How to Write a Novel in 500 Words

As part of submitting to agents and publishers, an author often has to write a brief synopsis of their novel. It's no big deal: Just boil your 80,000 word work of art into a 500 word ...

Okay, it is a big deal.

The actual length of a synopsis depends on who's asking, which is why I usually do three: a long one that's basically an outline, a medium length one of 2-3 pages, and a short one of 500-1,000 words. None are easy, if you're a long form writer.

These days, most agents and publishers ask for a page or less. You leave out subplots and a lot of the drama--it's can be a little dry, unlike most of your writing output, with just the facts and a brief look at your characters.

My finished rough draft was 4,085 words, in 12 pages.

The second draft is 2,985 words.

So. I have a bit of work to do.

After that I have to write a blurb, something you'd find on the back cover of a book, and it has to be good, interesting, and descriptive, and even shorter. Add to that a cover letter for your submission, which will be sent along with the first, oh, three pages of the manuscript, or five pages, or five chapters, or twenty pages, or whatever they ask for, and there's your submission package. Much of that you have to do even as a self-published author, for promotion purposes.

Writers stress hard over submission packages. But with the odds against them, and most never making enough sales to do it full time, you can hardly blame them.

Off to edit, then. Or submit, or research agents, or ... now that I think on it, it's February. Maybe I'll just have some fun and start on another story. I'll worry about outlining the new one when the days are longer.

This is why writers get a reputation for drinking.

(Let's see who reads to the end of this: After a rough couple of hours, I got it down to 839 words! Still over two pages, but what the heck. I know what you're thinking: "Now, Mark, wasn't that easy?"

No. No, it was not.)

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

This Snow Blows

 Hunter's Law of Diminishing Returns states that the more I prepare for something, the less likely it is to happen. This is why I always try to be prepared for winter. It's also why I put out dire warnings whenever severe weather is predicted: If I warn of ten inches of snow, wildfires, or tornadoes, it's less likely a fire tornado will cause severe blowing and drifting.

That doesn't always work.

Three years ago I bought a small electric snowblower. There were three reasons for this: first, shoveling out my driveway is a game for the young, of which I no longer am. Second, my old frostbite injuries have really started acting up in recent years. Even with gloves on, my hands become stiff, painful, and useless, kind of like Congress. Third, and in correlation with the previously described law, owning a snowblower made it less likely to be needed.

Also, a month ago I bought a new pair of boots. My old rubber boots started to leak, and also weren't insulated--and my toes have frostbite damage, too. So, between the snowblower and the boots, I figured we were safe from a bad snowstorm--at least, for awhile.

Which brings me to Hunter's Diminishing Return Correlation: The more confident I am that nothing's going to happen because I prepared for it, the more likely it is to happen, anyway.

Here's a spoiler line from my new novel in progress: "Nice boots". It loses something out of context.

 

This week we got nine or ten inches of snow, the exact amount being hard to tell because of the gusty winds, which also reminds me of Congress. Now, the most snow we've had in the two years before that was only a few inches at a time. While the snowblower worked in that, I found it wasn't all that much easier than just using a snow shovel. Just the same, when I got home from work at 6 a.m. and realized my car couldn't get more than a foot into the driveway, I figured it was time to break it out.

(I live on a state highway, and work less than a mile away--so in my experience the real driving adventure is parking after the plows have been through.)

Well. This blows.

Hunter's Law of Power Tools #7 is that the more I need a tool, the less likely it is to start. This is why I got an electric snowblower instead of a gas powered one: Fewer parts to break. That worked out for me this time, because it turns out snow in the 1-2 foot range is right in my little device's wheelhouse: It ran like a champ, and got my driveway clear enough to park almost before my hands went numb.

No one was more surprised than I was.

I didn't  bother trying to get it TOO clean--more snow was predicted later in the week.

Being able to park made the people who wanted to get by on the state highway happy. Hey, I left my car's four way flashers on, and it only took an hour--they couldn't just detour?

By then I was unable to move my fingers, so I called it a day and tackled opening the front door with my teeth, which are now also frostbit. I planned to shovel the sidewalk the next day, but my neighbor, whose dog is either a best friend of our dog or a mortal enemy (I don't speak dog), pulled out his big honkin' gas powered snowblower and cleared both mine and his. I'm extremely grateful for that, because my extension cord is only so long.

What's going to happen next? I'm betting flood. Just in case, I'm stocking up on buckets.

(Note: Flooding wasn't next--it was freezing fog.)

Snowblowers are our friends

How do you like that, I still know how to upload a video to YouTube!

I'm told we had about ten inches of snow in the recent storm, which is much more than we've gotten the last several years--it used to be just a normal weekend in northern Indiana. Can't say I'm glad to see it back.

Rockin' Out to the Classics

I've got some editing and polishing to do (on my writing), and I'm thinking of having a classic rock day while I'm doing it in honor of my late brother Jeff, who passed away on January 30th. Jeff was a big classic rock fan, or, as he would put it, he was a big rock fan.

After all, when we were teens "classic" meant a bunch of people in formal dress, playing music by dead old guys while another old guy stood in front of them wildly waving a stick.

When I'm writing it's those old dead guys I like to listen to, or movie scores composed and conducted by people who are still alive, but also waving sticks. (These days most people who see an orchestra assume the stick-waving people are casting spells.)

John Williams is my movie score hero, plus he can throw some mad magic.

That's because I find singing to be a distraction while writing, so it's John Williams or Beethoven for me. Or Holst: "The Planets" is great to write science fiction by. But while editing, voices are fine. 

I have an eclectic taste in music; that's a term that means "I can't make up my mind". I like rock, pop, country, jazz, and even have a Charlotte Church opera CD around the house somewhere. I find classical to be relaxing, unless I'm not paying attention and accidentally put on the 1812 Overture, which makes me want to invade Russia. Our Dad used to sing us old novelty songs, like "The Battle of New Orleans", and I also grew to love musicals.

Jeff generally stuck to good ol' rock and roll, but there's plenty of rock and roll out there. We didn't have all those weird band names, like they do these days, either. We had normal names, like Blue Oyster Cult, Thin Lizzy, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, ZZ Top, Styx, Led Zeppelin, and, of course, The Eagles.

Our rock stars looked normal, like this.

 

Okay, so The Eagles isn't all that strange of a name. We also liked Foreigner, although I never did find out what country they were from. Since those appear to all be guys, I'd add Janis Joplin, Heart, Blondie, and Stevie Nicks.

I've heard The Rolling Stones, Queen, and The Beatles were pretty good, too.

So I'll probably seek out a YouTube or Pandora channel, and see where it takes me. There was a lot of music we both loved, back in the day, with my favorite being the self-titled Boston album. But I haven't even begun to cover all the great rockers, so what would you put on the list?

Beethoven was happy to lose his hearing before rap came along.

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

My Funny Valentine free until the Big Day

 In honor of Valentine's Day, the e-book edition of our anthology humor book My Funny Valentine will be free from today, February 10, through February 14, which one of the humorists in the book calls "Sex for chocolate day".

That phrase isn't in my piece in the anthology, mind you. I've spent enough nights sleeping in the car.

You can find it here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006JROL8K

 I mean, you might as well laugh, right? If you cry, it will just cause people to edge slowly away from you, which come to think of it might not be so bad. Depending on the people.

I know what you're thinking: "But Mark, you won't get any money for that!" True, but we did it for love. It's in the subtitle. Besides, if you like my piece in there, maybe you'll come over and check out our other books, and that could be a real love match.

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

He Wasn't Heavy, He Was My Brother

 Today, February 5th, is my brother Jeff's birthday.

Almost a week ago, last Saturday, is the day he died.

Emily and I had stopped by to visit with him and his wife Cathy that evening. He's been undergoing treatment for lung cancer and other problems for years, and a couple of months ago had been given two weeks to live--but more recently he rallied, gained weight, and was doing a lot better.

But by the time we got there that night he'd taken a turn for the worse. A hospice employee was on the way to check on him, and the three of us were trying to get Jeff from the bathroom back to the living room couch when he collapsed and died.

I didn't think of it at the time, but in my fifteen or so years as an active EMT and forty years as a firefighter I've never had anyone actually pass away in my presence. Jeff quite literally died in my arms, surrounded by three of his loved ones. It was the end of the struggle for him, and the beginning of a struggle for us.

Here's Jeff's obituary:

https://www.hitefuneralhome.com/obituary/Jeff-Hunter

 

Jeff and Cathy

Of course, obituaries rarely tell you much about a person. 

Jeff was a lifelong smoker, and that's the only bad thing I have to say. When you get addicted to something as a teenager, it's hard to think it might come back to haunt you decades later. why do I bring it up? Because we could have had him for another twenty years or more. It's worth noting that for those of you whose loved ones would like to keep you around, too.

Jeff and I were only a couple of years apart, and since our sisters weren't born until years later, we grew up basically as just two siblings. We loved each other, and we protected each other, and we fought like wildcats, and we tried to kill each other. He managed to shoot me with both an arrow and a BB gun, not to mention almost blowing me up more than once. We loved blowing stuff up, climbing places we shouldn't climb, and jumping things we shouldn't jump.

He put together all my models of starships and warships, and his of various cars and trucks. He was a hands-on doer, while I just liked to play and imagine. That would be a pattern our entire life: Whatever I had that broke, he would fix it. Jeff could take an engine apart blindfolded, and put it back together again without instructions. I could write. Believe me, when people needed help it was him they went to, and he usually dropped what he was doing. He single-handedly kept my first three cars together, despite all my youthful efforts to shake them apart.

I never realized until many years later how much he tried to protect me. Oh, sure, we jumped from hay lofts, and made ramps for our bicycles, and fireworks? Don't get me started on fireworks. Just the same, he would try his best to protect me from people, and life, and other heartbreaks. He and Cathy were not able to have children, but he loved kids, and wanted them protected, too.

His teenage years were a little shaky, but by eighteen he was working, and he worked full time for the rest of his life. He wasn't a joiner; he wasn't part of volunteer organizations or other groups, although as I said earlier he was always ready to jump in and help. Like me he was something of a homebody, but he did a much better job of it than I did. Basically he wanted to pay his bills, take care of his home, see his friends and family, and not interfere with the lives of others. Boy, we could use more people like that.

He put ketchup on everything.

He was a fan of science fiction as I am, and wanted to see the new TV show, Picard, so Emily and I bought him season one. But his birthday is today, and he was gone before we could give it to him.

So, that was my brother. Life is duller for him not being around. My job now is to make it less dull by making sure people remember him. Forgive me, but for the moment this writer can't do any better.

He was loved.