{"id":648,"date":"2010-03-06T18:09:05","date_gmt":"2010-03-07T00:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=648"},"modified":"2010-03-06T18:09:05","modified_gmt":"2010-03-07T00:09:05","slug":"synopsis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=648","title":{"rendered":"Synopsis"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m supposed to write a synopsis of Kings of the North<\/em>, and since the book is essentially done (barring the revisions I’m working on) you’d think that would be easy.\u00a0\u00a0 Or some of you would.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Last night before bed, I was struggling with the synopsis.\u00a0\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0\u00a0 Surely I can leave out something, I hear someone say.\u00a0\u00a0 OK, I can leave out…the plum.\u00a0\u00a0 Minor incident, the plum.\u00a0\u00a0 Um….the assassin?\u00a0\u00a0 No, that’s too important.\u00a0\u00a0 Um…the combat stuff?\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe that one, but surely not the other one because it’s seriously plot-relevant into at least the third book.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The dwarf?\u00a0\u00a0 The gnome?\u00a0\u00a0 Not if I mention Alured and his appointed tasks, and they also have plot relevance into the next book at least.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Leave out the bones?\u00a0 No, of course not.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Leave out the elves?\u00a0\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n

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.”\u00a0\u00a0 I know from experience that this Will Not Do.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is not work.\u00a0 This is girding the loins as I approach the Untamed Synopsis and try to get it\u00a0 into coherent form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0\u00a0 Or some of you would.\u00a0 Some of you may suffer from a-synopsisism, a condition in which writing synopsis is only slightly more difficult and painful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,38,5],"tags":[112,72,107],"class_list":["post-648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","category-marketing","category-the-writing-life","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-synopsis","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":649,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions\/649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}