Paksworld

I’m supposed to write a synopsis of Kings of the North, and since the book is essentially done (barring the revisions I’m working on) you’d think that would be easy.   Or some of you would.  Some of you may suffer from a-synopsisism, a condition in which writing synopsis is only slightly more difficult and painful than pulling off your toenails one by one.

Last night before bed, I was struggling with the synopsis.   This morning before the arrival of friends (to celebrate birthdays–one of theirs, and mine) rescued me from the struggle, I was struggling with the synopsis.

Faced with a synopsis to write, I wave my hands, make faces, and struggle to tell the story in the book in anything less than the 170,000 (approx, right now) words I used in the original.   Surely I can leave out something, I hear someone say.   OK, I can leave out…the plum.   Minor incident, the plum.   Um….the assassin?   No, that’s too important.   Um…the combat stuff?   Maybe that one, but surely not the other one because it’s seriously plot-relevant into at least the third book.    The dwarf?   The gnome?   Not if I mention Alured and his appointed tasks, and they also have plot relevance into the next book at least.     Leave out the bones?  No, of course not.    Leave out the elves?   No.

What I’d like to say, as I mentioned on Twitter, is “Book Two starts at the end of Book One and ends at the beginning of Book Three.”   I know from experience that this Will Not Do.

My friends have left (half a birthday cake is still on the kitchen table) and I can squeeze in an hour of work this evening amidst the usual chores and some serious work on tomorrow morning’s music.    This is not work.  This is girding the loins as I approach the Untamed Synopsis and try to get it  into coherent form.