Midweek links-Synopsis

Synopsis = sucknopsis.

For those of you who don't know Synopsis suck, hence the name sucknopsis. A Synopsis is a one to two page summary of your book. That's not a big deal, right? you wrote the book, you should know what's it's about? Right.

Um no.

How do you condense a 70,000 word book into 1 page?

Leave out the details.

Tell, don't show <--which goes against EVERYTHING you know as a write.

Main plot points only.

Focus on the main character.

Sounds simple enough, but here's the thing, no one goes into writing to write a summary. No, we write because we like word play, we like characters, we like dialogue or exploring new ideas or rich worlds that are completely unlike our own. In other words we write because we like to be creative.

A synopsis is boring, its like REAL work... worse yet it's like a homework or a book report.

Why does it need to get done? Because some agents require it, how else are they going to know what happens in your book if you don't tell them.

So below are a few links on how write a sucknopsis.

Enjoy:


At Guide to Literary Agent blog, Chuck Sambuchino gives an example of a great synopsis for possibly one of the greatest movies in the past 20 years, Eternal Sunshine in a Spotless Mind. What's nice about this is that the movie is very confusing story and yet makes complete sense. It would be a nightmare to write a synopsis for it, but Chuck does an excellent job of it. And he includes some links at the bottom of his page.

He also give a few step by step example of how to write it here.

Querytracker.net Blog is always a good resource on how to write in general. Here's one on how to make your synopsis ROCK and who doesn't like a little rock.


YA Highway has a great article about the dreaded synopsis and I'm pretty sure this is where I stole to term Sucknopsis.

Because a mid week link session would be complete without it, here's Nathan Bradford's take on a synopsis.

Lots of the sights repeat the same information, again and again.
And it all comes down to practice.

Yes, it's skill and drill. Yes, its homework. But of the query process is like the final test, then having a great synopsis is like having a great study guide.

news

1) I hit 30 followers today! YAY welcome all new followers, I hope you read and enjoy.

2) I made this announcement today via Twitter-- when I hit 50 followers I'll do some sort of very cool contest--- although I have NO IDEA what, so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know. PLEASE leave comments below

3) I just hit 35K of Penny and Hank tonight. I have just under three weeks left to write it. I know my goal was 60K--- but honestly- I don't think I'm going to hit it. Not because I'm avoiding writing but because I don't want to force words on a story if they don't need to be there. I WILL finish this book by the deadline. It will have a satisfying ending. It just won't hit 60K. I'm stating that now for the record. Although I am hitting fun and pivotal plot points and if my adult ADD and the shiny distractablty of the internet didn't distract me (way to use the same word twice in a sentence).

4) So YaHighway (and Alicia just won a contest over there) is having yet another contest! YAY. This one you can receive early copies of some very cool up coming YA book, including The DUFF! I'm super excited to read this even though I know it's just going to make me feel SUPER depressed that I can't write like that.

Here's the linky link. To the BEA Giveway.

Weekend Reflection part 1

In one word--AWESOME.

This post is going to be about the writers' conference. I promise not to name drop or do anything annoying like that, but there will be a few names placed in this blog.

Alicia and I arrived in New Jersey on Friday at 7 pm-- there was a ton of airport issues but the important thing is we got there. The hotel was having a prom, which was weird because my prom was held there and the book I was pitching had their prom in that same hotel.

We woke up too early and got dress and awkwardly hung around the hotel room until we opted for coffee. By the time we got back, the breakfast was up and running. The keynote speaker was incredible. She described the pain and depression of writing -- which sounds like a total bummer but it was funny and touching and accurate. The best part about it, for me, was when she spoke about being a mom and a writer. That it's ok to do both. She puts the MothErhood. Me in motherhood. I rushed out and bought her book Dairy Queen.



The rest of the sessions were excellent, I went to one on Character, Conflict and Pacing which confirmed what I knew about writing. IT was run by a agent who knew his stuff. No name dropping but he runs his own agency and it gets 2000 queries a year.

The agent panel was excellent too. There were six agents there and they answered all sorts of questions, from how many queries do you get in a day to what is the project you're most excited about. They even answered my question of, "When is the paranormal teen romance trend going to end? Should I wait to query until its over, because I don't have a werewolf questioning his sexuality in my book." It got a big laugh. The answer was "it's not going anywhere, so you might as well query because there are agents who are sick of it too."


Lunch was amazing-- Mary Kole sat at my table. (We had assigned tables) I introduced myself to her and when the girls who were sitting next to her left. She patted the seat and told me to sit next to her. We talked about books and what sort of books she likes, and what makes a good conference for her. Very cool person. And I didn't throw up on her shoes, so that was a pretty big victory for me.

I had a one on one with an editor--- who edited The DUFF (its coming out in September I believe and it's going to be huge) She liked my 15 pages, thought it had good voice and the dialogue was funny. She had some concerns about the setting but in my mind that's a pretty easy quick fix.

Only two sessions were sort of lame, but that's not a big deal, everything else was amazing.

Would I go back? YES!
Should you go to a conference? YES
Is it worth the money? Depends on the conference, but I'm going to go with a yes on this one.

Anyone wanna share their conference experiences?

NJ SCBWI Conference

Saturday I'm going to the NJ SCBWI Conference. I pretty much always write it wrong and say its the swbi, I don't know why.

It's in my hometown of Princeton, NJ. A place I haven't been to since my wedding, and yet in my mind I can still drive through all the streets.

I'm worried that it's changed. I'm worried I'll get lost and look like a moron.

What if the place I grew up changed and grew up itself? What if it's not the place of my memories?

A about a year ago a ran into a friend from high school, I couldn't recognize him. He changed, got older. I don't think I've changed very much, sure I have a career, a husband and a kid. But how much have I changed? I don't know. It's weird. I live with me everyday, I don't notice the differences.

Also I'm worried because I might puke on an agent's shoes. My last conference didn't go well-- as you know-- I'm wondering how low my bar is to consider this conference a success.

I've got my hopes up pretty high (which is always a mistake) because there is a small flicker of a thought in my head that this whole thing is a sign.

1) I haven't been home in 8 years.
2) I'm going to pitch a book I feel confident about. (sort of)
3) My dream agent will be there. (although I found out yesterday she is no longer interested in my topic.)
4) The book takes place in my hometown.

It seems like a perfect recipe.

So writers, do you have any hopeful dreams or illusions of grandeur or any signs for above?

Also is there anything you think I might need?

Midweek links- Queries.

Queries.

Ok, here's the deal, you spend at between six months to five years writing a book.
And you want to get it published. How do you do that?
GET AN AGENT. How do you get an Agent?
Due to weird ass formatting issues you'll have to scroll to the bottom of the page,
to watch a cool video about it.



Ok, queries have a very specific format, three paragraph, one bio paragraph.

Here's a great example of what not to do, over at GotYA.

Sadly, I've known writers who have made most of these mistakes.
Don't ever send your form query out to 100 agents and wonder why you got rejected.

Here's another important fact-
ONCE YOU QUERY AN AGENT YOU CAN NOT QUERY THEM FOR THE SAME PROJECT.
No matter how much you change your query letter.
You get ONE shot with an agent, don't screw it up by spelling their name wrong.

Format of a query letter:

Nathan Bradford is pretty much the best resource out there for this topic.
Here is a fill in a blank format

Here is an example of a good query on Nathan's blog.
NOTE: he is representing the book as well.

Formatting the query.

Publishing Cred. What to list and what not to list.

See told you Nathan was a good resource.

Mary Kole talks about What to Query here.

I asked Mary Kole a few months ago when was the best time to query, see her response here.

Examples of Queries and why they are rejected by Janet Reed can be found here.
I will give you a warning, Janet's comments are harsh and if you are having a "woo is me, I totally suck and I should give up writing and breathing" sort of day, avoid this website.

Kathleen Ortiz gives you Query Etiquette and Part 2 is here.
She recently had a query with a 11,000 KB attachment!
It blocked up her e-mail for hours. Not cool.

HUGE TIP: Research the agent, what they like and what they don't like.
Here are a few places where you can learn all about agents.

agent query

Query Tracker.net

For YA and Children's books this is a great resource.

Reflection:
Query letters are hard, yucky and tedious.
There's lots of way to screw up on it.
So if you spent years of your life working on a novel, why not spent some time on your query letter and make sure it's perfect.

My first book I sent out 24 queries, I got 5 requests for content.
I was rejected because the novel sucked.
But I wrote a pretty awesome query letter and I learned a lot from it.

There's TONS of resources out there, but that was a small sampling that I found to be useful.


Well Maureen Johnson does a pretty good job of explaining the process here,
and since she's a published author she knows what she's talking about.

Penny and Hank 22 days left

A quick update on Penny and Hank, this weekend I wrote wrote wrote. I hung out with my family and wrote some more.

First off I got organized-- outlined the scenes I had left to write. I had 25 scenes/ chapters to write. Basically 25 things I wanted to have happen before I ended the draft.

I like lists, they keep me organized and make me feel productive.

Over the weekend I crossed off 5 of those scene.

Last time I updated the blog I was on page 89 and had 22K words.

As of 9:38 on June 1 I have 127 33K words.

My goal is to hit 60K and 250 pages. I don't think it's going to 60k, I think I'll end up getting to 50- 55k. Which is fine because I don't want to drag the story out and have twenty pages of the characters watching Doctor Who, because while I would find it entertaining to summarize all the episodes, I'm not sure if other people would. And I don't want to get sued by a British lawyer--- they're so fancy after all.

Night all, tomorrow is a mid week links--- all about Queries.

How to lose an Agent in 30 seconds part 2

So here is the continuation from yesterday's blog....
To recap, I went to convention, I had the flu, I thought I was awesome, (normally a bad sign) and I had a meeting with an agent... It was not going well- I had two books but nether were ready to pitch, I just wanted to ask an agent a few questions....

And things got worse from there.

Yes, you guessed, I pitched both books. One was a young adult book with a combination of prose and E-mails and IMs, something I thought would be very marketable and original, but according to the agent, it’s getting done a lot. Yikes. Then the second book, I said, “It’s only on the second draft but I have a really good feeling about it.” Oh. My. God.

My brain had been screaming, shut up, shut up now. What the hell are you doing? Stop talking. But my mouth wouldn’t stop. It didn’t. It couldn’t. I kept rant and raving about the dumbest pitch ever. A novel I had a really good feeling about! My mouth and my brain had become completely discontented and were two separate entities trying to get control of my body. Some other information I came out of my mouth during this disconnect between body and mind, my profession, my daughter, and I’m pretty sure my bra size.

Time is a funny thing, pregnancy time was the longest time in the universe while ten minutes with an agent was faster then the speed of light by the infinite power. I thought I had only been talking for two minutes when someone came in and told her we had one minute left.

Then just as she’s about to give me feedback, I CUT HER OFF to ask her the four stupid questions I had intended on asking in the first place. Yep. I cut her off. Its like I’d had never been in a social conversation before, like I had been locked in a small room in a basement only learning English from whatever fragments would filter down through the vents.

She ended the meeting with, “At least you had a good time at the conference, and good luck with your baby.” Ouch.

That’s not even the lowest point of the day.

I sunk to a level of desperation that I never thought was possible. I went to the final session of the conference, on the verge of tears as I replayed the events of minutes ago. The woman I met in the beginning of the conference sat next to me, her agent session went much better and the agent asked for a manuscript. I felt like crap. I did the most humiliating action I could ever do. I pounced on the woman and asked her to read my first 10 pages of the novel I had a good feeling about. I told her, “I just need to hear its’ good.” Newest personal low. Worse then anything I did in high school or college put together. I basically forced a woman to read my writing and tell me it was good. It was like I was raping her eyes and mind.

While she was reading and I was wallowing in modification I noticed something was very wrong. The woman looked up at me and said, “Its very good and funny.”

I blinked at her. “You’re missing four pages.”

“Oh.”

And that’s the point when I wanted to kill myself.

I sighed and thought one day I’ll be laughing about this. Or someone will. Hopefully when I’m dead.

At the very least people should learn what not to do.

Hopefully Saturday will go better.