May 2009

Novelists write novels-- giant stories in pages and pages of text, that take months or years to complete. We're not scared of novels. We've done it before and we can do it again. What strikes fear into the heart of novelists is the dreaded synopsis. Boil our masterpiece down into two pages? Heck no! No way. Impossible. But it is possible, I have to say, and here are my favorite resources for synopsis writing. Hope they help you as much as they've helped me! Lisa Gardner's Tricks of the Trade series on The Dreaded Synopsis - I love this and it helped me write my first really decent synopsis, that I wasn't embarrassed to send out. She covers several lengths of synopsis, so this should pretty much cover what you need to write. Suzanne McMinn does a great workshop on blurbing, which is helpful not only for querying, but also for synop... sizing. It's particularly helpful in figuring out what the hooks of your story are, and making sure those hooks get into the blurb and synopsis. And, the thing that took me the longest to figure out: Hit the main points, but don't lose your voice! You have to show your voice in the synopsis, or it's going to be boring. It's not an outline, it's a summary written the same way you wrote the book. Condense, but don't kill. What are your favorite synopsis resources?

Alex Sokoloff did a really wonderful 3-act structure breakdown of You've Got Mail on her blog. I did my own of Return to Me the other night, so thought I'd post it here, in case you're interested. SPOILER ALERT-- I'm going to spoil the whole movie. Return to Me Screenplay by Bonnie Hunt and Don Lake Directed by Bonnie Hunt This is one of my favorite movies of all time, probably mostly because it's my kind of humor: dry, a little sarcastic, but gentle. Also, it makes me cry within the first 15 minutes, which, to me, is usually a sign of a good movie... you know, as long as I'm happy again by the end. Structurally, this movie runs a little differently than a lot of romances. The hero and heroine don't meet right away, and, in fact, the hero is happily married at the beginning of the movie. The real romance doesn't start until the beginning of Act II, but we'll get to that. Act I: Sequence 1 The movie opens with a few scenes setting up Bob's happy marriage. (Bob is played by David Duchovny, and he is fantastic.) We see Bob's wife's dream, which is to build a new home for Sydney the gorilla at the zoo, and we see his wife's dream morphing into his dream, too. Bob promises to build Sydney's new home, funding or not, if his wife will promise to go to Italy with him. We are also introduced to Grace (Minnie Driver) and Megan (Bonnie Hunt, fabulous as the best friend). Grace is dying, but we see that she's still got a sense of humor. In one of my favorite lines in the movie (though there are many), Megan is trying to encourage Grace and telling her that once she gets her new heart, she'll be able to do all kinds of new things, like date. Grace wheezes, "I'm getting a new heart, not a new ass." For the climax of Sequence 1, at right around 15 minutes in, "Return to Me" plays as Bob and his wife dance, and then it fades into a haunting solo and we see a scene of a terrible crash. Bob is ok, but his wife is wheeled into the emergency room on a gurney. There's a storm going on, which is I think is an important symbolic element in the next act. Just keep it in mind. Act I: Sequence 2 We find out that Bob's wife has died. The scene that makes me cry: Bob goes home, still in the bloody tux he'd been wearing. His dog, Mel, comes to the door and just stands there like he always has, waiting for Bob's wife to come home. Bob sinks to the floor and says, "She's not coming home, Mel." Might as well rip my heart out. I'm getting misty just thinking about it. Hope dawns, though. In the climax of Act I, Bob wakes up just as Grace's new heart (compliments of Bob's poor dead wife) beats for the first time (again). He of course, doesn't know, but we sense that he feels something different, now that her heart beats again. This is at 23 minutes in to the movie. Notice that at the climax of Act I, Bob and Grace (the obvious couple) have still not met. Bob is completely wasted from the death of his wife, and Grace has barely lived at all because she's been so sick most of her life. Act II: Sequence 3 We know it's definitely Act II now, because the screen tells us: "one year later." So, essentially, Act I is this huge prologue, and now the real love story can start. We meet Grace's family, and we really see Grace for the first time. We understand her problem, too, because she says it: "I'm alive because someone else is dead." She feels the tremendous guilt just for being alive! We see Bob's problem, too. It's a year later, and he's no better off. In fact, he's worse. He is now "Bob the slob." His house is a mess, his dog will only eat by the door because he's still waiting for Bob's dead wife to come home, and he's kind of a grouch. At the climax of Sequence 3, Bob realizes he has to snap out of it, and he calls up his friend Charlie and tells him he'll go out on a double date with him. They end up going out for their date at the restaurant Grace's family owns, and where she is a waitress... and, of course, she's the waitress for Bob's table. It's a really charming scene, there's instant chemistry ("Do we know each other?"), and they're both really funny. I'm not really sure where the Sequence 3 climax ends and Sequence 4 begins, but it doesn't really matter anyway. Act II: Sequence 4 Here's the meet-cute... orchestrated by Bob. He left his cell phone by accident at the restaurant in his haste to get away from his awful date, but now he's giddy at the prospect of getting to see Grace again when he goes to get the phone. When he finally gets to the restaurant, he meets Grace's family, a posse of old people who are really charming, and some of the best comic relief in the movie. Eventually, he finds Grace, when she comes down to cover her plants because a storm is coming. See? It's fate! A storm took Bob's wife away, but now a storm is giving him new love. The midpoint climax, I think, is when Bob asks Grace out and she says yes. This is at 59 minutes in. Usually, by this point in the movie, the hero and heroine are gettin' naked. I think that's one of the reasons I like this movie. It's a gentler, slower pace, and we really get to see first love. They don't skip over the first meeting, first date sweet butterflies. Act II: Sequence 5 Bob and Grace are dating now. We get some interesting relational stuff, and we see the first big lie: Grace opts not to tell Bob about her heart. She's recently come off a bad blind date (set up by Megan's well-meaning but inept husband) where as soon as the guy found out she's had a heart transplant, he won't even let her lift a bowl of potatoes. In the Sequence 5 climax, Bob leans in to give Grace a goodnight kiss, and she thwacks him because she's afraid he'll see her heart surgery scar. It's awkward and hilarious. Act II: Sequence 6 Bob's world meets Grace's world. They are really together now, and life is good... Except for Grace's big huge secret. And it's an even bigger deal to us, because we know that Grace's heart came from Bob's wife. In the Act II climax, Grace finally gets up the nerve to tell Bob, but just as she's about to tell him, she discovers a newspaper clipping with the date of his wife's death, and the anonymous thank-you card she sent to the organ donor's family. Her nightmare has come true. Someone did have to die so she could live, and it was someone Bob loved. Act III: Sequence 7 I love how Bonnie Hunt manages to sum everything up in the scene following the big revelation. Grace has rushed away without telling Bob what she's discovered, and she's gone to Megan's house. Megan is trying to comfort her, and explain the situation to her big dumb husband at the same time, and in frustration ends up blurting, "Grace has Bob's dead wife's heart!" It's the whole problem of the movie summed up in one funny line. Love it. Grace tells Bob the next day, but he surprises her with a new bike before she can say anything. (The bike is important because it's a symbol of all the things Grace can do now that she couldn't do before she got a new heart... Bob doesn't know that, but Grace does.) Bob doesn't take the news too well, and Grace decides to move up the date of her planned Italy trip to make it easier for Bob to figure things out. I think the sequence 7 climax is Grace and Bob, trying in their own ways to figure out what to do, Grace in Rome and Bob still back in Chicago. Act III: Sequence 8 Bob makes his decision: "I miss Elizabeth, but I ache for Grace." Great line. Then Grace's grandpa delivers another doozy. He tells Bob that a special heart is at home in Grace, and, "Perhaps it was meant to be with you always." God! Make me cry again, why don't you! Grace has taken her bike to Rome with her, and she lets some nuns take a ride on it. The bike comes back with Bob on the seat and a nun on the handlebars. :) The bike is again the symbol of everything Grace has gained along with her new heart. He's come all the way to Italy (and we remember back to when he made his wife promise to go to Italy with him if he finished the gorilla house for Sydney). The closing scenes are great. Bob unveils the new gorilla house. About his wife, he says, "Her uncompromising passion brings us together today," and the audience gets a big kick out of the multiple meanings. It's a lovely, clean, sweet story with a lot of great structural elements! Well-written script that's so lively, and a great cast of secondary characters, which I barely mentioned here because this post is way long anyway. If you haven't seen it, do! If you've seen the movie, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Agree with me? Love it, hate it? Let me know in the comments!