The Pain in the Art blog

When writing a synopsis is fun

Before you go, I mean it. Synopsis writing can be fun.

If I had told me that at any time in the last three or four years, I'd have laughed in my own face. Fun? In a masochistic, attach-jump-leads-to-testicles kind of way, perhaps. With the first version of this book, I struggled with the synopsis. In fact I hated it. Unwieldy, episodic, lacking a coherent flow and a narrative integrity.

In other words, much like my book.

I'm no expert in these things, but it's tough to create a great summary of a story that's not working. Those early synopses were trying to tell me something.

I've been giving my story a lot of thought. Well, I've been giving my characters and their histories a lot of thought (there is an immense difference). Introduce those fuller characters to a situation and guess what? Story happens. I had a go at a plot summary the other night, trying to get the key points straight. A 90% complete synopsis fell out of the sky and into my lap. If you saw the remarkable video of a meteorite streaking across the sky and blowing out windows in the Urals, it was a bit like that.

There are two reasons why it came to me so much more easily than my earlier efforts: there weren't any of those inelegant constructions tripping up the flow; and, frankly, I hadn't yet written any of the story. Boiling a complete story down to a page or two is a Herculean task (the messy one in the Augean stables fits the bill). Sketching out a story from scratch in the same space is a fragrant walk in the park in comparison. If you haven't tried it before, I'd recommend the starter-synopsis option. And if you need any help, get yourself a copy of Nicola Morgan's succinct Write a Great Synopsis.

My story summary will change, of course, but that's easy to handle. What I will always have is a useful little overview of my work in progress. I'll take all the help I can get.

The location equation

I haven't blogged in a while because I've been away. It's not an excuse (life's too short for excuses); it's just the reality of my working life at the moment. But a self-funded business development trip to Hong Kong was a great opportunity to soak up the essence of a place I had never visited. These experiences are never wasted.

The relevance to this rewrite blog post is the question of setting, or as I have come to think of it, the location equation.

The setting I picked for my book was Birmingham. Why? It's where I grew up, it's a place I find interesting, and there was a challenge implicit in making it an interesting place for readers. It is, after all, not high on people's bucket list of weekend destinations (they're all wrong, but that's another story).

It is also the birthplace of my protagonist. He hates the place.

In my mind this provided plenty of scope for tension between character and setting, for overturning people's preconceptions about a place, and opportunity to bring family issues into the subplot. I'd overlooked two important considerations: did the setting work for the main story, and would anyone choose to read a book like this based in dear old Brum?

It was another example of design trumping practicality and vitality in my story-telling. If readers have unappealing preconceptions about a place, there's little reason to choose it unless challenging those preconceptions is absolutely fundamental to the story. I was attracted by the idea of taking on that challenge, but in doing that I'd put another obstacle in the way of my reader.

In a discussion with agent David Headley, I first heard the argument for going with an easier location. His sense was that the story had a high concept feel to it, and that a readily accessible location for the reader would make it more attractive. This is art, but it's commercial art, so being more attractive is a Good Thing. I could see that a sexier location would solve many problems. I fact I knew straightaway how the story would work better in a capital city location. That interplay is what I should have been aiming for.

So, London it is. This time. I know the city and I can render it in the way that I want and need (whatever setting you choose, you can't assume that some positive reader baggage will be enough to bring it to life. We have to bring something else to the table. Read Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor and you'll never look at a London church in the same way again.) Having just come back from Hong Kong, I'm excited by the idea of sending Stephen Fiske to that fascinating bridge between east and west in his next outing. I've broken out of my self-imposed Birmingham restrictions, so I can take Fiske anywhere - that's liberating. And liberation is an accelerant to the fire of revision.

There's an equation to be considered, then, in that choice of setting:

Successful location = (relevance + resonance) x vivid realisation

One last point. Easy isn't everything. Birmingham is a difficult location, particularly in the way I want to treat it. So I'm not going to drop it altogether: Fiske is still a Brummie, and he'll visit from time to time. It's not the place you think it is.