I have no problem telling people I’m writing a novel. It makes me sound Interesting at parties. “You’re writing a novel?” But inevitably, people ask me, “What is it about”? They want a 30-second synopsis. Or is it 30 words? Anyway, that’s when I get tongue-tied. I suck at giving synopses, and usually just say lame stuff like, “I don’t know,” or “It’s complicated”, or… I change the subject.
It’s not like I’m embarassed about my novel or anything. It’s just it’s… it’s a character-driven novel with a bit of a complicated plot, and how do you summarize such a thing? Plot-driven novels usually have a concept, or a premise. Something that started the whole writing process in the first place, something the writer is shooting for that lets him/her know when it’s complete.
My novel had no such premise at all in the beginning. It started off as a soap opera about a bunch of academics. A few professors, some grad students. But it’s not about academia. That’s just the setting. It’s about relationships. Oh! That’s another vague lame thing I say at parties. “It’s about relationships”. Gee, thanks, that cleared it up. It’s about a young woman, a graduate student, and her relationships with people–her advisor, her friends, her family members. It’s about her mommy issues and her anger management issues. But the novel isn’t just about her, it’s about a collection of people in her immediate world. Her advisor, her friends, her family members, and their issues as well.
I guess it’s about (theme-wise), self-control and people’s need to or inability to control others and themselves. But I only know that because my beta-reader writing coach told me that after she read it. Still, it gave me an idea for a title: “dis/inhibition”.
I once synopsized the novel as “it’s about a young woman who is emotionally screwed up and how she begins to learn not to be.”
That sounds so dull. Would you read a book with that blurb on the back cover?
You know, just to put this in context, if you had to give a 30-second synopsis of BtVS to someone at a party, how would you do it? Would giving the premise do it justice? “It’s a TV show about a young woman who is a Slayer, a supernaturally strong warrior who fights demons and vampires.”
Or would you instead try to concentrate on the metaphorical element of the show? “It’s a show that uses vampires and demons and other critters to metaphorically represent the various struggles of growing up into adulthood”?
Or would you give a short summary of Buffy’s 7-year journey from young reluctant one-slayer-in-all-the-world to mature woman who has struggled with power and responsibility and found a way to make peace with a life’s calling?
Or would any summary not to do justice to the fact that the story is also about her friend’s journies as well? Would you need to throw in a note about the fact that Giles and Willow also struggle with issues of power (as Watcher and Witch) and Xander also dealt with that theme as well as he learned to deal with being the most “powerless” of the group?
And that’s assuming the struggles with power is the major over-riding theme of the show. But hey, let’s just assume it is for the sake of argument. Would giving a good synopsis of BtVS require you to summarize its theme?
Author Nancy E. Shaffer 
Trying to explain anything as complex as a novel or tv show is never gong to be easy, I think!
self-control and people’s need to or inability to control others and themselves
Sounds like a fascinating theme, especially as people seem to be more and more about paranoia and control and fear. We think if we have more, we control more of the people and events around us, we’ll be safer, happier. And when things slip through our fingers, we blame ourselves or others and generally have big melt-downs. Doesn’t sound dull at all! (OTOH, the “emotionally screwed-up young woman” blurb is blunt, but not very specific!)
Whenever I try to argue the merits of Buffy to friends, I never bother saying “strong woman, fights vampires”. They already know that bit. But I do try to give themes, and say things like “but the philosophy! the metaphor! the archetypes!”. And with Angel I keep pushing the religious thing: “Christian themes! Catholic angst! Free will versus determinism!” Doesn’t usually work to convince them, unfortunately 😛
So yeah, I would probably go theme over plot, though if they had never heard of the book/show before, I’d probably do a little bit of plot. “Stargate is a sci-fi show where the US Air Force visits other planets through this big ring that creates a wormhole and they fight these alien overlords and meet ancient cultures like Vikings and Egyptians.” Only then would I launch into “it’s all about the team, and exploration, and freedom from oppression, and becoming a mature society, no really, it’s not as hokey as it sounds!”
Um, yeah. Heh. Difficult, I agree!
If you want some laughs, read these attempts at story summaries. I know you don’t read fanfic, but seriously, it’s the same thing where you try to describe a story and it comes out sounding so stupid you wonder why anyone would want to read it!
Buffy
A 7-year journey from adolescence to maturity of a young woman who struggles along with her friends with great power and responsibility, as well as day-to-day life, and finds a way to make peace with a difficult life’s calling.
All it needed was a little rewording. Remember a synopsis isn’t supposed to say everything, or touch every detail or every plot line. It just gives a hint of the scope of what the work is about.
So for your book, you just need to present a simpler clearer picture of what you yourself have written. What’s so important about this woman that’s she’s worth writing and reading about? What’s different or absolutely representative of young women/grad students about her? etc.
My novel is a science fiction story set a thousand years in the future about how a man and a woman who have no respect for each other or each other’s opinions are thrown together by fate and come to care for each other as a great war slowly closes in on them. Old One would tell you that’s only a hint of what happens, but it does give a taste of the central theme. That’s all a quick synopsis is supposed to do.
LOL! The nasty plot synopsis…
have no problem telling people I’m writing a novel. It makes me sound Interesting at parties. “You’re writing a novel?” But inevitably, people ask me, “What is it about”? They want a 30-second synopsis. Or is it 30 words? Anyway, that’s when I get tongue-tied. I suck at giving synopses, and usually just say lame stuff like, “I don’t know,” or “It’s complicated”, or… I change the subject.
LOL! At last someone who has the same problem I do when it comes to explaining a novel they’ve written or working on to others. I do exactly the same thing you describe above – word for word.
I went nuts last year attempting to write a frigging plot synopsis, some nasty potential agent requested it, even bought a book that explained how to do it: The Sell Your Novel Tool Kit by Elizabeth Lyon. And it did have a great plot synopsis outline – which was based on Joesph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey (ugh, apparently Dedalus is right it all comes back to Campbell) – which works beautifully if your novel happens to follow that path, but mine didn’t. Actually my novel has zip in common with Campbell’s Hero’s Journey – which made me wonder if the novel had a problem? Do all stories have to deal with the heros journey in some way, what if yours doesn’t? (Took me a while to get past that particular insecurity – I am now). Then I wondered: Maybe the plot wasn’t clear enough? I mean if you can’t write a two-page brief plot synopsis of your own novel or explain the plot/theme in a sentence, then maybe your novel has a problem? A *serious* problem? So…long story short, poor novel is on back-burner and I still to this day find myself tongue-tied whenever I attempt to try and explain the plot. “It’s complicated – I say, occult underpinings, art forgery, celtic folk tales, romantic intrigue, character driven, and well…ugh.” I resorted to using books I thought were similar to it – to describe it – ie. It’s Waking the Moon meets The Secret History meets Harvest Home. (Not really that close unfortunately.) Plot synopsises, synopsises period…one of the banes of my existence. I’m too much of a complicator, I guess, to ever be able to describe a story I’ve written with one sentence.
Oh – I usually describe Buffy as a coming of age story with horror and gothic metaphors. Angel is a noir/horror tale about redemption that takes place currently in a corporate setting. (Apparently I’m better at describing others works, just not my own.)
sk
people seem to be more and more about paranoia and control and fear. We think if we have more, we control more of the people and events around us, we’ll be safer, happier. And when things slip through our fingers, we blame ourselves or others and generally have big melt-downs.
I think self-control is the bigger theme of the story than controlling others, although that’s part of it, too. The central protagonist of the story lack self-control, the central antagonist has too much self-control. But the antagonist also is a control freak who tries to control the protagonist. And Ms. Protagonist rebels in her out-of-control way, and zip, the novel’s off and running. The same hi/lo self-control, dealing with other’s too controlling/out-of-control behavior is echoed in the journies of all the other characters as well.
I just don’t know how to say that so it doesn’t sound like gobbley-gook.
Could be worse. I could be writing science fiction, and having to explain premises like, “Stargate is a sci-fi show where the US Air Force visits other planets through this big ring that creates a wormhole and they fight these alien overlords and meet ancient cultures like Vikings and Egyptians.”
I’m not picking on your synopsis; one problem I have buying sci-fi and fantasy books is that, when I read the synopsis on the back, it’s usually completely non-sensical outside the context of the novel itself, and I put those books back on the shelf, perhaps unfairly.
At least with a non-sci-fi novel I can say something like, “It takes place in academia, and follows a few weeks in the life of a graduate student, her friends and family.” Then launch into the control theme.
OK….
clears throat
“My novel takes place in academia, and tells the story of an emotionally troubled, impulsive and yet charming and talented graduate student and her collegues, family, and friends.
It explores the theme of self-control, and how the level of control we have/try to exert over ourselves and others can effect our relationships, both positively and negatively.”
Hmmm…. this could use more pizzazz.
And it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the emotional soap-opera roller coaster that is my novel.
That’s part of my problem with synopses. I don’t want to wet their appetites, I want to do complete justice to my work. I’m just not a synopsis kind of gal!
Re: OK….
Maybe you should start with taglines for the cover/poster?
dis/inhibition
‘Cause everybody has issues.
dis/inhibition
[over a sexy cover shot]
Are you in control?
Taglines: because everything meaningful should be condensed into one sentence!
Re: LOL! The nasty plot synopsis…
I’ve had The Sell Your Novel Tool Kit on my amazon wish-list for a while now. Just waiting until I was actually ready to try to sell it.
I find it interesting that she couches synopses in terms of the hero’s journey. The main character in many novels (including mine) aren’t heroes, they’re protagonists. My character is charming, but she’s also obnoxious and angry and impulsive. I guess in the end she starts to learn how not to be that way, and that is heroic, in that it takes courage to let go of our well-worn but disfunctional ways of dealing with the world in favor of ways of behaving we fear will make us more emotionally vulnerable.
I mean if you can’t write a two-page brief plot synopsis of your own novel or explain the plot/theme in a sentence, then maybe your novel has a problem? A *serious* problem?
I doubt the problem is with the novel, and perhaps with the novelist (we of many words, finding the sound-bite antithetical) or perhaps with a publishing culture and culture at large that thinks anything can be adequately summarized in an entertaining sound-bite.
But take any really good complex character-driven novel and try to write a synopsis of its plot that would satisfy that potential agent of yours. It’s not your novel that’s the problem.
I hadn’t thought of using other books/movies to describe mine. I’m not certain I could think of anything that comes close. Buffyverse fans would understand if I said my main character is “Faith-like”, but the context she is in is completely different than BtVS or AtS.
She has a similar journey to take, though. She starts out brazen, cocky, wild. She rebels against what she perceives as the disrespect of others, does things in response to that which are guaranteed to set people off. People react negatively to her behavior, people whose opinions matter to her, she goes through a dark night of the soul sort of thing, and the only thing that’s going to save her is an honest look at her own behavior, the precursors for which I set up through her relationships with certain key characters. The end is not all “and now life is wonderful”, she loses a lot, but is also on the way to becoming more self-aware, more reflective about her own behavior than she was when the novel started.
And that’s the boring psychological summary. This novel is actually fun. Girl does wild outrageous things. Girl falls in love. Girl has a psychologically complicated past.
And I haven’t even started talking about all the stuff her friends and family do.
Well, I have the sexy cover shot
Picture the words
dis/inhibition
at the top of a slick paperback book cover.
The picture is from the pov/angle of a student sitting at their desk. She has her legs propped up on the desk, so that’s what you see–a pair of long, lanky women’s legs in jeans with cowboy boots propped up on a desk, from the hips to the toes. Maybe some textbooks on the desk or something that identifies the context a bit without drawing attention to itself.
Then a tag line: “A novel about self-control”???
Re: OK….
That’s the ticket. Except the thought in the second sentence belongs first.
Writing a synopsis is just like writing a newspaper article. The first sentence is whatever is absolutely the most important. From there you work your way through the details in descending order of importance as space or time permit. You’ve already felt the need for some zip. That’s half the battle. The next thing to do is remember you ain’t writin’ an academic abstract so phrases like “both positively and negatively,” are out of place. Let the reader find that out from reading the book. Squeeze the bit about emotionally troubled grad student into that sentence about relationships, and leave the less important stuff (impulsive, yet charming, etc., as well as friends, colleagues, etc.) for later if you have the space.
First describe the main problem in the book with a clue about the main character(s), then give details about the main character, then you can add peripheral issues of the main character, then talk about the minor characters you haven’t already mentioned. It doesn’t matter if the minor characters seem to be worth a bigger role from what happens in the story, you’re trying to interest other people so simplify rather than make it confusing.
Re: Well, I have the sexy cover shot
Now you’re talking! I like it!
Now all you have to do is flip your shiny sexy book over to see the back. What do you see? Another pic? And maybe some sort of funky font with a one or two paragraph blurb. If you can make out what that blurb says (conveniently located under the praising quotes from your favourite author) then you’re all set.
Re: OK….
The irrepressible force meets the immovable object:
Valerie is an emotionally volitile but talented graduate student. Elizabeth is her control-freak advisor. When Elizabeth lays down the law, Valerie just end-runs around her. Starting with Elizabeth’s cute, sheltered, and hormonal teenaged daughter.
And it’s a roller-coaster ride from there.
Dis/inhibition: a novel about self-control: having too much… scandalous smile …and not having enough.
Now it sounds like the over-hyped summary on the back of a paperback. And leaves out the fact that you’ll get an in-depth look at the self-control issues of Elizabeth’s daughter, husband, Valerie’s friends, and mother along with the rest. And a sobering look at where both excessive disinhibition and inhibition can take you.
Re: Well, I have the sexy cover shot
See my reply to Cactus Watcher below for the description on the back cover (beginning with “The irrespresible force…”.
Unfortunately, I need something a little less manipulative for synposizing at parties.
OMG, DOOD!
Clex fic synopses written by inarticulate valley girls who spend too much time talking on the ‘net.
Re: OMG, DOOD!
Hee! First time I read that post, I nearly laughed myself sick! I could only figure out two or three stories based on those synopses. Even The Spike’s “Butterfly Effect” (which I adore) sounded like some kind of teenybopper’s badfic when summarised like that! And I don’t usually like parody, but when it’s aimed at yourself and your own fandom, it’s actually pretty hilarious!
Re: OMG, DOOD!
Makes me wish I could read one for a story that I’ve actually read, but I can count the fan fic I’ve read on one hand, so….
Wonder how they’d summarize BtVS or Angel eps, or Smallville eps, or something I’ve seen/read?
I’ll tell you when I finish writing it.
That’s as good an answer as any. 😉
But inevitably, people ask me, “What is it about”? They want a 30-second synopsis. Or is it 30 words?
Or how about… “I can’t reduce it to a sound bite.”
Or, better… “I don’t know. I’m still finding out.”
Can you tell I’ve been dealing with this myself? 😉
I finally came up with something that works well enough: “It’s a story of return and reintegration, the heroic quest that comes after the heroic quest is done and leave the hero a mess.” Or something like that.
Re: I’ll tell you when I finish writing it.
“I don’t know. I’m still finding out.”
That works well, and is the truth, through the first four drafts. At some point (a point I’ve past), you figure out what you’ve been writing about and then you have to express it to others in a way that will, one hopes, intrigue them.
Still, damn this quick-sell capitalist society and its short attention span and demand for sound bites. A pox on them!
Re: I’ll tell you when I finish writing it.
Still, damn this quick-sell capitalist society and its short attention span and demand for sound bites.
Hear, hear.
(And yes, I know how to spell it!)
Re: I’ll tell you when I finish writing it.
Hear, hear.
(And yes, I know how to spell it!)
Hey, it’s a cross between “I agree” and “I hear you.”
Re: LOL! The nasty plot synopsis…
Your novel actually sounds far from boring and incredibly interesting as does the description of it – maybe because your protagonist is not necessarily “loveable” or “heroic” to begin with. Have you seen Wonderfalls – by the way? Yes, it’s a tad in your face, but the heroine of that show reminds me a lot of yours (actually Minear described his heroine in almost the same terms.)
I have a similar heroine – except mine is very much of an anti-hero in some respects. She’s not necessarily heroic, she is very self-centered. And may even be directly responsible for deaths of her friends – but she ends up sacrificing herself in a way towards the end, which is heroic in an odd way.
She’s also just a little Faith-like, I have another character who is very Spike-like (not nice fluffy either). That said? My novel has some definite problems – one was that I lost track of the main character and got too interested in a supporting one.
Also I over-complicated the plot. I have a really bad habit of complicating storylines when I get bored, so that they get messy plot-wise.
I like the pricky characters and being a somewhat sadistic writer – I like to torture them. Unfortunately I’m not sure the publishing culture wants this. One of the agents who read my book and considered it – dropped me because it wasn’t a “cozy mystery” but “occult horror”. Another wanted me to hone up on Mary Stewart gothic romances. (Ugh! I read all of those when I was in Junior High.) The difficulty with publishing industry and agent field is too many marketing people have gone into it – marketing people may be the death of creativity in more than one profession in my opinion -so into trends, reducing things to slogans to sell something, copying what works, categorizing and labling everything – they are evil! 😉
The Elizabeth Lyon book is helpful – but it’s limiting if your novel doesn’t fit certain categories. I found it frustrating at times, but much better than the other stuff out there – and she provides some excellent advice on how to grab agents and pub interest. Some good stuff on queries.
Re: LOL! The nasty plot synopsis…
marketing people may be the death of creativity in more than one profession in my opinion -so into trends, reducing things to slogans to sell something, copying what works, categorizing and labling everything – they are evil! 😉
You’ll get no disagreement from me. Everyone’s so enamored of the bottom line now that the truly innovative is getting marginalized when some part of the publishing/television/whathaveyou industry should always be cultivating it. Instead of finding the next trend-follower clone, they should be finding the next trend setter.
As for agents and all that, I’ve been putting it off until I think I’ve got a product I can feel proud of. It’s taken me years to reach that point, and soon I might have to admit I’m procrastinating the whole “trying for publication” thing.
I’m actually thinking of researching the whole self-publication angle as well. Side step all that other crap and sink my non-existent fortune into self-promotion.
What a synopsis is good for
I write with a friend, mostly just to give ourselves deadlines, but also because it’s fun. Often I’ll change my book and she’ll get me to explain the new version to her. It really helps me keep my focus, and to bring me back to the direction I want to move in. But then, I’m writing a mystery, and plot is maybe more of an issue to me. However, I’m wondering if it helped you think about your novel when you explained why it couldn’t be synopsized. Even trying to do it, or refusing to, might have its uses.
Re: LOL! The nasty plot synopsis…
My novel has some definite problems – one was that I lost track of the main character and got too interested in a supporting one.
What has been really fun for me in writing was all the characters who just sort of popped up and invented themselves. And now they’re forcing me to go back and let the main character do that, too. Sort of like they’re telling me I was keeping her in prison and letting them ramble around free.
And also weird is when I am wandering around in a store and see someone, or hear them talk, and realize they’re an even better version of one of my characters.
Re: LOL! The nasty plot synopsis…
I agree with mamcu. The main character of my novel didn’t start out as the main character. She was just part of a large company of characters, in fact, she was added on as the relative of a more “important” character. She gradually took over the novel. I felt a lot of “energy” around writing her. She was the one through who my story needed to be told.
Doesn’t mean the story isn’t still about a company of characters, because I tell the story through at least 7 other points of view switching off between scenes, but she is the center of gravity, she is the “main character”.
Re: LOL! The nasty plot synopsis…
What has been really fun for me in writing was all the characters who just sort of popped up and invented themselves. And now they’re forcing me to go back and let the main character do that, too. Sort of like they’re telling me I was keeping her in prison and letting them ramble around free.
Yes, this happened to me, I ended up losing the protagonist in the middle of the book, and readers got confused. One reader told me that she liked the supporting character – that I end up killing off, better than the protagonist. Then well things got muddled.
I’m trying to work out some of these writing problems by doing fanfic exercises at the moment – basically forcing myself to write for characters in buffyverse which I find difficult to think in. First was Drusilla. Then Xander. Then Dana. Now Buffy. Next is Giles. I’m also trying to see if I can really practice that old adage – come up with the worste possible thing to do to character then do it and make sure you change them as a result. Playing with someone else’s characters to do this, helps a little with the writer’s block – in that I don’t have to come up with a character sketch. I’ve already analyzed them all too death so I feel them or at least know them in my gut and that’s where you really have to feel a character, whether originated by you or someone else, in order to write it. You have to hear the characters voice inside you, know their actions, be them. Otherwise they’ll look like puppets prancing about on the page and the reader won’t care.
Very hard to do I think. I think I failed a little in my novel on it – regarding my main character.
Re: LOL! The nasty plot synopsis…
Everyone’s so enamored of the bottom line now that the truly innovative is getting marginalized when some part of the publishing/television/whathaveyou industry should always be cultivating it. Instead of finding the next trend-follower clone, they should be finding the next trend setter.
Another result of a capitalistic economy gone hay-wire in my opinion, but I admit I’m a tad biased right now and just slightly bitter. 😉 So maybe not seeing things as clearly as I should. But it does annoy me to no end that instead of being innovative, they are all scrambling to copy The O.C. – which in of itself is hardly innovative, it’s basically a retread of Beverly Hills 90210 with better writing.
Or re-doing Lost in Space or Dark Shadows (which has been done twice already, we don’t need a third attempt.) Just saw the original Dial M For Murder tonight which was so much better than the three remakes – yes, they remade the classic three times. It’s sad. Granted there are no new ideas – but there are new ways of telling things, we don’t have to retell the same idea the same way over and over again.
What was wonderful about BTVS was Whedon found a new way of telling an old idea. That’s genius. And it’s becoming rarer.
Regarding getting published or self-publishing, seen both tracks, both are equally tough. Self-publishing can be really really hard – since you have to be your own marketer, own promotor, own agent, etc – the only thing the on demand or self-publishing firms do is print the book in paperback and electronic format so “you” can sell it. I think it cost my Dad around 10,000 to do his, not positive. He hired an editor and every time you send in corrections to the printer that costs etc. The one Dad used was 1stBooks.com. Now, he has a friend who *really* worked to market her books. She self-published, took the books to all the bookstores, sent them to newspapers, sat outside bookstores to do book signings for free. After her third self-published novel, a real publisher saw a copy lying on table of her neice or friend and picked it up, read it and asked to publish her next one. When that happened, she had to change the title, had to give in to their cover demands, but still ended up doing most of her own marketing – she paid to go around the country to sell her book – including flying to Phoenix, Denver, Kansas City, etc and sitting outside Walden Book Stores or doing radio interviews. Reason my Dad hasn’t been as successful self-publishing is he just doesn’t want to fly around or drive around the country hawking it. Now that’s just one story – I’m sure there are more positive ones out there. Meanwhile – I have another friend, who has published three non-fiction books, sent out her novel – got 0 responses, got really frustrated, re-wrote it, got it in as perfect shape as possible, went online found a list of agent emails and emailed a bunch of well-drafted query letters. She got several positive responses. Sent her book out. Got an agent. The agent got her a publisher and she’s been reworking the book for publication. I think she’s finished the fifth or sixth draft and is waiting for her editor’s response. Writing is not an easy occupation, is it?
I don’t have a novel I’m working on, but I do have a thesis, and after a year of practicing I can happily say that I’m working on “Kant’s theory that our self-knowledge has limitations, and how the incommensurable gaps in our self-knowledge raise potential problems for his moral philosophy” (22 words, not bad). Of course the wording changes every time.
I once synopsized the novel as “it’s about a young woman who is emotionally screwed up and how she begins to learn not to be.”
That sounds so dull. Would you read a book with that blurb on the back cover?
Actually I don’t think it sounds dull at all. Instead, I wonder if the academic setting contribute to the screwed upness or the learning not to be… or both.
Re: LOL! The nasty plot synopsis…
I think I failed a little in my novel on it – regarding my main character.
But it’s not over till it’s over–maybe the final book will be a success even if that character’s role was changed.
Alas, I think it’s just me
I’m not a synopsis gal. I’m wordy and long-winded and thorough and precise, and I was that way long before I was in graduate school. I was one of those kids in high school, who, when assigned a ten-page paper, wrote a 20-page papger. Who wrote a novelette as a final project in creative writing.
And I could never summarize something for people, or find a non-awkward way to stumble through its premise.
I used to have the same problems with my dissertation at grad school parties. “What’s your dissertation about?” “Um… well, it’s about bias.” “Anything in particular?” “I don’t know.”
Apparently, it was about something interesting in particular, because they graduated me.
Re: What a synopsis is good for
However, I’m wondering if it helped you think about your novel when you explained why it couldn’t be synopsized. Even trying to do it, or refusing to, might have its uses.
Actually, I’m thinking you were right in the preceding sentences. Figuring out how to summarize what I’m doing is the best exercise in figuring out what I’ve done. (I say “done” instead of “doing” because I hope I’m on the last draft–pure editing mode now).
Re: LOL! The nasty plot synopsis…
I’m trying to work out some of these writing problems by doing fanfic exercises at the moment – basically forcing myself to write for characters in buffyverse which I find difficult to think in.
I think one of the benefits of doing fanfic “exercises” is that it allows you to write a character who is already well-developed by another writer. It gives you a feel for what a well-developed character is, a feel above and beyond what you get when you just watch the show.
Playing with someone else’s characters to do this, helps a little with the writer’s block – in that I don’t have to come up with a character sketch. I’ve already analyzed them all too death so I feel them or at least know them in my gut and that’s where you really have to feel a character, whether originated by you or someone else, in order to write it.
When I was a teenager trying to write, I would do extensive character outlines and plot outlines and outline everything before hand and nothing was so conducive to writer’s block than that. When I started my present novel, which was, oh…. eleven years ago, I didn’t say, “I’m now writing a novel”. It was pure entertainment, something to do for fun while working on my dissertation. I spent a lot of time working at home in those days, and watching soap operas on TV, and I’d think, “I could do better than those writers do”. And one point of the “writing game” I was playing was not to plan anything ahead of time. Just get a vague idea of who the characters were (grad student, native american, female. professor, married, white) and let them write their own personalities.
Of course, eventually, you have to step aside and fill in back story for them and think about how they got the way they did, and what their childhood was like and what their favorite color is and whatever, but its much easier–and more fun–to do it long after your characters have written themselves.
Re: LOL! The nasty plot synopsis…
Writing is not an easy occupation, is it?
Which is why, despite the fact I’ve wanted to be a fiction writer since I was 11, I have been instead a psychologist, a philosopher, a teacher, a comptuer programmer, a database administrator, and written my novel in my spare time.
Character outlines
Have to say I agree with you regarding character outlines and plot outlines – they may work for some writers, they don’t work for me. I’m an odd writer – I tend to write what appears in my head and it’s unfortunately out of order. For instance I’ll get a scene that comes much much later before I’ve fully worked out what comes before it. My imagination moves faster ahead than my fingers or well the grammar/writing functions of the brain. Doing the current fanfic exercise is making me aware of it. I keep skipping a head of the game and not fully developing what lies in between. I’m told outlines prevent you from doing that and keep you organized enough that you can back-track. Elizabeth Lyon in The Sell Your Novel Tool Book – recommends you write the plot synopsis before writing the novel or even outlining it first. And believe me I’ve tried, but …I was horrible at outlining law school courses. 😉
The character sketch thing I was forced to do in theater courses from the sixth grade through high school. I hated doing it. It’s basically the Uta Hagen/Stanislasky method of building a character from the outside in. (Not to be confused with “method acting” which is building character from inside out – I got training in both sort of, very tough to grasp in high school though.) At any rate what you do is you take a character from a play and in plays – all you know about them is the dialogue, so you do have to add stuff from your own imagination – build on to it. Take what they’d wear, design the costume, then the hairstyle, then the makeup, then body type, mannerisms (bite fingernails?), then interests, hobbies…etc. Hard as hell. Worked fine as an acting exercise. But resulted in writer’s block every time I attempted it. I’d get bogged down in details like do they wear red or black? And lose track of the story completely. OTOH – looking back over the novel and seeing some of the errors in evil fanfic – I’m thinking spending a bit of time figuring out what the character would wear or whether they bite their nails, might help.
It’s interesting reading established/professional published writers takes on this. I think Elmore Lenoard outlines every book, while Stephen King just writes. I own a book by Reynolds Price called “Learning A Trade” which is basically about the writing profession and his journals as he wrote each of his books (he’s similar to Wallace Stegner, Shelby Foote, and Walker Percy – southern, male, literary) – and he seems to do a bit of both. So I guess it depends on whatever works best for you.
Seems we both had the dream of being writers since we were 11, yet have been forced to hunt other occupations to pay the rent. I find myself envying those who have found a way to make writing their profession.
Re: Character outlines
Elizabeth Lyon in The Sell Your Novel Tool Book – recommends you write the plot synopsis before writing the novel or even outlining it first. And believe me I’ve tried, but …I was horrible at outlining law school courses. 😉
One has to ask themselves why she would do this in a book that sounds like it should be about the end of the writing process, not the beginning. I imagine, if she’s in the publishing industry, that she or her collegues have to slog through a bazillion manuscripts that have no coherent plot or just ramble away for 300 pages or that are otherwise disorganized, and she’d like to help her readers avoid that.
But there are many ways of avoiding that. For me, the first draft has to be written off the top of my head, or I get bored of it. I have to not know what’s going to happen next. Then in draft 2 or whatever, I can take all the verbiage I’ve written and “give it a plot”–a beginning, middle, and end, which usually entails more writing (esp the “giving it an end” part). And then in draft 3, I might make the first detailed outline (I actually didn’t do an outline until draft 4, but that’s a long story). And now in draft 5, I’m actually bouncing back and forth between chapters trying to get rid of any obvious inconsistencies.
Re: Character outlines
Seems we both had the dream of being writers since we were 11, yet have been forced to hunt other occupations to pay the rent. I find myself envying those who have found a way to make writing their profession.
I actually pursued other fields that interested me. Being a novelist is my dream occupation, but I really did enjoy psychology (although being an experimental psychologist turned out to be less exciting) and loved philosophy (although not bein a teacher). I never set out to become a computer programmer but I ended up with a double major in college (psych+computer science) for the fun of it.
Wanting to be a writer was always there in the background, but at some point I made a conscious decision not to write for a living. I just could not stand the idea of prostituting out my writing ability to whoever would pay for it, just so I could say I was a writer. I’d still be a struggling novelist, earning my money at something other than my novels, only I’d be writing all day and taking the energy away from my novel, rather than, say, computer programming all day and using other parts of my brain. Maybe some day, after publishing one or two successful novels, I’ll consider ending the day job thing.
Re: Character outlines
It’s interesting reading established/professional published writers takes on this. I think Elmore Lenoard outlines every book, while Stephen King just writes. I own a book by Reynolds Price called “Learning A Trade” which is basically about the writing profession and his journals as he wrote each of his books (he’s similar to Wallace Stegner, Shelby Foote, and Walker Percy – southern, male, literary) – and he seems to do a bit of both. So I guess it depends on whatever works best for you.
Do you ever read the journal of ? She’s had some random scattered entries about “writing manuals”, or books that writers put out giving you the “rules” of writing. It’s funny, but I’ve seen in some of the “how to” books I’ve read “Here are the rules you should follow, and yes, we know, author X broke this rule, but he knew exactly what he was doing when he did it”.
The truth is, you have to do it the way that works best for you, what gives you the best results. A lot of the “how to” books are aimed at the beginners and amateurs who make editors cringe because they committ the same fixable errors over and over and over and I don’t blame said editors for writing “how to” books in response (e.g., “The First Five Pages”, “Self Editing for Fiction Writers”, etc).
I have an attitude now when I read “how to” books or come across advice or get feedback from a reader or whatever of “take what I can use and leave the rest”. I may still be a hopeful amateur, but I know what works for me. And I know that, over the years, I’ve also learned to do the things the “how to” books suggest on my own, through trial and error.
Re: Character outlines
I just could not stand the idea of prostituting out my writing ability to whoever would pay for it, just so I could say I was a writer.
I think that’s a really good way of phrasing it. I tried it myself in undergrad and shortly afterwards, also tried it again this past year – but it just doesn’t work for me. Journalism I’ve always had difficulty with – not overly comfortable with exploiting others lives for my own gain. (Oh I know it doesn’t have to be that way…but quoting people in interviews or investigating them made me nervous and uncomfortable in undergrad.) Tried the copywriting gig as well, but it didn’t work out and slogans aren’t my thing.
For me, I write best when I have a day job that is focused on something completely different. When I was working at the evil company, I wrote volumes in my spare time. That said the day job does have to involve my brain and use my skills in some way – the tough bit is I haven’t really fallen into a field I loved yet. Still searching.
Re: Character outlines
Do you ever read the journal of oursin?
No, I hadn’t heard of her. I should check her’s out if it has stuff on writing. I agree have had the same experiences with the how to books, to the extent that I finally stopped reading them. Actually if you’ve ever taken a writing class in your life, you’ve gotten quite a bit of this stuff already. And it is amazing how many people out there do make the mistakes that the how to books are harping on. I have to admit, part of me is terrified that I’m making these mistakes as well but can’t see them. (Yep, going through that annoyingly insecure writing thing at the moment, which is not helping the writers block. You know the point where you begin to wonder if everything you’ve written is crap and maybe you should keep your stuff to yourself? (actually you may never have had this feeling – I hope not, it’s highly annoying and hard as hell to work yourself out of, which is what I’m attempting to do now.) )
Re: Character outlines
For me, I write best when I have a day job that is focused on something completely different. When I was working at the evil company, I wrote volumes in my spare time. That said the day job does have to involve my brain and use my skills in some way
That’s me, exactly. Granted, this particular day job isn’t a “big love”, just a profession I fell back on, but it saves my imagination and writing energy for the novel, develops my problem-solving skills, and the benefits are really good.
Re: Character outlines
Yep, going through that annoyingly insecure writing thing at the moment, which is not helping the writers block. You know the point where you begin to wonder if everything you’ve written is crap and maybe you should keep your stuff to yourself? (actually you may never have had this feeling – I hope not, it’s highly annoying and hard as hell to work yourself out of, which is what I’m attempting to do now.)
Despite my apparent air of confidence, and I do have enough confidence to keep writing, I go through that “I suck” stage every three months on average, most recently this past January. The moments when I don’t feel this way are a real blessing.
eh hi. From scrollgirl’s answer I deduced she liked stargate and so I went and wrote her a long stargate letter in a random post of hers. I did this so as to not spam your answers to this post. But then I started talking about morality in Buffy and so I kind of regretted that. I’d actually like to talk about that sometime. I could link to it from here or I could just start another, more Buffy-centered one with you. (we could even put in that Buffy discussion community–I’m not sure you were in on that, rahael made it up.)
I like being spammed!
and I have a contest to see who can get the most replies in a post. So far she’s winning with 71. My longest is 60.
I don’t know much about Stargate, but morality in BtVS is a cool topic.
Re: I like being spammed!
🙂 and to show your love of spam you sent that twice!
I will prepare a coherent Buffy discussion–do you know Carol Gilligan at all?
Carol Gilligan
I used to have a Carol Gilligan section in my Philosophy classes in the section on moral theory, to examine the assumptions behind both philosophical moral theories (e.g., Kant) and contemporary psychological theories of human morality.
That was a long way of saying, “Yeah”.
Re: Carol Gilligan
Well, I ran across her in a study of moral development but in fact she can be a contrast to other ethical theories. It’s not really great but I liked the idea of moral decisions being entirely contextual. You don’t have a moral theory so much as try to figure out what is right in each particular situation. There’s something appealing about that, as moral theories can end up being bludgeoning instruments.
It changes through the seasons, though. I have this tendency (I may have warned you about it before) of only analyzing seasons 1-5 as I have a kind of loathing for 6 &7. Not that everything in them was awful, but in a way it might have been easier if it was awful–then I wouldn’t care. But I think ther are definite thematic changes that occur. So, I will probably be only talking about 1-5. But if you want to bring in interesting stuff from 6&7, go right ahead. Just I might get rather derrogatory about them. 🙂
I used to read slayage.com and one article really impressed me. I don’t think it’s wholly right anymore, so bear with me. It was mostly about “gingerbread”. (hmm maybe I’ll go read ATPoBtVS first so I can see where we’re starting.)
Ok I read it. Intersting point about Michael getting the shit first at school–as a boy and a witch he’s even more of a freak to them. Though Willow, Amy, and Michael got equal mistreatment from their families.
The intersting thing was the orientation everyone had towards evil. Buffy had pretty much been a roving vigilante. She protected people and killed vampires. She patrolled. But she didn’t really Get Anything Done, as her mother pointed out. She never got rid of the problem. Whereas her mother tried to create an organization that would get rid of evil–and it became a totalitarian nightmare. Or a metaphor for one. When the police come to open the lockers, Xander says, “It’s Nazi Germany and I have Playboys in my locker!” (the article pointed out the irrelevant but still chilling fact that Willow is Jewish.) MOO was a group designed to eradicate evil. They had definitive terms and there were no exceptions. That’s how rigid, logical morality works. There are laws, they are applied, and then we are Good.
I’ve heard it suggested that Buffy & Co. are only kept from being facists by their lack of power. Since they have very little power and can only do a little to help, they seem like good people. But if they had a lot of power, they would be like MOO, eradicating evil.
I’m not sure if that’s true or not. There are moments where Buffy seems conflicted, and she allows for different decisions. When a vampire or demon is not a threat, she lets it go, even though she speaks as if all vampires deserve death with no question. I don’t know, there are examples one way and examples the other. It’s hard to say–I don’t think the writers had any of this in mind, either, which can lead to conflicts.
But to me, whenever I try to sort out moral laws in Buffy, I end up thinking, “Buffy isn’t a big picture kind of girl. She’s fighting what’s in front of her. She isn’t an ethicist. She’s more inclined to say, ‘screw ethics, I’m going to do what’s right.'”
So frequently ethics traps you into things that are not right.
too long going to part 2
Here was part of the interesting thing from stargate. One of the characters died, and ascended to become .. something. Not sure what. But he had powers. Maybe he was like Cordy (but without that “we don’t know when she’s evil” thing). He is Daniel. The other main character is Jack. Daniel was a conflicted ethicist in their program. Jack was more of a solider, trying to get things done. Their interactions were nifty. Anyways, Jack is trapped and being tortured, and Daniel comes to him. He wants to offer comfort. jack says, get me out of here. Daniel says he cannot, he doesn’t have the right to interfere. He has powers, but he doesn’t have the right to act like a god. He is not qualified. It hurts him to see Jack suffer but he can’t intervene. They have a fight, and it culminates in Jack saying that if he were in Daniels’ place, he would have broken him out and killed the torturer and not stopped there–implying he would destroy the people with whom they were at war (there’s this ongoing war and one of them had captured him). Daniel says “No, you’re a better man than that!”
There’s a lot in there that’s interesting. (there’s more aspects to it but they wouldn’t make sense without a lot of backstory.) What I find interesting is that Daniel becomes a good person, in his eyes and in mine, by abdicating morality. He says that he is not qualified to make moral decisions. Not enough to decide who lives or dies. Not enough to judge and punish. Not enough to decide for everyone.
Try to work that into a moral theory based on logic. Try getting to that in a moral theory based on laws. He’s saying that his choice is right because we can’t know what is right. We can’t figure it out. Not that far.
I brought up Buffy because I had the similar idea that while the group of them do heroic things and almost always make waht I think are the right decisions, I would not trust them with more power. Every once in a while they meet another race who is more technologically advanced, and they ask for weapons to defend themselves. The advanced race says, no, you’ll just blow yourselves up. And the humans are quite insulted. But I tend to agree. I woudln’t trust that particular group of people with immense power.
Which leads me to question–are they doing the right thing in the first place? How can they be heroic and good as long as they don’t have power, yet not if they do? How can their policies be good if they’re in a small scale, but not in a large?
Hmm.
I once had a philosophy professor (heh perhaps I should add that this was at an engineering school) who said that things can’t simply be scaled up and down. Design a building and build it to be strong enough–you can’t simply scale up the design to build one ten times as big. You can’t just make the beams ten times as large and expect it to work. This is because the materials of the beams haven’t changed–steel is still steel–and so they might not have the same integrity if you just blow up all the dimensions. Similarly, you can’t just scale down. Try to apply normal laws of physics to the molecular level and it doesn’t always work. His point was that this is true in all things. You can’t just find something that works and scale it to suit everything.
So the behavior of the guys is good, for the power they have, for the things they attempt. If they had greater power they would have to make wholly different decisions. Whole different types of decisions. And maybe they would be capable of changing their mindsets and maybe they wouldn’t.
gaaa still too long
part (groan) 3
Not sure how well this applies to Buffy–I was mostly remembering how someone had said that the only thing keeping the gang from being facists was their lack of power. What if they had greater power? Godlike power? Even in season 7 when they went after the source of all evil, it was still a concrete battle using limited sources. Well, except for that amulet thing–not sure what that did.
anyway
I had always loved Buffy for refusing to even think of killing dawn in season 5. Maybe it wasn’t rational, maybe it was even deeply immoral. But I’d always loved her for it. And I mourned her when she outright stated that now she would do it, in season 7. I mean, I’d known it already, but it was surprising to hear her say it.
that was a bit jumbled. But we’ll start there. Now I have to go back and split it up because I’m sure that was too long. (heh I had no idea)
Re: Carol Gilligan
It changes through the seasons, though. I have this tendency (I may have warned you about it before) of only analyzing seasons 1-5 as I have a kind of loathing for 6 &7.
Not a season 6 and 7 lover, myself. Actually prefer the first three seasons best, followed by 5 and 4.
That’s how rigid, logical morality works. There are laws, they are applied, and then we are Good.
It’s more apt to say there are general principles. There was a big movement in philosophy in the 17th-18th century to come up with the underpinning principles of morality. Hence you get guys like Kant and Mill and their easily statetable principles. At the time, this was revolutionary, because it couched morality in non-religious terms. And morality was the same thing for all people–there weren’t different moral standards for kings or peasants.
This is the same sort of thinking that gave birth to modern science–look for general principles that will be true for all situations. Of course, real life is much muckier. Trying to apply Kant or Mill in the real world involves other considerations. One of the things that spurned Gilligan to do her research on moral development was that psychological theory at the time put the kind of thinkin inherent in Kant and Mill at the pinnacle of moral development–you were the most psychologically developed in your moral thinking if you adhered to objective, universal principles of morality.
And of course that conflicted with the thinking of a lot of people, especially women, who had a tendency to not apply their moral standards equally to all people–they put family and friends and those they were emotionally attached to first, before anyone else. They weren’t objective in that sense, and when you think about it, there is a pretty justified reason why this is so.
Buffy has always struck me as this sort of person. She puts her sister before the rest of the universe. She refuses to ever let an innocent die to save a hundred others. Episodes like Choices and the Gift show her unwavering adherence to the “friends, family, and the innocent must be saved AT ALL COSTS–no compromises”. Her opposite is Wesley, who would sacrifice one individual to save one hundred, no matter how blameless and innocent or close he was to that one individual.
*Taking a brief break now* phew!
Re: Carol Gilligan
(psst. You have some comment issues. I got the above comment twice, but once with html in it and no line breaks.)
Buffy has always struck me as this sort of person. She puts her sister before the rest of the universe. She refuses to ever let an innocent die to save a hundred others. Episodes like Choices and the Gift show her unwavering adherence to the “friends, family, and the innocent must be saved AT ALL COSTS–no compromises”.
I just realized that I never specifically talked to you about the Churchill dilemma. *gleee*
Hmm I’m going to go look at my previous post about it and see if I still think it’s right.
Ok, it’s not horrific. here it is
Buffy, interestingly, always struck me as the sort who doesn’t compromise because she refuses to believe that you can’t win another way. That’s what I saw in “Choices”. She just said, well we’ll give up this definite advantage and then we’ll find another way. She just thought that no matter what, she could keep fighting. And even if she might lose, she could always fight and that was what was important. It’s not quite that she flat out refuses to compromise.. she more refuses to think in a certain way, refuses to see the world in a certain way, and so she never quite gets to the point where she has to. She doesn’t ever believe that there is no solution. And when it came down to the wire with Dawn… it’s hard to say. Before the ritual started, she could always just keep fighting. She had a plan and that was it; try to take out Glory. When that failed, well it’s hard to say what she eventually would have done. Dawn wanted to sacrifice herself. I don’t know that she would have forcibly stopped Dawn from doing it. But she might have still killed anyone who tried to hurt Dawn.
“Her opposite is Wesley” is interesting, as well. I noticed that moment in the end of season 2 where they’re in Pylea (sp) and Wes has to command the army. Attention was called to that, by Gunn’s uncertainty. And Wes does sort of seem to think that way most of the time. Though right now I can’t think of when he’s demonstrated it.
All that went to hell for Connor, though. Which is another demonstration of how much he was cracking up in mid-season-3. And I’m not so sure he would have let Fred die. If it had been up to him. Not if he had such a short amount of time to make the decision. I’m not sure what he would have done. But then the Fred thing is a little confused to me–I don’t know if I have a grasp of what she means to Wes and what I think of it.
He’s saying that his choice is right because we can’t know what is right. We can’t figure it out.
Some of the most famous philosophers are famous for saying much the same thing.
But I tend to agree. I woudln’t trust that particular group of people with immense power.
What group? This actually sounds like a common Star Trek dilemma.
Which leads me to question–are they doing the right thing in the first place? How can they be heroic and good as long as they don’t have power, yet not if they do? How can their policies be good if they’re in a small scale, but not in a large?
I think you can be moral with more power and influence, it’s just you know the old saying: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Beyond that, there’s the problem of scale. Doing the right thing for one person is easier than doing the right thing for a large group of people. With one person, you can take their needs and desires into account, and do more for them. If you have the power to do things for whole groups of people, you have to take into consideration all their various needs and desires (possibly conflicting), and what you can do for each individual in the group becomes less than you can do for a single person if you were just trying to help them individually.