Question Week Answers, #2

TOP SECRET NEWS: I’ve just seen early versions of both of my 2009 covers and I’m in AWE! So gorgeous!

Anonymous asks: “who is your agent? I thought you were with deidre knight but she is an author now.”

She is an author (with a new book, RED FIRE, on the shelves now). She’s also my agent. In fact, she’s been an author the entire time she has been my agent, as she sold her first book a month or two before we began working together. She’s sold six books for me since April of 2005.

Patrick asks: “How’s the new house and how are you finding the joys of homeownership?”

To be perfectly honest, I haven’t gotten a chance to really do anything with it yet, as I’ve been super busy with the new puppy and deadlines. We have maybe three rooms in the entire house furnished/unpacked (keep in mind that we’ve moved from a tiny apartment, so we don’t have much int eh way of furniture) and all my little “oh, we certainly have to do X” projects (like hanging pot racks, painting, putting up curtains) are not done. I’m really going to start digging into the home ownership thing soon. It may not have been the smartest idea, getting a puppy the same week we moved into a house. Something had to give, and it wasn’t going to be Rio

Vicki asks: “Do you write your synopsis before you start each book? And if so, do you find the book changes a lot from the synopsis or do you stay pretty close to it?”

I always write a synopsis or outline before writing the book. It usually comes before the book is begun, but certainly not later than a few chapters in. I have a very hard time writing anything without a road map. I also find that it’s far easier for me to write a synopsis before I write the story and get bogged down in all the details of individual scenes. It’s much easier to say, “Plot development X occurs, which ties into character arc Y just so” than to sit there and think, “Okay, character A goes to lunch and had a burrito, but she doesn’t want the avocado so she scrapes that part out, all the while reflecting on character arc Y just as plot development X comes into the room to interrupt her.” The latter is probably what would happen to me if I tried to write the synopsis after writing the book. I’d get bogged down in avocado.

I always recommend people write the synopsis first. Most people disagree with me. Some claim that when they write the synopsis, it feels like they already wrote the book and then the “fire” goes out. Some say they don’t know what the story is about until they write it. My brain doesn’t work that way. If I don’t know what the story is about, I *can’t* write it. And believe me, I’ve tried. I honestly do not understand the brains that do work that way. I’ve tried to understand them, too, since two of my critique partners are in this camp. I think they are both barking mad (and I’m sure they feel the same about me), but they write good books, so there you go.

The other reason that I write my synopsis first is because that’s how I have sold every one of my books: I wrote a proposal, which usually contains a few sample chapters and a synopsis, I contracted the novel, and then I wrote the novel. many authors do this (though some–those people who claim they can’t write synopses first–have already secretly written the entire book, even if they are only marketing a proposal).

As for the synopsis differing from the final book — I guess it depends upon who you ask. My synopses tend to focus more on plot and character development, so if things change, I look at them as minor details. A character makes a revelation in a classroom rather than while scraping avocado from her burrito. Or maybe event X ends up happening before event Y. However, though I don’t view these as significant changes, other people may. People who work for my publishers, for example.

One of the reasons synopses are important is because most people who work for your publisher are not going to read your book. They may just read a synopsis. For instance, the copywriter who is in charge of crafting back cover copy may read your synopsis, draw certain inferences from it, and use it in the back cover copy even though it actually has nothing to do with the final form of the book. Or perhaps, if your synopsis does not make entirely clear that event Z is a major plot twist, they might mention it on the cover copy. This happened to me once. Luckily, I was able to offer suggestions before the book came out. Two of my biggest pet peeves are incorrect and spoilery back cover copy, so I’ll pretty much do anything to avoid that.

When I sold RAMPANT in 2007, I already had half the book written. Along with my contract came a revision suggestion so comprehensive in its nature (a POV change) that I decided to start the book over again from scratch. Almost every scene was completely different as I realized that a scene that seemed interesting or that had a point in one POV was not dynamic from another, as a piece of information that was clear in one POV needed a scene to reveal it in another — perhaps even in a different place in the book, and if that was the case, an earlier scene where that information is assumed knowledge had to go — and so forth in a ripple effect. But when I finished the book, I discovered that the first half of my synopsis, the half that described the book I’d written two completely different ways, didn’t need to be changed at all. It still described the same story! The second half needed a bit of adjustment in the third act, but it still ended up in the same place, with the same climax and resolution, and even the same last line! (I have a habit of quoting last lines in my synopses, which I read somewhere you aren’t supposed to do, to which I say to the Supposeda Police: “Bite me.”)

Usually when changes occur between my synopsis and my finished manuscript, they’re in the third act of the book. This is because as I’m writing the book, I realize that the premise I’ve concocted does not fold into the conclusion I’ve planned as neatly as I make it sound in the synopsis. Synopses are EASY. You can make anything sound good for five pages. “And then there was an epic battle, a moving love scene, an insurmountable conflict.” Actually making that stuff appear on the page is the tricky part.