My Journey To The Wattys 2020

Day 225

The last five days have been busy in many ways except writing. Valentine's Day and subsequent days involved a lot of family time so I mostly left this project alone. Before I get too far ahead of myself, let me take a step back before I tell you what I've been working on.

As I've mentioned, I want this journey to be a peek into what I'm doing when I prepare and write this story, as well as how and why I'm doing things a certain why. I'm hoping that for those of you that follow along, you'll get an idea about what works for me and how it may work for you. My hope is that one we reach September 30th, you'll either have seen how not to approach writing a novel, or you'll have witnessed the process of writing a novel from beginning to end. Regardless, I hope you'll learn something from it.

So, as we go forward, I'll try to emphasize not only what I'm doing but why and how.

I've mentioned that I'm a bit partial to the Snowflake method. It's been around in my writing brain for years. Although I don't strictly follow all its tenets, the overall concept works well for me. 

The next step in the journey is summarizing the whole story into one sentence. That's step one of the Snowflake method. However, I've deviated right away here, simply because I need to have a little better handle on what the story is going to be.

So, what I ended up doing was sit down with the premise of what I wrote eleven years ago and some ideas of where I want to go and I just punched out 1,200 words or so. I ended up with what I feel is a beginning, a middle and an end. It's a good start.

With that in my back pocket, I returned to step one: create a single sentence that encapsulates the whole story.

After about twenty minutes of playing around with words, I ended up with something like this:

A young man searches for the truth about the origins of his society in order to save his family.

Is it perfect? Far from it. But, in its own way, that one sentence is the whole story. As I move along in the process, I'll return to it and tweak it.

Next, I worked on the synopsis, part two of the Snowflake method. Part of this will be the building blocks for a longer synopsis, but it'll also be the foundation for the story blurb on Wattpad. Incidentally, this is also why I haven't yet posted the placeholder story. I want to have at least a synopsis ready to go before posting the placeholder story on my profile. It'll be so much more interesting to look at than just seeing a "synopsis coming soon" message.

Don't you agree?

Anyway, here's a summary of step 2 of the Snowflake method:

"Expand that sentence to a full paragraph describing the story setup, major disasters, and ending of the book.

1. The first sentence sets up the story by introducing the lead characters and the story world.

2. The second sentence summarizes the beginning and presents the first disaster to force a decision that frames the story question.

3. The third sentence summarizes the first part of the middle, leading up to the second disaster.

4. The fourth sentence summaries the second part of the middle, leading up to the third disaster, which forces a decision to pursue the final confrontation.

5. The fifth sentence explains how the story ends, including the final confrontation and any wrap-up that you feel you need to explain."

So, I set to work to create my synopsis with the above five steps. Now, a lot of this structure doesn't sit well with my brain so I deviated almost immediately. Basically, I condensed the beginning, the middle and the end into a few sentences. In the end, the result is similar. At least, it's a synopsis I feel good about at this very moment. Over the next few days, as I expand it, I'm sure I'll revisit it and tweak it. Here it is:

In a society where your life mate is chosen based on genetic compatibility, Wared yearns for Shea, chosen for his best friend. When his father survives a sacred ceremony and is elevated to a honored role within their society, Wared's family is unexpectedly put under the microscope and his friendship with Shea disintegrates. While Wared blames his father he discovers that their society and sacred rituals are built on a lie. He must uncover the truth to regain the trust of Shea and save her, his family and the rest of his society from certain death.
Obviously, for the sake of keeping some things under wraps, the exact resolution of the story isn't included in the above paragraph. I have to keep you guessing in one way or another, right? However, with the above completed, I'm satisfied that I have enough to finally post the placeholder story on my profile (which I did earlier today). Here's a peek at the cover.

This cover is, of course, subject to change, but for now, I'm pretty happy with it. Check out the link in the inline comment or go to my profile to add it to your reading lists, if you so desire.

Link over here >>>>>>

Now, you may wonder what this Genesis Prime stuff is. Well, that's a longer discussion but it relates to this story having the potential of being the first of several novels in a series. Whether we'll get to the origin story of Genesis Prime, that's still up in the air, but by the end of this novel, you will know what Genesis Primeis and the role it plays in this story.

What's Next?

For the next few days, I'll be taking a bit of a step back from the synopsis and taking a look at the characters. That's step 3 of the Snowflake method, figuring out the motivations, the goals etc. For me, this will be an interesting learning experience for me simply because I know I haven't spent enough time on this in the past. This is part of what I hope to get out of this process: not just write another story but grow as a writer as I do it.

Discussion

Although this is intended to document my journey to the Wattys, I'd love to hear your thoughts about the subjects I encounter. Today, that's the synopsis, the backbone of the story. 

I'm curious: how do you approach the synopsis? Do you write one? Do you wing it? Do you write it before or after the main story? Comment below or inline.