Still beautiful, still complete, but not yet without mysteries, gaps between, things to be worked out.Įach synopsis arrived with an evocative title and opened with an effortlessly engaging summary of the book: the authors communicated what is at stake in their novels and why we will desperately turn the pages. It lacks precision, cleverness in its construction: if a short story is an intricate watch, a synopsis would be a watch in pieces, being put together with care, on the watchmaker’s bench. Unlike a short story, however, a synopsisdoes not concern itself with its own internal beauty. All offered complete reading experiences, almost as satisfying as short stories. This blog post was inspired by three beautiful synopses I just read by authors of mine, so I am very clear today on how to get this right. In reading the synopses, I was immersed totally, even though each was only a few pages long. (The character traits, the plot devices, the significant events, the settings and ideas.) How does it feel, too, to live this story, to read it? So it is in an author’s synopsis: it isn’t enough to pile up the signifiers, to assemble the evidence. Each abandoned possession will be a word, or a phrase, or even a sentence: but together they won’t make a story. But when they pick up a treasured teacup, they won’t know the precise way in which it pleased me – how my finger fitted perfectly into its handle, how its weight echoed the weight of some other archived memory. Yes, those who love me and know me well will be able to look at a painting and know where I created it or bought it leaf through my letters and remember the emotions they describe. The me they added up to, and the life they mark out in clues and remains, will be illegible. When I get to the end of my life, I plan to leave a lot of evidence behind (teacups, snippets of children’s hair, precious books, boxes of magpie finds, a trunk of vintage clothes, love letters, a few ticket stubs, a little chunk of slate, some paintings and a lot more besides).Įven so, what this evidence will amount to, when I’m gone, is a pile of signifiers only. We are archivists: photo album creators, email filers, certificate framers, decades-long storers of children’s creations, diary-keepers. For a start, we are good curators of the past, us humans. We are good at telling the story of our lives. A synopsis too should somehow embody voice, mood and character. When a friend tells you entertainingly of her day, she doesn’t just list what happened, but how she experienced it she employs her point of view. But that’s only a small part of what I mean by story. Yes, he or she needs to relay the plot, including the ending. The key is for the author to mine the story from their book. An effective synopsis is one of the mightiest tools in the writer’s toolbox and yet even experienced authors worry about how to create a great one.
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