Slashing a Fat Synopsis

Well, I finished my first draft of the synopsis for Fire On Mist Creek.

3,642 words.

Now, opinions differ on how long a novel synopsis should be. (In my opinion, I should be rich enough to hire someone else to write my synopsis and not worry about how long a synopsis should be.) The general consensus in the writing community is that a synopsis should be kept strictly between two thousand words and, oh, fifty words long. But the shorter the better; just like opera, or congressional term limits, or that little guy from Game of Thrones.

"Did you just call me a LITTLE GUY?"


 So I have some cutting to do, and with an ax, not a scalpel. There's a certain irony in cutting a novel down to something you then have to cut down. Meanwhile, I've identified a possible publisher for the book, but according to their publishing guidelines my novel is four hundred words ... too long. (Which is not something I'm remotely worried about for the moment.)

Later I'll probably have to boil my synopsis down into a back page blurb. There'll be significant shrinkage.


This is so much easier than writing a synopsis.

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