Stuffing an Elephant into a Bird Cage or How to Cram an Entire Novel into a Synopsis and Not Go Crazy

A few weeks ago I chatted with my agent on the phone for nearly an hour. It was a good talk. She had attended the big book fairs during the spring and it was good to finally catch up with her. I was thrilled to find out she is currently reading The Tale of the Vampire Bride. We discussed the book and its sequel at length. She feels strongly that this is my next book that we should pitch and I agree. I especially enjoyed it when she laid out what she felt were the strong points of the character, plot and the narrative. It validated what I already felt about this particular book.

"Is there a second book?" she asked.

I told her there was a second and possibly up to three more after that.

Then she said the words I feared, "Send me a synopsis for the second book."

EEK!

"Okay," I said, my mind whirling. "Uh...but I don't know how it ends."

"Write what you know," she answered.

Crap!

Happily, the next day I had a "Matrix" moment and it was as if my entire novel was downloaded into my brain in a second. I suddenly had all of it, beginning to end. But I still had no idea how to shove that entire story into a synopsis.

I put off the synopsis for nearly a week as I cruised the Internet for advice on how to write one. I have failed utterly in writing a synopsis before. I just couldn't imagine successfully writing one this time. In fact, this task seemed more daunting than even writing a book. It felt like I had been asked to stuff an elephant into a small birdcage. How the heck was I going to compress an entire book into ten pages or less?

Finally, I hit on the blog of Karen Harbaugh. Part of the way down the page (as you scroll) is a section called "Karen Harbaugh's Index Card Method of Writing Synopses." Reading over the post, it utterly made sense to me. I broke out my hot pink index cards and a purple sharpie and started scribbling.

After two days of furious typing, I had my synopsis. I didn't even fill the cards out all the way before I knew exactly what I wanted to write. I sent it off to my test readers, tweaked some things per their suggestion (adding time frame, explaining a plot point a bit better) and sent it off my agent.

What did I hear back? She liked it! She thought it had some really great stuff in it. Yay!!

So now I'm working on the next synopsis I owe her. I'm using the exact same method, but also utilizing yWriter as well this time. I'm writing a summary for each chapter in yWriter in the chapter tab. When I'm done, I'll just export the synopsis using these chapter summaries (I love yWriter) and revise from there.

Have I conquered the Synopsis Monster? Not yet, but I have a better handle on what I'm doing now.

Research! Research! Research!

Bloody hell....I'm exhausted.

It's been one of those ultra-busy weekends where I did a lot of socializing and dashing about and not much along the lines of writing. I know I needed to get out and be a social beast, but I have to admit feeling a wee bit guilty about neglecting my "other" job.

Of course, I'm talking about writing and now self-publishing.

Writing used to be my "other job" all by its little lonesome. It was my "other job" I could neglect because I was busy with the real job or just living my life. But when I became very serious about it last year, I did a lot of research on how to be more productive in my writing and turn out a damn good book. I felt I elevated myself to the next level as a writer and I am proud of the work I produced last year. My "other job" really did become another job!

Now that I have fully come to understand exactly what publishing and the gatekeepers are all about, I have decided to self-publish my work instead of waiting around for years hoping that someone in the publishing business is actually interested in a well-written horror novel about zombies. Which means self-publishing has now become my other "other job". How's that for a tongue twister?

I admit I now have a big ol' soft spot for Cliff Burns. He's a damn good writer and I love his rants. I love them because they are honest and from his gut. I love a straight talker. My husband is one of those people. When he's passionate about something, by God, you're gonna hear about it. So Cliff Burns was the first self-published writer to catch my eye, but I've now found the blogs and websites of quite a few "indie authors" that have a wealth of information. It's not just their commentary on the gatekeepers of the publishing world, but the sharing of their own experiences with the traditional publishing world and self-publishing that I find encouraging and educational.

Here are two of the blogs I've been reading the last few days:
http://mickrooney.blogspot.com/
http://aprillhamilton.blogspot.com/

Both authors have very interesting tales to tell and share a lot of information. Mick Rooney is posting about his experience using Lulu.com to publish his novel and shares his knowledge of how to format your own novel and how to submit it to Lulu. April Hamilton's blog has a lot of great links and she has put together what she calls her Indie Author Guides. I am just starting to review her guides and so far they are quite informative.

The more research I do, the more I realize I am part of a new movement. The new media has swung open an unknown door to countless writers that have GREAT ideas, can write a GOOD story, but do NOT fit the preconceived notions of the publishing world. I feel excited to be one of the indie authors that will hopefully pave the way for others.

There will definitely be a difference between people who can't write, turn out horrible work, and throw it out there in a sloppy format (I've seen these) and those determined to put out the best work possible.

I am determined to put out the best work possible.

And one more thing...

I'm not going to bother querying the traditional publishers. I realized that this would be a waste of my time and slow me down. I need to concentrate on what I am doing now to get my writing out there to my fans.

As for the future....who knows?

Anyway, I'm exhausted and need to sleep soon.

A new story is up on fanfiction.net for people to read. It is a rough draft, but its a good story. It's about two of the more popular minor characters from As The World Dies: Ken, the resident cute gay boy and his best friend, Lenore. I've had one reader express her discomfort with Ken being gay, but I have a ton of great gay friends and they will have representation in my books. I love people in all their shapes, colors, sizes, sexual orientation, religious affiliations..etc. The world is full of diverse people and my stories will be too.

Meanwhile, I'm happily formatting As The World Dies and getting ready to start the revisions on the second book in the trilogy.

It's fun to be an independent self-publishing author of zombie novels.

I Am Not Pulling a George Lucas! I Swear!

I had a comment to my last post that was really quite sweet. I appreciate hearing from fans that loved As The World Dies. It's very encouraging to have that kind of support when doing something as crazy (or not so crazy) as self-publishing. Knowing that there are fans out there dying for this story in novel form is the major reason I chose to do this.

But the question was asked (as it has been by others) as to how the story was being changed. From Glenn's comment "The question I have, are you going to change much of the story when you do self publish? Just curious. Personally (and of course you're the author and know what you want) I think the story is EXCELLENT and really doesn't require much changing."

I have to admit that portion made me giddy.

As The World Dies has several things happening to it. Let me explain.

First, the original online story ended up being well over a 1,000 pages long and around 300,000 words. In other words, it was one massive huge gigantic enormous wowzer of a tome. I had been considering printing it out, but when I realized how massive it was I decided it was time to figure out how to manage it. As I was looking through the story, I realized there were three naturally occurring "endings". In fact, during the writing of the story twice fans thought the story was over when it was actually not. So I chopped up the book into three sections.

Upon rereading the story, I realized that scenes I thought were in the story, actually were not. These were actually important scenes that gave further depth to the characters and I was bummed when they were not there. But I have to give myself a break since I was writing on the road and sometimes had no Internet connection to double check what I had previously written on the forum. At that time, I never imagined I would make As The World Dies into a novel, let alone a trilogy. If I had, I may have taken greater measures to not let anything fall through the cracks plot wise or with character development. In the new version, these scenes are included. I am not taking anything out of the story or removing any characters.

It's not until the third book that readers of the original will see any major scenes added. When I wrote what was to be the last novel in the trilogy, I admit, I was rushing to be done. I had a lot of negative things happening in my life at that time and the darkest part of the series does come in the final book. I deliberately left out a huge, dramatic event in Jenni's story because I just didn't want to go there with her. Yet, it was an important part to her development. It will be restored in this version.

Also, someone who was supposed to die (and I let him/her live) was left alive because I just didn't feel like killing anymore characters. I broke my sacred rule of "if they die on the movie screen in my head, they die in the book". I was just emotionally wrung out at that point and didn't want to do it. This time around they are going to die. And I ain't telling who it is.

Finally, the book is being edited for spelling, grammar, etc. I am also doing research on things I glossed over before.

So what does the revision actually mean? A tighter, better written story. Nothing is coming out, but things are going in. Things that make SENSE. None of that Han Solo shoots second in the revised version of Star Wars.

'Cause, as you long time fans know, Jenni ALWAYS shoots first.

Progress Maybe?

After last night's post I felt a little angsty about possibly losing great story ideas because of not having anything handy to record a spark of inspiration. Today, I wandered around Target with a co-worker during our lunch hour and she found something that immediately peaked my interest.

It's a 4x6 index card wheel. It's got a removable bolt in one corner that allows you to reorganize the cards, there are four different colors (four different story ideas? hrmmm) and a neat little elastic to hold it all together in my purse. I rather liked it since spiral bindings always trip up my wrist or make my writing even worse as I try and angle the notebook just right. Trust me, my handwriting is bad enough. I need no additional obstacles to make it worse.

So now I have a new way to manage my story ideas and I'm pretty satisfied with it.

Meanwhile, I'm getting ready to send the first book of the "As The World Dies" trilogy off to be red inked to death (gotta love editing!) and my husband is getting ready to launch the website soon. It feels good to be working together on this project and it means a lot to me that he supports my writing. Horror is not his thing. He likes movies with the horror element, but he's not keen on horror novels. That he has sat down and read three of mine and liked them means a lot to me. He's a sci-fi kinda guy and he has a good idea for a novel we hope to work on together. Sci-fi is my first love and I do hope to write some novels in that genre in the future, but for now I got my zombies and vampires to take care of.

It seems like every day I'm learning something new about the publishing world and I'm so grateful for the Internet. It is such an incredible resource. I'm getting more and more excited about our self-publishing endeavor. Musicians and filmmakers get to enjoy the concept of independent producing, but writer's really don't. I already know I'll get the "oh, but you're not really published" spiel from people, but I'm ready for it. The way I see it, if someone buys my book, likes it, and feels satisfied when they reach the end, my book has merit whether its published my a major book company or me and my husband.

I have to admit, I have not felt this good about anything I've done in a long time. If anything, this will be a fun and exciting experience.