Monthly Archives: May 2009

Waking Up in Vegas

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City of Las Vegas
Image via Wikipedia

I’m back from my whirlwind Vegas weekend for Skye‘s bachelorette party. Here are some things I learned while in Vegas:

  • How to take my shirt off without messing up my hair or makeup.
  • Slots are only fun if you’re willing to lose all your money. Or if it’s someone else’s money.
  • Time has no meaning in Las Vegas, unless you’re trying to make it to a show. Then you’d better be on time because there’s none of that 7-minute delay stuff.
  • Frankie Valli sang a lot of songs that I know.
  • Old married ladies can still get hit on at clubs.
  • Bachelorette parties frequently do not have to wait in line at clubs, especially if their ringleader is willing to point out their bachelorettiness.
  • Shots in Las Vegas are twice the size of standard shots. I swear.
  • Good friends are all you need to have fun, no matter the location!
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Weekly Fatass, Edition 3

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Tuesday, May 19

Distance: Maybe a mile and a half?
Pace: A fast walk most of the way.

It was nice to have a little break since my shins were hurting from all my weekend running anyway. And we’ll get back on the horse on Thursday.

Thursday, May 21

Distance: 3.5 miles
Time: About 60 minutes
Avg. speed: 4ish miles per hour
Avg. pace: 17 min/mile

Jamie and I rocked. We’re still walking a little, but not nearly as much as we were. We are going to pwn that 5k. And, despite my massive toe cramp and the fact that Jamie swallowed a bug, we pushed on.

Synopsis Resource List

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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.

Image of Suzanne McMinn

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?