@bwauthors / bwauthors.tumblr.com
Today’s work aesthetic is brought to you by bad photo editing, my roommates laptop, and as always, @alchemyandink 😂😂 . Anyone got big plans for new projects? . #WritersofIG #StaringAtTheKeyboardCounts #writersGonnaProcrastinate — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/37rtZrv
What’s this? The first post in literally a year? Yeah, I know, absurd. Who do I think I am? . Well, it’s national cat day, and it’s almost the end of October. I’ve been writing along with @manierenoireshop ‘s inktober prompt list to get back into my attic notebook. I ended up stringing the prompts together in a mess of a short story that doesn’t have an ending, but I’ve had a lot of fun so far. 😂 Astoreth may or may not have been inspiration for both “Black Cat” and “Fantastical Animal”. Will this turn into some trash fire nanowrimo project? Probably not but who knows—it’s got old, terrifying fairies, witches, and monsters, so there might be something there. . Anyone else doing Nano this year? Are you prepared? Can one ever truly be prepared? . #atticnotebook #nationalcatday #writersofinstagram #blackcat — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/33a26CE
Today’s the first day of the @ladiesofhorrorfiction Rebecca read along, and I can’t wait to get started tonight! Reading accessories courtesy of the @AlchemyandInk Gloriously Gothic box, and the coffee itself Frankenbones by @bonescoffee because I have to stick with the theme, obviously. . If you’re participating in the readalong let me know! I’m hoping to keep up while also keeping up with the day job, mini writing projects, and a hackneyed version of Nano, but I’d love to have someone to talk with! There will be discussion questions over on the website next Sunday, but it’s always cool to have someone to gush at in between. . (Side note, the Alchemy and Ink December mini boxes are available for preorder now! December’s items will feature stories inspired by winter like the Nutcracker and The Golden Compass, and seeing as how the Gloriously Gothic box was 👌👌👌 I’d say it’s worth a peek if you’re into bookish merch!) . #LoHFRebecca #Readalong #GothicLiterature — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2RuHsHg
I’ve seen a few people recommend Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier, and then I found out that @ladiesofhorrorfiction are doing a read along in November. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up or really participate, but it seemed like as good an excuse as any to buy this really pretty edition off of Thriftbooks and give it a read. . And today Acheron was sleeping on the blanket I’ve been using as a background so... Here’s a shameless picture of my cat. Cats and books go together right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (He was not excited about his nap being interrupted) . #CatsOfInstagram #CatsAndBooks #ShamelessCatPic #Rebecca #LadiesOfHorrorFiction #Bibliophile #Bookworm #HorrorLit #ClassicLit #classicliterature — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2SdHULs
I know a lot of us have huge TBR piles, and honestly the biggest books on mine are nonfiction—mostly physics and futurism and that sort of stuff. I’m trying to balance one fiction and one nonfiction at a time to make sure it all gets read. 😬 . Anyone else do this? Or how do you manage multiple books? . #AmReading #WriterLife #nonfiction #BookPile #PhysicsIsHard #TBR #nonfictiontbr — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2OiVChM
It’s important to take coffee breaks and also maybe chicken nugget breaks while working. Keeps you focused, right? At least until you get on IG to check on some stuff and then forget what you opened the app for. 🤔 . I’m editing for a friend—anyone got anything fun going on today? Second drafts of your own WIPs? Naps and coffee? . #AmEditing #WriterLife #ImGonnaNeedABiggerHighlighter — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2IICvHF
Just in case someone out there still wasn’t aware, it’s October which means it’s Peak Spooky Season and the perfect time for Leigh Bardugo’s Language of Thorns. . I actually had no idea it was illustrated when I got it, and have to say, I love the changing borders around the stories. (Though idk why I didn’t take any pictures of those 🤔) . Any thoughts? I know I’ve seen quotes from this all over the place. . #illustratedbooks #bibliophile #bookworm #bookcollector #autumnreads #writergram #writersofIG #octoberreads #tbr — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2OvSPkC
We don’t really have autumn here in Florida, but if I read enough spooky books I can pretend, right? Anyone else have a multiple collections for the same author? I think the one I just bought makes it four collections of Poe for me. But in my defense, none of them are truly exhaustive! . What if I just make trips to Michael’s for skull decorations and read enough Poe and buy some fluffy blankets? . #indieauthor #booksbooksbooks #bibliophile #classicauthor #bookworm #Poe #bookcollector #autumnreads #writergram #writersofIG — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2IcPyRo
We’re so in love with our second book baby and thank you to everyone who’s purchased it so far! . The Paris Portal is on sale for one more week, too! If you haven’t picked it up, it’s only $.99 for Kindle. . If you could take a few minutes to leave an honest review when you’re done, it would really help us out. (Or on the Paris Portal if you didn’t review there—Amazon kicks up some promotions with more reviews 🤗) . #indieauthor #indieauthors #bookbaby #bookstagram #bookworm #fairylights #autumnreads #writergram #writersofig #historicalfiction #amreading #booksale #crosspost — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2DnCpGz
It’s halfway through September! Anyone working on spooky reads, or is it too early for that? . It took me so long to take this picture because I kept losing that bag of tea. 😅 It’s delicious—I love jasmine tea and this little bag definitely won’t last long. . The Poppy War is one of the huge number of books I recently binge picked up at Barnes and Noble (it was a half off sale! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) . I started it but put it down in favor of Vicious so I can finish before Vengeful comes out. The Poppy War is interesting, but I haven’t quite fallen in love with it yet. It reads a little bit like a Kung fu movie, which gives it a unique spin. . #PoppyWar #Bookworm #SpiceandTea #TeaLife #YABooks #YALit #TBR — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2QI8NpM
The Paris Invasion is now available on Amazon! And for the next 2 weeks, The Paris Portal is only $.99 on Kindle! 🎉🎉 . My pretty print copy without the proof band is still on the way 😅 . #indieauthor #Bookbirthday #newbook #writerslife . #crosspost — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2padhJn
Book 2 of the Portal Series will be available on Kindle and in paperback tomorrow! 🎉🎉 . To celebrate, The Paris Portal is just $0.99 on Kindle for the next 2 weeks! 🎉🎉 . #IndieAuthor #BookSale #bibliophile . #CrossPost — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2xf51w0
In preparation for #Vengeful being released at the end of the month, I picked up Vicious and honestly? Victor Vale is 👌👌 . Don’t get me wrong, he’s an awful person but a great character and I love the dynamic he has with Eli. I may also be an awful person so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . This is my first book by @veschwab and I didn’t expect to feel it so hard. I’m about halfway through now and I just can’t wait. 😱 . #bibliophile #villains — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2xa5UVZ
Surprise! Here it is, the cover for our second novel, The Paris Invasion! 🎉🎉 . Travelers are missing. Even amid troubling discrepancies and the sudden silence of their historical accounts, the Society refuses to take action. Victor Brochard knows that he must enlist help before more of his charges are lost. . After her forced retirement, Daphne and Julien have spent two years building a life for themselves in the present day. Their happiness is shattered by these new revelations as well as the mission at hand: to travel back to 1940. . On the eve of World War II reaching Paris, they must investigate the disappearances in hopes of determining just how deep the corruption goes. When their plans unravel, they both must fight for their survival as they try to evade the German army--and the unknown enemy of the Society itself. . Available Sept 15th! 🤩 . #indieauthor #amwriting #coverreveal — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2Mia6Zk
Universal human emotions
Back when I was doing my MA program, I typed up a guide to writing query letters. It’s the post from this blog that I’m most proud of: a thorough step-by-step guide that combines days and weeks of research, and dozens of sources, into a neatly packaged 1,800-word post.
And I have to admit, I didn’t write it for tumblr. I needed to write a query letter myself for a publishing class, and my post was little more than compiled homework notes, saved as a Tumblr post for posterity.
I’ve actually had pieces of this in my drafts for years, but now I actually have to write a synopsis and I’m piling up the research, so I thought it was finally time for the sister to my query post to be published here.
But first…
A synopsis is a 1-2 page summary of the events that transpire in a book, either proposed or already written. It’s used to give people who haven’t read your book a quick overview, so they know the story that’s being told in the book without having to read it.
Some literary agents request synopses along with query letters. More often, they’re used slightly later on in a writer’s career, when they have an agent or an editor and they need to submit a proposal for a new idea or project. A synopsis can also be used later on, in situations that don’t involve the author. For instance, when an editor pitches the book to the marketing and publicity team, who may not have time to read every book they’re working on. Unlike a query letter, the book doesn’t necessarily have to be written when you’re submitting its synopsis.
The job of a synopsis is to lay out the story with little fuss and no frills. They let the person you’re pitching know what they’re going to find in that giant stack of pages on their desk or in that obscenely long Word document (or else in the Word doc they’ll eventually receive).
Most professional synopses follow these rules:
Writing your synopsis, you have one goal: to tell a 50,000-100,000 word story in 500 words. It can be a little difficult to do this right. A great way to do this is to identify the key turning points in your protagonist’s story.
Do you remember those little plot roller coasters you’d make in elementary school? They’d usually be pointy witch’s-hat shaped things labeled with the terms: “beginning, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.”
Those turning points are the events you should be including in your synopsis.This is the structure you want to emphasize to your reader. You want to make abundantly clear that your story works like a story, that the events of your book have a beginning, a middle, and an end, that there’s an intriguing beginning, an exciting climax, a satisfying conclusion. You don’t want to just list out the events of your novel, but highlight the function of those events. X moment is important because it’s the inciting incident, the moment that takes the protagonist from their normal life and throws them into the story.
There are tons of great story roadmaps out there, that go into more specific story elements. The Hero’s Journey is the most famous example of a detailed, and mostly universal, story structure. There’s also the three-act structure that’s famous among screenwriters.
Find a structure that fits your story the best and use that to identify the events of your story that need to make it into your synopsis. I’ll link to different sources at the bottom of this post that will give you variations of story structure.
If you can correlate key scenes in your novel to the descriptions of these plot points, you’ll find an easy roadmap to navigating the many events of outlining your novel.
Your protagonist is the heart of your story, and should be the heart of the synopsis, too. The protagonist’s emotional journey may not string all of these plot points together, but it’s going to be what makes them matter to the reader. The human element of your story has to be represented in your synopsis.
There’s no room for long descriptions, so you’ll have to be smart about finding a few terms that not only tell your reader who the character is, but what their story will be. For instance, if your story is about someone trying to get their critically-panned paintings in the Museum of Modern Art by breaking into the museum and installing the pieces themselves, you may want to introduce them with a sentence that begins like so: “When IGNATIUS, an ambitious and untalented struggling artist, discovers his work is rejected from yet another gallery…”
In addition to these descriptive terms, you should spell out what your protagonist wants (or wants desperately to avoid) and their stake in the events of the story.
Along the way, tell us how these key aspects of their persons change due to the events of the story, or else how they influence the events of the story. Tell us about how after raving reviews for his DIY MoMA exhibit came in, Iggy realized that though he still liked painting, his talents actually lay in performance art. Untalented to talented, struggling to successful, all because his ambition pushed him to try new and daring things.
As in query letters, you only name the most important characters and locations outright. If you’re writing a synopsis for Harry Potter, you’ll want to use Harry’s name in the query, but most other people and places can be referred to by their function in the novel. Ex: Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon can be “his cruel relatives.” Hermione and Ron can be “his friends.” Even Hogwarts can be a “school for people with magical abilities.” This makes it easier for a reader to understand what’s going on in your story. Too many names in such a small amount of space can be overwhelming.
All telling, no showing. This is one piece of writing where you’ll want to tell, instead of show. You need to get to your point as quickly, as clearly, and concisely as possible; this isn’t the place for creative storytelling.
Oftentimes, synopses are given along with other materials, such as pitch letters and sample pages. While a synopsis should be captivating in-so-far that it’s well told, and it should maybe be a little stylish, being captivating and stylish aren’t its main goals. Additional materials like sample pages and pitches have more room for creative flourishes and can do a better job of selling the story, while the synopsis focuses on telling it.
Your synopsis should show that you know how to tell a story. While a synopsis doesn’t sell a story like a query, it should still illustrate the fact that you have an interesting, unique and well-structured plot. When finished, your reader should be able to think to themselves “that’s a good story. I want to read that.”
Your first draft will be too long. Your first draft of a synopsis will always be at least a page or two longer than it should be. Identify the sentences and paragraphs where you explain why a thing happens and ax them. Identify sentences where you repeat yourself and ax them. Identify descriptors that aren’t vital to understanding of the story and ax them. Once you make your first painful cuts and see that the story still makes sense without those things, you’ll start to get a better understanding of what can and cannot be taken out of your synopsis.
I may have lost my mind. 😬😬 . To be fair, most of these are birthday gifts. Mostly from me to me. I think 3 were actual gifts. 😅 But B&N was having a half off sale, and there were a couple of books that I really really wanted like Any Other Name by @devanitely (Queer regency romance? Yes pls) and The Black God’s Drums by @pdjeliclark (which I technically preordered forever ago, and as you can see is already tabbed up and was 👌👌) and also this really pretty edition of P&P so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Who needs self control. . I also may or may not have a Thriftbooks haul coming in, and I wasn’t sure where these all were even going to fit, hence the bookshelf reorganization. 😬 — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2wyomaq
Rebloggin’ our own post ‘cuase Devan is @unhappy-mordred over here
