Tag: writing synopses

No Longer Pantsing

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Image courtesy of Haruhi Suzumiya

I’ve been thinking about how my writing style has changed over the last couple of decades, and I think I can finally admit that I’m no longer a pantser. [For those of you unfamiliar, this of course refers to ‘flying by the seat of your pants’ — meaning that I used to be a writer that barely plotted ahead and just ran with whatever came to mind at that moment.] I’m actually just fine with that, to tell the truth.

Pantsing used to work just fine for me, especially back in the 90s and early 00s, when my main issue was spending far too much time hyperfocusing on whatever scene I was trying to write, and I needed to break out of that somehow. This style worked because it forced me to choose what I wanted to write and run with it. In the process, I’d get a full scene done super quick because I was finding it all out as I went.

Nowadays, though? I’ve become a huge fan of working out complete synopses! I haven’t quite nailed full outlines just yet, but I’m sure I’ll get there soon enough if I keep this up. Writing these synopses out means that I can come up with a solid main plot and maybe a few side plots that will serve as the structure and backbone of these stories. This in turn cuts down on time where I’m sitting here, staring at the screen trying to figure out where I want to go next. I’ve gotten really good at playing out the story a scene or two ahead, so the writing session is really me working from Point A to Point B. The synopses helps me work through that.

Perhaps I’m getting a bit too excited about this, as I’ve managed to work out four or five projects ahead, what with all these synopses I’ve been writing lately, but really, I’m not seeing a major problem with that, other than prioritizing them…and that’s where the whiteboard and daily schedules come in. It’s a matter of “okay, I need to do prose writing work for Project A this morning and Project B this afternoon” and maybe playing around with the world building of Projects, C, D and E when I want some light and fun work at the end of the day. The main idea of all of this is giving myself future projects to work on, or something else I can work on in tandem with whatever is currently going on. It’s so I can have multiple titles on hand to offer while submitting, really. [Jumping into the pro submission biz is another subject entirely, and I’ll be blogging about that soon enough.]

This is what I meant earlier about having good distractions. All this is keeping me busy and productive. I may have been able to pull this off as a pantser back in the day — I mean, I was too broke to do anything else, plus this was also back during my dial-up years so I wasn’t online nearly as much either — but things in my life have changed enough that it only makes sense that my writing process evolves along with it.

As long as I’m going in the right direction, as I often say!

On Writing Queries and Synopses

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Image courtesy of Beyond the Boundary

If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that I find writing queries and synopses for novel submissions infinitely harder than writing the novels themselves. I can keep tabs on multiple plot threads in my head without ever writing them down. I can write two completely unrelated novels in tandem and not have any unexpected crossover issues. I can even update my blogs at some point during the week and have time left to focus on the big work.

But sit me down and ask me to write a query letter and explain my novel in one or two paragraphs? Ask me to write a short synopsis with the barest of details? Say I just need to do an elevator pitch? That’s when my brain stutters to a halt and I end up looking at you in anime-dots-for-eyes confusion.

I mean, I can write them. I did just that the other day so I could send out a novel project to a prospective literary agency. But it took me nearly all day to do both, even though I knew the novel backwards and forwards. I might joke that I’m a New Englander of French-Canadian descent and that talking about anything quickly and clinically is nigh on impossible for me, but it really is a frame of mind that’s super hard for me to shift over to. [Side note: I saved these documents soon afterwards so I can reuse them elsewhere if need be. I’d rather not repeat that work again, thank you very much.]

It’s not just the question of what definitely needs to be in this synopsis and what can I leave out?, but crafting it in a way that makes sense to someone who has not read the story yet. It kind of feels like a job interview in a way: I’m trying to upsell my abilities while at the same time not overwhelming them with detail. I’ve talked to agents at cons many a time, and they always come across as nice and easy to approach, and yet I always feel super nervous and that I’m about to fail the most basic of introductions because I freeze up and flail and blather and my thought process is rarely in chronological order.

One of the many assignments I’ve given myself over the last couple of weeks is to fix that mindset once and for all. After that massive exercise the other day, I was confident enough that I’d gotten my point across and managed to edit everything down to a normal requested size. I sent out the submission without feeling like I was about to make a fool of myself. [Side note: Synopses can still be tricky, as I’ve had agents and publishers say they should be three paragraphs or three pages, depending on who you ask. I’ll adjust as necessary, but whoo doggie is it hard for me to adjust either way sometimes.] And usually when I get through this kind of thing once or twice, I’ll be comfortable enough with it so future attempts won’t be as agonizing. As with most things, I just have to do it.

It’s tough as hell sometimes, but with experience, I’ll get used to it soon enough.

Current Status: Planning Stuff Out

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I’ve been focusing on my outlining and synopsis writing with my current and backburner WIPs this past week, and I’m happy to say that it’s working quite nicely. I’ve managed to reach the end of Act I for one of the current stories, and do some major scene rearrangement and rebuilding for another.

The outcome of all of this is that it’s kind of fascinating to see the difference between “all the ideas are in my head and I have a vague idea where it’s headed” and “here’s the roadmap, have at it”. I mean, I’ve done this kind of preproduction many times before (and to varying degrees) and this time is no different. Just that I’m taking this step more seriously this time out.

Am I going to plan out the entirety of my current WIPs? I don’t know. I probably will with the shorter one, because the more preparation I have ahead of time, the quicker the project is finished. If I keep up with what I’m doing, I’ll probably have a complete synopsis in a couple of weeks and will be able to get to the heavy writing without delay. As for the other one…that’s MU4 if you must know, and that’s going to need a lot of planning due to the way its universe runs, so I think I’ll at least get it to where I feel comfortable with being a few chapters ahead plan-wise, just like the previous trilogy. For every prose chapter I finish off, I’ll add another synopsis chapter as I go.

I’m definitely going to keep this process going if I can. I still want to get back to my plan of self-publishing at least one novel a year, and planning stories out like this will definitely keep me well-stocked in future projects! It’ll also help me when I return to the Day Job World…just like I did with the trilogy, I can easily block out a few chapters ahead during slow time/lunch hour at work, dedicating my evening hours solely to cranking out the prose.

In the meantime, I’m thrilled to be where I am at the moment in these projects…I may not actually be getting any prose wordcount done, but this prep work will definitely open up all kinds of time for it later on.

Writing All The Things

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A few days ago I woke up super-early in the morning from an amazing dream and had that classic OMG this needs to be story!! moment, so of course I made sure that I remembered it after sliding back into slumber for a few more hours. And yes, somehow I did in fact remember it! So before it went away and before I distracted myself with any other internetty things like comics and social media drama, I logged onto/dusted off the 750 Words site and hopped to it. I’d originally meant to just work out the bare bones of the idea, but before I knew it, I was writing a full-on synopsis and a few hours later I had three thousand words and a full novel plan written out. [Side note: this once and for all proves that I really do need to work more on eliminating distractions.]

Mind you, that NEVER happens, so I didn’t question it…I just kept working at it until I had it done and finished. [And to top it off, I ended that productive day by finishing off the Diwa & Kaffi revision as well. There wasn’t too much I needed to fix, but I was certainly glad to sign that off so I can start submitting it.]

While I basked in my pride for having gotten so much done that day, I started thinking…what if I started doing this on the regular? I’ve only recently started doing synopses and outlines on a semi-regular basis, so maybe it’s time I made it a full-on part of my writing process once and for all. I thought about my other open projects on the various burners and thought, wait…maybe this will work better if I’ve got a map to work with.

So a few days later I opened up the 750 again with a test run for another complete synopsis — this time for a project I’d started/stopped/trunked/revived several times over the years. It’s not an impossible story to write, I’ve just had constant problems figuring out how it should be written. This time out, I just focused on creating a short and tight synopsis, devoid of all the moods, distractions and lingering issues. End result: another success! I figured out why it hadn’t worked in the past, and how I could approach it from a slightly different angle and have success with it. So yay me, another future project!

Which leaves me with the current two front-burner projects, both of which I’m still feeling a bit tetchy about. Neither of them have a synopsis at this time.

The issue with both is, you guessed it: lack of direction. I know where I’m going and even where I want it to end up, but there’s still a high level of flailing on both. And when I flail, the longer it takes for me to get these projects done.

So my plan for the next couple of days is to work them both out with synopses. Sure, I should have done this a long time ago, but considering both of these were started right at the start of the pandemic (and at the end of my Former Day Job) in early 2020, real life and Diwa & Kaffi sort of got in the way and I kind of forgot that this approach does in fact work sometimes (okay, most times). If I can give myself a clearer path for both of these stories, then I’ll be much happier and I won’t be flailing nearly as much.

Will it work? Who knows. I hope it will. I have faith in it now.