Interviewing Your Protagonist – (and other synopsis wrangling adventures!)

The synopsis = every writer’s nemesis! Fitting your story on one, single spaced, twelve point, Times New London font, page of text. WITHOUT fudging the margins. Whilst communicating all the plot points, story arc, character development and if well executed retaining some of the book’s voice. It is awful, time consuming and often very frustrating to create.

Drawing by my daughter CIRCA 2013!

 

A few months ago I came to the point of the dreaded synopsis writing. Usually I do a reverse snowflake – I write it all out and then cut it down. I start by halving each paragraph and then each sentence until it fits on to the page. But this time it wasn’t working so I tried a new technique.

 

Upon advice from one of my agents Callen, I interviewed my protagonist. I initially found it a hard concept to wrap my brain around, So I started by creating an image of me and my character together in a chat show style setting and  then went about conducting the interview. I was sceptical as my main character isn’t a lover of talking about herself or doing public speaking. I know this as she’s interviewed in the manuscript, and she tends to lock up and say very little.

However I was in for a surprise, for I hadn’t taken everything into account. Usually my main character is interviewed with her friends as a group, including her bestie who is very confident and verbose. However on a 1-2-1 situation, she really opened up when recounting her version of the adventures that take place in the book. FOUR AND A HALF A4 PAGES worth of opening up! I was left with a way too long synopsis, but I also learnt a lot more about the character in the process which was great.

 

But this then left me with 3 synopsises - A blurb type single paragraph synopsis. A one-page synopsis of an older draft and this epic four-page interview synopsis. I knew that between the three I could sow a ‘Frankenstein style’ synopsis together by adopting the Roald Dahl literal Cut and Paste editing method – and resorting to scissors and glue. Then I used my tried and tested of halving each paragraph until it was right. 

Taking the plunge and tackling the synopsis from an interview stance has taught me that when you are stuck and blocked, then a change an approach can work wonders.