Just another awesome lesson from you Glen!

(LOS ANGELES, CA)

Question: I can't believe I have found you! You are a gold mine and see people from all over the world thinking about all you know!

I just spent another 4 hours reading all about your things that I'm stuffing in my head while deleting things I had no business even thinking of!

But now I have two questions, the synopsis and the 4--if you are lucky to get--throughline stories that run along side of your novel.

Is the synopsis just a paragraph of what the whole book is about, even with the end? As with the throughline, I just had 4 sheets of paper, and I put all the different angles that will be happening at the same time as my main storyline is being front runner. Like the tension, is my protagonist who is being warned by half her people around her that the perfect guy she's been slowly being led away from all into isolation, as key people who have proved to be a threat concerning her perfect guy, all of a sudden die mysteriously, while,"the others," the perfect guys enemies are going after my protagonist, all at the same time!
Is this what I think it is that you are saying? If not then please let me know, for I have just added a new bunch of interesting characters due to your advice! Thus, making this story so exciting--in my mind--that I can't wait to kill off one and then replacing him with another!
With your help, I'm having so much fun, because I can't wait to murder, gossip, isolate and do harm via writing!

These things are all sins, but while writing them, I can do whatever I want! Meaning...I'm having a blast!

Answer: You would be hard pressed to write a good synopsis in a paragraph. My guess is that the most you could do in one paragraph is give a brief plot summary. Most synopses run for several pages because they include the major signposts of the story and the elements that demonstrate to an editor or agent that you have a sound and compelling story.

As for the throughlines...

Your Overall throughline is centred around the Story Goal, which is the problem most characters are affected by or involved in. In the story you're writing, this would seem to be the struggle going on between two groups. The outcome of that struggle will either be the Goal or the Consequence (depending whose side the reader should be on).

If your main character is the protagonist, she will be the one leading the effort to achieve the Story Goal. Or (as I suspect) it could be that the protagonist is the guy she is involved with.

As main character, she will have a decision to make at the climax of the story: whether to stay the same person she has been all along, or to change and make a different choice. That choice will determine whether the Goal is achieved or not.

The Main Character throughline illustrates the progress of her inner conflict - what she's like in the beginning, how she's pressured to change, whether she changes, and how that choice affects her life in the end.

The Impact Character throughline will provide her with an example of a way to be or to do things other than her usual way, so that she has another option at the climax. She will see the impact character doing things differently or arguing for a different approach.

The final throughline is the story of her relationship with the impact character, how it starts out, evolves, has its own crisis and resolution.

Popular Articles

---