rolling up a rocky knoll. Be ready for that. Exercise patience. Find other acts of wordsmithy to fill those gaps. Breathe in. Breathe out.

18. Tact

You’re going to deal with publishers, writers, readers, fans, and it isn’t all going to be newborn puppies and pina coladas. Tact goes a long, long way. This is shorthand for, “Don’t be a fuckweasel.”

19. Discomfort

Discomfort is good. Discomfort is that stinging nettle at the cusp of your butthole telling you that sometimes you need to get up out of that chair, kick down the walls of that box you’re in, try something new. Discomfort drives you forward. A little taste of dissatisfaction makes you crave bigger and better. Comfort is nice. But comfort is overrated. Flee that zone now and again. Truth lurks in conflict.

20. Courage

Have the courage to go forth and do not what everybody else is doing but what you want to do. Have the courage to put yourself out there. To give a big neon middle finger to those who will inevitably disrespect and misunderstand your choice to be a storyteller. Invoking your craft and creating art (in a perfect world) is an act of bravery. Of putting all your sensitive bits on the cutting board.

21. Liquor

GODDAMNIT IT IS TOO A VIRTUE. I will break this vodka bottle over your head if you try to take this away from me. Or if you try to take my vodka away from me. Daddy needs his potato juice.

22. Tranquility

Sometimes you need that Zen place. Find the blank chalkboard, the tabula rasa, the motherfucking no-mind. Mow the lawn. Listen to the rain. Thousand-yard stare. The story sometimes lives in this place.

23. Loyalty

A good writer finds his loyalty to be a raft on which he can float in even the most turbulent storm-tossed seas. A raft with a beer cooler. And a snack machine filled with bacon. You’ve got to be loyal to your own work: no taking another manuscript out for a little rumpy-pumpy behind the shed when you’re supposed to be working on another. And be loyal to your own ideas, too. Stick to them. Stand by them. Finally, other writers. We’re a tribe of individuals but a tribe just the same, and that means this whole thing we do is made of people. Loyalty matters to them, to you, to the whole lot of us farking moonbats.

24. Ten Pounds Of Crazy In A Five Pound Bucket

Speaking of farking moonbats: we’re moonbats because we need to be moonbats. I mean, really. To want to do this thing? To want to have this life? You gotta be a little bit — and by “little bit” I mean “project a massive crackling force field of” — crazy. Crazy is defense. Crazy is enlightenment. Crazy is the act of doing differently. For the record, I don’t mean “crazy” to be, “please go masturbate at the salad bar” or “to stop the voices you will first have to kill every third member of British Parliament.” I mean crazy as in, to have that electric vibe pushing you to put the words on the page and to create stories unbidden from the empty ether.

25. Love

The most important thing. You gotta love what you do. It’s the only way you’ll make it through. This is not a safe nor sane journey. It’s not a career choice for most normals. It’s also not a road that offers a whole lot of initial reward: you step into the breach on the whiff of a promise, on the potential for success, and so it is that the only prize you’ll find early on is the love and passion and satisfaction for what you do. Without all that, what’s the fucking point? You don’t love it, then being a writer is no different than pushing a broom or making a corporate nest surrounded by four fuzzy gray cubicle walls. And by the way, why are cubicle walls fuzzy? Are they draped in the pelt of some dull, listless monster? Some bleak hell-cow wandering the world’s uncharted swamps? Whatever. Fuck it. The point is: love this thing you do and you’ll have all the reward you need. Except vodka. Because despite my many letters to Congress that shit still costs money.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

I’m a panster at heart, plotter by necessity — and I always advocate learning how to plot and plan because inevitably someone on the business side of things is going to poke you with a pointy stick and say, “I want this.” Thus you will demonstrate your talent. Even so, in choosing to plot on your own, you aren’t limited to a single path. And so it is that we take a look at the myriad plotting techniques (“plotniques?”) you might use as Storyteller Extraordinaire to get the motherfucking job done. Let us begin.

The Basic Vanilla Tried-And-True Outline

The basic and essential outline. Numbers, Roman numerals, letters. Items in order. Separated out by section if need be (say, Act I, Act II, Act III). Easy-peazy Lyme-diseasey.

The Reverse Outline

Start at the end, instead. Write it down. “Sir Pimdrip Chicory of Bath slays the dragon-badger, but not before the dragon-badger bites the head off Chicory’s one true love, Lady Miss Wermathette Kildare of the Manchester Kildares.” Rewind the clock. Reverse the gears. Find out how you build to that.

Tentpole Moments

A story in your head may require certain keystone events to be part of the plot. “Betty-Sue must get sucked into the time portal outside Schenectady, because that’s why her ex-boyfriend Booboo begins to build a time machine in earnest which will accidentally unravel space-and-time.” You might have five, maybe ten of these. Write them down. These are the elements that, were they not included, the plot would fall down (like a tent without its poles). The narrative space between the tentpoles is uncharted territory.

Beginning, Middle, End

Write three paragraphs, each detailing the rough three acts found in every story: the inciting incident and outcome of the beginning (Act I), the escalation and conflict in the middle (Act II), the climactic culmination of events and the ease-down denoument of the end (Act III). You can, if you want, choose the elemental changes-in-state you might find at the end of each act, too — the pivot point on which the story shifts. This document probably isn’t more than a page’s worth of wordsmithy. Simple and elegant.

A Series Of Sequences

The saying goes that an average screenplay usually offers up eight or nine sequences (a sequence being a series of scenes that add together to form common narrative purpose, like, say, the Attack On The Death Star sequence from Star Wars or the Kevin James Makes Love To All The Animals In Order To Make The Audience Feel Shame sequence from Paul Blart, Zoo Abortion). So, chart the sequences that will go into your screenplay. If you’re writing prose, I don’t know how many sequences a novel should have — more than a film, probably (or alternately, each sequence is granted a greater conglomeration of scenes).

Chapter-By-Chapter

For novel writers, you can chart your story by its chapters. A standard outline is more about dictating plot and story without marrying oneself to narrative structure. This, however, puts the ring on that finger and locks it down tight. A chapter-by-chapter outline is visualizing the reader’s way through the novel.

Beat Sheet

This one’s for you real granular-types, the ones who want to count each grain of sand on your story’s beach (or, for a more terribleminds-esque metaphor, “count each pube on your story’s scrotum”). Chart each beat of the story in every scene. This is you writing the entire story’s plot out, but you’re writing it without much dialogue or narrative flair. It’s you laying out all the pieces. The order-of-operations made plain.

Mind-Maps

Happy blocks and bubbles connected to winding bendy spokes connected to a central topical hub. Behold: example. You can use a mind-map to chart… well, anything your mind so desires. It is, after all, a map of said mind. Sequence of events? Character arcs? Exploration of theme? Story-world ideas? Family trees? The crazy hats worn by your villains? Catchphrases? Your inchoate rage and shame made manifest? Your call.

Zero Draft

AKA, “The Vomit Draft.” Puke up the story. Just yarf it up — bleaaarrghsputter. A big ol’ Technicolor yawn. You aren’t aiming for structure. Aren’t aiming for art or even craft. This is just you getting everything onto the page so that it’s out there and can now be cleaned up. You’ve puked up the story, now it’s time to form it into little idols and totems — the heretic statuaries of your story.

In The Document, As You Go

AKA, “The Bring Your Flashlight” technique. You outline only as you go. Write a scene or chapter. Roughly sketch the next. Then write it. Onward and upward until you’ve got a proper story.

Write A Script

For those of you writing scripts, this sounds absurd. “He wants me to outline my script by writing a script? Has this guy been licking colorful toads?” Sorry, screenwriters — this one ain’t for you. Novelists, however, will find use in writing a script to get them through the plotting. Scripts are lean and mean: description, dialogue, description, dialogue. It’ll get you through the story fast — then you translate into prose.

Dialogue Pass

Let the characters talk, and nothing else. Put those squirrely fuckers in a room, lock the door, and let the story unfold. It won’t stay that way, of course. You’ll need to add… well, all the meat to the bones. But it’s a good way to put the characters forward and find their voice and discover their stories. Remember: dialogue reads fast and so it tends to write fast, too. Dialogue is like Astroglide: it lubricates the tale.

Character Arcs

Characters often have arcs — they start at A, go to B, end at C (with added steps if you’re feeling particularly saucy). Commander Jim Nipplesplitter, Jr. starts at “gruff and loyal soldier boy in the war against the Ant People” (A) and heads to “is crippled and betrayed by his country, left to die in the distant hills of the Ant Planet” (B) and ends up at “falls in love with a young Ant Squaw and he must fight to protect his ant-man larvae” (C). A character arc can track plotty bits, emotional shifts, outfit changes, whatever.

Synopsis First

You might think to write your query letter, treatment or synopsis last. Bzzt. Wrong move, donkeyface. Write it up front. It’s not etched in stone, but it’ll give you a good idea of how to stay on target with this story.

Index Cards

Index cards are a kick-ass organization tool. You can use them to do anything — list characters, track scenes, list chapters, identify emotional shifts, make little Origami throwing stars that will give your neighbors wicked-ass paper-cuts. Lay them on a table or pin ’em to a corkboard. Might I recommend John August’s “10 Hints For Index Cards?” I might, rabbit. I might. See also: the Index Card app for iOS.

Whiteboard

A whiteboard represents a great thinking space. Notes, mind-maps, character sketches, drawings of weird alien penises. Get some different color pens, chart your story in whatever way feels most appropriate.

The Crazy Person’s Notebook

Once in a while a story of mine demands a hyper-psycho notebook experience. My handwriting is messier than a garbage disposal choked with hair, but even still, sometimes I just like to put pen to paper and scribble. And I sometimes print stuff out, chop it up, and tape it into the notebook. (Example!)

Collage

You’re like, “What’s next? A shoebox diorama of the Lincoln assassination?” That’s a different blog post. Seriously, on my YA-cornpunk novel POPCORN, I took a whole corkboard and covered it in images and quotes that were relevant to the work. Then I’d just wander over there from time to time, stare at it, get my head around the story I’m telling and the feel of the world the story portrays. Surprisingly helpful.

Spreadsheets

Stare too long into the grid of a spreadsheet and you will feel your soul entangled there — a dolphin caught in a tuna net. Even still, you may find a spreadsheet very helpful. Track plots and beats to your heart’s delight. Seen JK Rowling’s spreadsheet for Harry Potter? High-res version right here.

Story Bible

Everything and anything goes into the story bible. Worldbuilding. Character descriptions. The “rules” of the story. Plot. Theme. Mood. An IKEA furniture manual. (Goddamn Allen wrenches.) The BIOSHOCK story bible was reputedly a 400+ page beast, which means that yes, your story bible may be bigger than your actual novel. The key is not to let this — or any planning technique — become an exercise in procrastination. You plan. Then you do. That’s the only way this works.

The Power Of Templates

Film and TV scripts already follow a fairly rigorous template, but you can go further afield. Look to Blake Snyder’s SAVE THE CAT beats. Or Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. Go weirder with the Proppian morphology of fairy tales. You may think it non-imaginative but the power of art and story lives easily within such borders as it does outside of them.

Stream Of Consciousness Story Babble

Slap on a diving bell and jump deep into the waters of the stream of consciousness. Order, you see, is sometimes born first from chaos, wriggling free from a uterus made from fractal swirls and Kamikaze squirrels. Open yourself to All The Frequencies: get into your word processor or find a blank notebook page and just scribble wantonly without regard to sense or quality. You may find your story lives in the noise and madness and that on that snowy screen you will find structure. Like a Magic Eye painting that reveals the image of a dolphin riding a motorbike and shooting Japanese whalers with twin chattering Uzis.

Visual Storyboards

Sometimes the words only come when given the bolstered boost of a visual hook. Sketch it out yourself. Get an artist friend. Find images from the Internet. Ingest some kind of dew-slick jungle mushroom and paint your story on the wall in an array of bodily fluids. Sometimes you really need to visualize the story.

The Test Drive

Take your characters, storyworld and ideas, and run them through a totally separate story. Let’s call it apocryphal, or “non-canonical.” It’s not a story you intend to keep. Not a story you want to publish. You’re just taking your story elements through their paces. Run them around a test drive. “This is where Detective Shirtless McGoggins solves the murder of the goblin seamstress.” Sure, your Detective lives in the real world, a world not populated by goblins. Fuck it, it’s just an exercise. A test run to find his voice and yours.

Pants The Shit Out Of It

All this plotting and scheming just isn’t working for you, so go ahead and pants the hell out of it. (Me? I don’t wear pants. Pants are the first tool of your oppressors.) Sometimes trying to wrestle your story into even the biggest box is just an exercise in frustration, so do what works for you and what doesn’t. Once again, however, I’ll exhort you to at least learn the skill of outlining — because eventually, someone’s going to ask for a demonstration of your ability.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

1. Everyone Hates It (And Nobody’s Great At It)

Writing a summary of any creative endeavor makes every writer feel like he’s wearing a tuxedo made of bumblebees. It’s a very uncomfortable process and any writer who tells you how much she enjoys writing synopses should be immediately shoved in a bag and burned because she is a robot from the future sent here to destroy all writers. Why would we enjoy the process? We just wrote a whole screenplay or an entire novel. And now we’re supposed to compress it down until it fits in the palm of our hands? Fuck. Fuck. It blows. It’s difficult. Nobody does it 100%. But you gotta suck it up and do the work.

2. Put This Pig In That Bucket

A pig will not fit in a bucket, and yet, that is your task. You must identify all the parts of the pig that you cannot live without. The rest? Chainsawed into bloody gobbets and left on the abattoir floor. You’re not here to explore the whole pig. You’re here to give a sampling of the beast — a taste of pigness. The hoof, snout, squeal and tail are for later. For now you need to deliver a packet of prime cuts only.

3. Excuse Me While I Whip This Out

Length matters. A query letter is never more than a page. A synopsis or treatment is maybe two to 10 pages, though some treatments are as long as 60. A beat sheet for a script is maybe 10% of the total document (or six pages/hour). Identify the length and stick to it. Though, like with a certain dangling male organ, it’s not just how long it is, but what you do with it. For instance: my penis kills hooded cobras, like a mongoose.

4. The Shallowest Reader In The World

On the next Twitter #fridayreads, tell the world you’re reading a fuckload of book jackets and DVD cases. You know how if you’re writing epic fantasy it helps sometimes to read epic fantasy? Well, what do you think this is? You’re trying to summarize your work, so read summaries of other work. And book jackets and DVD cases are exactly that. True story: the book jacket for my upcoming novel DOUBLE DEAD features text pulled straight from my synopsis. The text on a book jacket or DVD case (or video game case or Amazon description) is meant to entice. Which is also your job when writing a query, synopsis, or treatment.

5. Egg Samples

You need to find examples of good — meaning, successful — treatments, queries, and synopses. Grab them from writer friends. Dig them up online. Discover what about them feels successful. Mine and mimic.

6. Get Goofy On Rainforest Drugs And Explore Core Truths

I often phrase this as, What the hell is it about, maaaan? As in, if you were sitting around a fucking drum circle or some shit and you were stoned out of your gourd on some weird powder made from pulverized elk bezoar and someone grabbed you by the collar of your ratty technicolor robe and they asked you that question, what would you say? Not the basic plot, but dig deep for what it’s really about, what it means to you. The essence of that answer must be present in your truncated treatment. Because it matters. It’s one of the things that elevates it from an examination of plot to an exploration of story.

7. Bottle All The Lightning

Another fun exercise: go through your novel or script and start identifying all the things that you think are — caps necessary — FUCKING AWESOME. The knees of the bees, the hat of the cat. Action scenes, plot turns, character foibles. Any of that. Call it out. Write it down. It won’t all go into your synopsis but it helps to have an arsenal of Awesome Things to call out, don’t you think?

8. We Come For The Character…

That sounds dirty, doesn’t it? Well, stop juicing your capris and tenting your khakis, we have things to discuss. What’s true for your overall story is true for any synopses of that story: character matters most. Good characters serve as our vehicle through the story and so it must in part be our vehicle through any treatment. Distill those characters down and make sure we know who they are and what arcs they travel.

9. …We Stay For The Conflict

Readers are dicks. We want to read about bad shit. We don’t want to read about how Sally didn’t study and got an A on her test. We want to see sad li’l Sally put through her paces. “She’s poor and her textbook was eaten by coyotes and the teacher hates her because he’s dating Sally’s mother and she still got an A on her test.” Conflict is the food that feeds the reader. Any query, treatment or synopsis must showcase conflict.

10. Heh Heh Heh He Said “Tentpole”

Repeat after me: “This story doesn’t stand up unless I include [fill in the blank].” No, you’re not supposed to say “fill in the blank.” Are you brain-diseased? You’re supposed to actually fill in the blank. You need to go through your story and find those tentpole items: details that, were they not included, would cause the story to collapse without their presence. When and Where are two you likely cannot do without.

11. Talk That Shit Out

Before you write, vocalize. Sit down with somebody you trust — friend, family member, agent, basement-dwelling cannibalistic hobo — and babble out your synopsis. Have a few drinks. Figure out how you’d sell a buddy (or a man-eating hobo) on your story. Keep pitching it to them. Hone your approach. Write it down. Harness what you learned and incorporate into any synopses you must write.

12. Act Structures And Outlines

Maybe you did an outline before you wrote. Maybe you didn’t. Doesn’t matter now because you need to grasp the architecture of this thing. Act structures and outlines help you get your hands around a story in terms of summarizing and — behold my brand new made-up word — succinctifying. I always exhort writers to grow cozy with writing outlines because trust me when I tell you: someone’s going to ask for one.

13. The Logline Is Your Best Friend

Learning to write a logline is your first best step. Take the logline. Hold it close. Nuzzle it to your neck like a cuddly ferret. Treat it right, it’ll coo and burble. Treat it wrong, it’ll spray piss in your mouth and bite off your earlobe. Wait, you don’t know what a logline is? Take your story. Summarize it in a single-sentence pitch. But it’s more than that, too — you’re trying to sell the story, trying to give an aura of mystery and possibility. A good logline hits at around 50 words. Go to 100 words and it’s likely too long.

14. Sharpen That Hook So That It Can Rupture A Fucking Atom

A bad hook makes for a bad query, treatment, or synopsis. Every molecule in your marrow resists this: your script or novel is not built on so flimsy a foundation as a single line of marketing text, but I am sad to remind you that life is not fair. Puppies are not immortal, rivers don’t run with ice cream and you don’t get a free blowjob every time you pay your taxes. Life is tough. So learn to whet the hook to an eye-gouging point. The hook must be the promise of the premise. And don’t ignore emotional investment. I’ve seen some loglines for DIE HARD that leave out the wife, and the wife is the core of that film.

15. The “Explode It Out” Method

Summarize your story in one sentence. Then one paragraph. Then one page. Or, do it in reverse: page, paragraph, sentence. Imagine someone’s got a gun to your private parts. You gotta do this or they’ll blow your nibbly bits into the carpet. You’ll soon see what is essential and what is not: pearls versus peanuts, rubies versus shiny pieces of aquarium glass. Learn to pare down until only its heart remains.

16. Embrace The Holy Trinity: Hook, Body, Climax

Open with a hook: a real juicy logline. Then move into the body: your story laid bare. Sum-up the ending in the same way you wrote the hook: a single sentence that delivers the final kidney-rupturing punch. I’ve seen some advice that says some agents or producers don’t want to hear the ending: unless you know this for sure, I’d say make sure you give it to them. It’s a significant piece of the story puzzle.

17. The Saggy Fatty Middle

The danger of a novel or a script is the same danger you run into with a synopsis: the saggy, soggy middle. Tighten that shit up. Find the boring parts and cut them out or rewrite so they’re a dose of meth instead of a mist of sinister sleep gas. Be advised: writing a synopsis can suddenly highlight secret problems in your story. Don’t let that freak you out. Embrace the opportunity to go back and do some repair work.

18. Stick That Landing

The ending should be as lean and mean as the hook. Maybe 50 words. Maybe 100. If the hook is the promise of the premise, then the ending is the fulfillment of that promise pistoned through the reader’s brainpan.

19. Still True: “Show, Don’t Tell”

You’re not standing in front of your intended audience (editor, agent, producer, executive) and reading a menu of options. You’re grabbing their hand, kicking down the door to your storyworld, and showing them what you’ve built. Always write your synopses from a place of wonder and potential, not from a podium where you deliver a sullen reiteration of your work.

20. Your Voice Matters

What’s going to elevate your synopsis from being dull as regurgitated cardboard? Your voice. Specifically, the same voice used to write the novel in the first place. Your synopsis is not the place for a dry recitation of plot points (and then, and then, and then, and then), but rather, a place for your words to bring the story to life in a different context. Put yourself into the synopsis same as you put your heart into the story.

21. Beware Strip Mining

You’ve taken your pig, blown him apart with a hand grenade and fit what you could in the bucket. Suddenly you realize: the value of this pig isn’t the loin chops but rather in the squeal. Writing a synopsis sometimes reveals that you’ve gone the wrong direction. You’ve taken the best parts out. You’ve chosen to embody the wrong emotions. You’ve strip mined the soul out of the thing and now it’s just a hollow exercise.

22. Go Back Over It With A Magnifying Glass And A Scalpel

Always re-read your queries, treatments and synopses again and again. It is your war-horse leading the charge and if it’s an out-of-shape nag with a herniated disc and a bad case of bell’s palsy then it’s not going to survive the coming battle. Read and edit and read and edit. Then give it to someone else and let them read and edit, read and edit. Compress that lump of coal until it is a throat-cutting diamond.

23. You Are Not A Pretty Pony

Different recipients want different things. If an agent specifies that she doesn’t want an author bio, then do not include an author bio. If guidelines say, “A 10-page synopsis,” then it’s your job to give 10 pages of straight-up synopsizing. You’re not the only pretty peacock in the room. Don’t stand out by giving your middle finger to the rules. Stand out by writing a kick-ass query for an even kick-assier story.

24. Vaporlock Is Your Enemy

Paralysis of the analysis: writing synopses will freeze a writer’s brain like a moist dick pressed against an ice-frosted flagpole. You can try all manner of thought exercise, but in the end the only way to the other side is the same as it is with any project: write your way through the swamp no matter how stridently the mire sucks at your boots. Stomp forth sloppily: remember that it’s okay for your first synopsis to suck. You aren’t beholden to just one draft. You get as many at-bats as you need, slugger.

25. In The End, It’s About Making People Want More

This is really where writers buck at their chains: a query, synopsis or treatment is a sales tool. You’re trying to get people to buy what you’re selling. It is enticement. It is tantalization. You’re dangling lush grapes, trying to lure someone to take a bite. In the end you think, this is not what I do, this is a distillation of my work and isn’t what I signed up for. Only problem? It is what you signed up for. Storytelling is always an act of enticement and, further, is frequently an act of whittling and winnowing until the best of the story remains and the worst is burned to ash. Sometimes it just takes a reconfiguration of thought: look at your query as just a smaller version of what you already do, which is to say, look at it as yet another act of storytelling. Because that’s what a synopsis is: it’s you telling your story. Except instead of 300 pages you get, say, ten. Or five. Or one. Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy.

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