Summing It Up

An author’s palms start to sweat. The task ahead seems impossible. Turn 80,000 words that were agonized over into three pages? No, there must be some mistake. Even the cruelest person wouldn’t force a poor writer to do such an outlandish thing.

But, back in real life, agents and publishers do require a synopsis. Instead of letting that dreaded document hang over your head through the entire book-writing process, maybe we should put it to work! Here’s how.

First, look at it as a tool, not a chore.

Instead of leaving the synopsis for the end, try writing it as you’re brainstorming. Or, I often start it after writing a couple chapters. Once you’re published and can submit proposals instead of full manuscripts, you’ll have to write it now anyway, right? Right. It’s a good habit to start.

It also provides a wonderful opportunity to write out all that backstory we’re so tempted to dump into the first chapters. It can always be cut out of the synopsis later but having it all out there makes it easier to pick what pieces should be revealed when.

Now, make it work for you.

So, you have a bunch of backstory, but now what? The synopsis is a great outlining tool. This can work for plotters or pantsers. Either before you start or as you write, plug the major plot points into the synopsis. The inciting incident, turning points, climax, resolution, all of it. Use those points to begin your synopsis. Once you have a little backstory and the major parts of the plot down, you pretty much have the whole synopsis written!

You also have an overhead look at your story. Are there plot holes? Is every scene realistic and logical based on the characters goals and motivations? Do any characters fall flat? Stepping back from the story through a synopsis reveals issues that can make or break a book.

Finally, put your best foot forward.

A solid synopsis shows an author is willing to put time and effort into doing things the right way. It’s well-known that a synopsis is hard to write. But agents and editors have reasons for needing them, different ways they utilize them. Therefore, they all have their own requirements. An author who checks into those requirements and fulfills them will make a better impression than one who doesn’t. Sending a ten-page, single-spaced synopsis when the guidelines ask for three pages double-spaced will make it look like the writer doesn’t care or isn’t capable of working within constraints. You don’t want either of those to be the first impression an agent or editor has of you!

Okay, I want to know: do you love writing a synopsis or hate it?

Abbey Downey never expected her love for writing to turn into a career, but she’s thankful for the chance to write inspirational romance as Mollie Campbell. A life-long Midwestern girl, Abbey lives in Central Indiana, where her family has roots back to the 1840s. She couldn’t be happier spending her days putting words on paper and hanging out with her husband, two kids, and a rather enthusiastic beagle.

You can check out Abbey’s books at www.molliecampbell.com. Be sure to
look for her newest book, Orphan Train Sweetheart, in stores or online in June!

Writing Books That Encourage Me Recap

By Kelly Bridgewater

From February until November in 2016, I took a writing book and showed how the book has improved my writing. If you missed any of the actual post, click on the name of the book, and it will link you right back to that page.

      1.)   Story Trumps Structure by Steven James

James’ is a huge supporter of writing without an outline or a plan. Too many writers create a story with an outline, and they don’t allow the story to take them where it needs to go. They are controlled by the outline that they made before they started writing.

       2.) On Writing by Stephen King

The first half of the book is an autobiography of Stephen King’s life or his CV as he fondly calls it. It includes how he started writing and showed the many times he wanted to even quit, but he kept at it. Secondly, the second half of the book talks about his writing advice.

      3.) Scene and Structure by Jack M. Bickham

As a budding writer, I have a hard time understanding how a scene goes together. Why internal dialogue? Why do you need to know the other character’s facial and body expressions to understand the story? When reading, I understand it completely. But as the writer, I have a hard time including that in my writing. I create the emotions from the main character’s perspective for each scene, but the Stimulus-Internalization-Response sequence confuses me. I have a really hard time with Deep POV too. I have read and studied Jill Elizabeth Nelson’s book on the subject. But once I sit down to include it in my writing, it doesn’t happen.

      4.) Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain

Swain also talks about a number of different areas that writers need help on. There is the “Beginning, Middle, and End”, “The People in Your Story”, and “Preparation, Planning, and Production.” Luckily, you don’t have to read Swain’s book straight from front to back. You can pick and choose what you want to read. If you don’t really want to sit down in a comfy chair and read for hours, you can pick up the book and read a chapter once a week or whatever makes you comfortable. It took me about a month to finish the book. Not that it wasn’t interesting, but I needed to read and digest what I had read to see how I could use it in my next book.

      5.) Forensic Speaks by Jennifer Dornbush

It is a great resource for any suspense writer who wants to make their stories ring true without having to actually go to an actual crime scene and figure out the answers to our questions. I don’t know about you, but approaching an EMT, firefighter, or police officer isn’t something I have done, but I really want people to believe what I have to write.

www.startuppremarketable.com

     6.) Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell

Plot and Structure uses tons of examples from many different contemporary pieces to draw the writer in. Bell will explain an idea to you like using Raw Emotion to start the novel, but then he will show you an example of raw emotion from The Quiet Game by Greg Iles. Even though I haven’t read the book or even heard of the author, it doesn’t stop me from understanding Bell’s example.

     7.) Stein on Writing by Sol Stein

From the first page in the first paragraph, Stein grips my attention. He says, “This is not a book of theory. It is a book of usable solutions—how to fix writing that is flawed, how to improve writing that is good, how to create interesting writing in the first place” (3). His book does exactly that. It teaches how to make the basic writer better and keep teaching those who have been published or who have been reading book after book for a while on how to be a better writer. The book doesn’t discriminate. There is something for everyone.

      8.) Writing for the Soul by Jerry B. Jenkins

Writing for the Soul is a quick read that you could sit down and read straight through for a couple of hours. It really doesn’t throw anything at you that would require you to do exercises upon exercises. It grips your attention and comforts you. At the end of each chapter, there is a Q and A section where Jenkins answers questions.

9     9.) Grammar for College Writing by Don and Jenny Killgallon

The Killgallons take simple grammatical words like appositives, gerunds, infinitive, and noun clauses and shows how to expand the sentences using these grammatical devices. She starts each section defining what each term means with at least three different examples from classic literature. Then the review section is usually pretty big. First, you will exchange sentences by switching up the infinitive or gerund with something closely grammatically related. Then you will practice expanding by adding an infinitive phrase or gerund phrase to the bold face section. There is matching. Multiple choices. More practice.

10.) From the Inside . . . Out by Susan MayWarren

             

Warren helps you with everything from writing the synopsis to defining the Dark             Moment in your character’s past. She explains it in an easy to understand format so that I    think she is sitting right next to me offering me advice to, hopefully, someday give me a    complete book that is ready for publication.

    

I really hoped you enjoy taking this journey with me. I truly enjoyed finding books that improve my writing. Is there any other books that you would add to this list? I'm always looking for other writing books to improve my craft. Thank you! God bless!

Sent to the Prose Fat Farm

by Rachael Phillips

Perhaps you are one of the Ernest Hemingways of the writing world—an author whose lean, perfect prose moves over a page like a dancer in a sleek black dress. Your writing rarely has to go on a diet—it works beautifully as you’ve written it. No more. No less. Agents love it. Editors love it. The reading public loves it, because you have supplied spare, artistically written stories that satisfy, yet don’t leave them feeling stuffy and overfed. 

  

Then there are the Charles Dickens writers who love words, love them all and use them all any way they can. Dickens, for example, wrote four paragraphs at the beginning of A Christmas Carol simply to establish that Jacob Marley, Ebenezer Scrooge’s partner, was deceased. He included a 79-word side discussion as to whether a door nail is deader than a coffin nail.

I have always savored reading such paragraphs. And I love writing them. I love feeling overfed! However, the last time I attempted to slip something like that past my crit partner, she sent me to a literary fat farm, where they took away all the heavy tangents that marble my writing.

“What are you thinking! The fat is what makes it taste good,” I protested. “It gives my voice its unique flavor.”

“It kills your readers,” said my cruel trainer. “Nobody these days can digest all that.”

But that’s not all. They also denied me my favorite fluffy adjectives, claiming they smothered my nouns. The sugary ly adverbs also stole the impact of my action.

“What action?” my trainer said. “Your verbs are so flabby, they can’t stand on their own. Get them moving! Make your characters sprint, cling, shriek, crawl, fling, leap, and plop. Stop adding pounds and pounds of other words to prop them up. Is it really necessary to use ‘suddenly,’ ‘actually,’ and ‘literally’ 453 times in one manuscript?”

“I kind of like them.”

“You also used ‘kind of’ 177 times.” She glared at me, then at my manuscript again. “Once we get rid of all those, we’ll start cleaning out these extra ‘thats’—”

“Nooooh! Not my thats!” I shrieked (see, I can use an action verb when I want to).

“Too many uses of ‘the.’ You don’t need all those possessive pronouns, either.”

She says she’s trying to keep me from killing my readers. She’s killing my manuscript—not to mention, me. My poor book and I will starve to death.

But when my trimmed-down words move across the page, they now fit in their jeans and move without huffing and puffing. Perhaps even a slim little black dress is in the future. …

How about you? Have you ever been sent to a prose fat farm?

Or sent somebody else? 

      

         

   

Motherhood and Writing

By Kelly Bridgewater

           

In addition to being a writer, I’m also a mother of three rowdy boys. I think the part of me that understands the concept of why a motherhood works is the same part that allows me to invest time in my writing, even through the craziness called life. There are similarities between writing and raising boys into mature Godly men.

1.)    Devote Time

At the core, motherhood brings many problems, but a mother who spends time with their children every day, either through helping them with their homework, allowing a “date” night, or playing games, motherhood can be rewarding. You might not see the results right away, but over time, this little stolen moments where the children have your undivided attention can develop a deeper relationship between the child and the parent.

In comparison, the manuscript becomes longer and richer the more time you devote to writing. Right away, the story may disappoint because there is a sagging middle or characters are two-dimensional, but by spending more time with your butt in the chair, the more emotions run through the character. The tension jumps off the page, waiting to grab the readers’ attention. With the time given to your writing, the novel can be revised to maybe actually become published. (We can all pray.)  

2.)    Improvement

As a mother, look for ways to build your children’s character up. Encourage them when they accomplish little tasks, such as gathering the trash, wiping the table after a meal, or earning an A at school. Overlooking the little tasks can be detrimental for a children’s growth. The more time you spend praising your children, the happier and closer your relationship with your children.

In writing, it is important to keep reading a number of writing books to improve your skill. Using the advice of a mentor or a critique partner, your writing should improve by leaps and bounds. Like your relationship with your children, your writing will improve.

3.)    Revise to Near-Perfection

Being a parent, sometimes you have to punish and correct your children when they do something wrong. Even though it hurts the parents as much as the children, parents who punish their children prove they care about the path the children are heading down and want the best for their children.

Likewise, in writing, if you submit your manuscript without doing some extensive revision, then you’ll probably receive a rejection letter, which could hurt your feelings and give you the desire not to write ever again. You revise because you care about your final manuscript. You want the best to meet the eyes of the agents and readers, not a sloppy first run through.

I love being a mother almost as much as I love writing. Investing your time in your work is such an important part of writing and approaching it like a mother armed to raise Godly children can be a lot of fun. I wish you all good luck with your writing as a “mother” to your current work in progress.

Kelly Bridgewater holds a B.S. in English and a M.A. in Writing from Indiana State University on the completion of a creative thesis titled Fleeting Impressions, which consisted of six original short stories. She has been published in the Indiana State University Literary Journal, Allusions, with her stories titled “Moving On” and “Life Changing Second.” In fall 2011, she presented her essay, Northanger Abbey: Structurally a Gothic Novel, at the Midwestern American Society of 18^th Century Studies Conference. Kelly’s writing explores the ideas of good prevailing over evil in suspense. Kelly and her husband reside with their three boys and two dogs.