Three... Two... One... Novel Away!

I sent the files for Blood in the Orchard to the agent on Friday of last week.

Whooo! I'm happy it's out, and it's in good hands. Of course, I'm nervous, but I've developed a knack for forgetting about work that's out in circulation. I don't think I'll be obsessing about the fate of my MS for the whole 2-3 months the agent will take to get back to me.

He asked for the first four chapters, an excerpt starring the monster/creature of the book, and a full synopsis. I'd never done a synopsis for a novel before and had no idea how difficult it could be! I finally just went through the book, chapter by chapter, and hit all the high points in the synopsis (following the agent's advice from the panel I posted about last week).

The synopsis is definitely a tool I'll use directly after finishing the first draft of the next novel. Right away I could see huge pieces of the story I could carve out and still leave most everything relatively intact. One of the only sticking points the agent had about my book is how long it was. The finished first draft was 124k, and in editing I'd dropped it down to 119k... but he said that as a first time novelist I really need to be shooting for 100k or less. The reason, he said, is strictly economic... once the book surpasses 100k words, the printing prices jump. Which makes for a more expensive book at the end of the whole process... and in the end, a less attractive book for your potential reader. If no one knows your name, they're much less likely to spend $25-$29 for your 115k-word novel than they would $17-$21 for your 90k-word novel. So I need to find some fat to trim... and once I really buckled down on the synopsis, I found a few places I could cut. Mainly, any time I had a hard time figuring out how to explain a particular scene, I asked myself how important it was to the story, or if it was just writing for the sake of expressing my voice. Often it was the latter of the two.

So now I'm in the final edits of the MS, changing up a few things so I can have a polished copy if the agent wants to read the rest of it. And my baby is in someone else's hands... all I can do is send it out there with the best of my heart, and hope it won't come back too banged up.

Pitch vs. Synopsis

I took a screenwriting class a couple of summers ago, and on the first day the teacher explained the concept of an "elevator pitch" - that is, if you were a screenwriter suddenly stuck in an elevator with a movie executive, would you be able to summarize your idea in the length of time it takes to go ten floors?

I was enchanted with the concept - what a great idea! I thought, never realizing how frickin hard it could be to condense a complicated story into less than three minutes of conversation. I'm hoping my trouble with summming the story up in just a few words is because my head is inside the novel and I'm unable to hold it far enough away from my perception to really give it a concise definition.

Does that even make sense?

I'm worried the reason I'm having trouble is because the novel's too complicated - and then I wonder, is it possible for a novel to be too complicated, if it's written well?

In any regard, I've made headway on the synopsis, at least. It's what I first thought of as "the pitch" for the book, but it's really too long for that. I sent it to my writers' group and they are going to help me make it really tight. Gail has already said it needs some scrubbing, so I'm hesitant to post it here... Oh, don't look at me like that.


Okay, okay, how about we compromise with the first paragraph of what I've come up with? I'm pretty happy with that, at least.

Blood in the Orchard is a horror novel set in the fictional Southern town of Brookston, South Carolina. It is the story of a family torn apart by the death of the talented artist Kate Spivey, a beloved daughter, sister, and wife – and how the two men who loved her most struggle with the grim supernatural consequences of her passing.

What do y'all think?