The Synopsis Treasury Read online

  I thought perhaps they’d say they were too busy, and couldn’t help me on such short notice. But instead they were very understanding, agreeable, and quick to respond. Professional writers are used to deadlines.

  I also decided I would really like to have an editor’s point of view. I wanted an editor with experience at reading synopses and outlines for a publisher to write the introduction to The Synopsis Treasury. But there was so little time! Could I find one? Who?

  On a whim, I reached out to one of the most well-known and respected candidates in the genre: Betsy Mitchell, former vice president and editor-in-chief of Del Rey, whom I had met all those years ago on Maui, before the book even began. Terry Brooks himself had introduced me to her, as she was his fiction editor.

  I thought it was a shot in the dark, but Betsy responded with a “yes,” and wrote a great introduction for the book on a very tight deadline.

  By some miracle I accomplished all my goals. I got the apartment unpacked and organized (mostly), moved my wife and boys in, and finished The Synopsis Treasury.

  Finally I reached the end of a ten year journey.

  What you will read here is only a fraction of what I originally compiled. But maybe there is life in it yet. Maybe all those chapters I had to cut will make it into a Volume 2 someday? Tell all your friends to buy this book, and we’ll see!

  In the meantime, here are my suggestions on how to use The Synopsis Treasury:

  Read the summaries herein.

  Buy and read the novels that were finally published, and compare. What changed? Did the changes improve the idea?

  As a bonus, compare these synopses to the cover copy if available—the summary of the story usually found on the back of the novel or in the cover sleeve. Cover copy is designed to entice a reader, whereas the selections in The Synopsis Treasury are designed to entice a publisher.

  I hope you are as fascinated reading all this as I have been!

  —Christopher Sirmons Haviland

  Editor, The Synopsis Treasury

  September, 2014

  * Barbara Bova passed away in 2009

  ***

  Introduction

  In thirty years as a professional editor for various New York publishing houses, I must have endured hundreds of synopses from all kinds of writers. The bad ones went on for pages, detailing every movement the characters made up to and including their bathroom breaks. The better ones surprised me, kindled my interest, and sometimes made me laugh—always a good thing during a long afternoon at the office!

  But the best ones were those that opened a window on the writer’s mind. Most manuscript submissions come from strangers. We may know their agent and trust that person not to send us a potential space case, but the writers behind the submissions are unknown quantities. A well-crafted synopsis can introduce a new friend. What experiences do they bring to their writing? What personality quirks show through? What values will they stand up for in the story?

  Most editors I know read the author’s writing sample before turning to the synopsis. If the writing isn’t strong enough, the synopsis may never get read at all. But if the sample pages are good, the editor will turn to the synopsis next—and you mustn’t waste a word.

  The synopsis should not be a recitation of the events in your story. Even the most exciting action scene makes for tedious reading without the buildup of tension that occurs on the actual page. Complex relationships between characters can lose all nuance when reduced to straight description.

  A synopsis can (and should be) a mini-sample of your ability to tell a story. The Synopsis Treasury is, as its title promises, a treasure-trove of how-tos.

  Check out the wonderful grabber with which Orson Scott Card began an early outline of Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus: “It’s 1492, and Christopher Columbus discovers America right on schedule—but waiting for him on the shores of Cuba are three Chinese.” I defy any reader not to go on.

  Follow up with just a paragraph or so of straight plot description—yes, it can be done!—then move to deeper issues. As Joe Haldeman says in his synopsis of Old Twentieth, “Of course a novel is more than a plot line.” He went on to describe the subtext he planned to develop in the novel (in that particular case, the nature of self-awareness).

  Or imitate the way Frank Herbert posed a major concept: “We can make a stab at understanding extreme unconsciousness and may even equate it with death, but we grasp extreme consciousness much more dimly. What we usually do is fall back on mysticism.” His synopsis went on to explain how he would explore that idea in the course of the story.

  And you can never go wrong by providing some description of the potential audience. These days, acquiring editors must run a gauntlet of probing questions before getting approval to buy a manuscript. “Who’s the audience?” is always a biggie. “High-tech science fiction fans with an interest in the future of democracy” is the type of response an editor needs to be able to give. If you can make an editor’s job easier by spelling that out in your synopsis, it’s a stroke in your favor. Ben Bova does it beautifully in the outline of his novel Mars.

  All these suggestions and many more fill the pages of The Synopsis Treasury. C. S. Haviland has provided not only many ways to present your story at its best, but done the field a service by including a number of exchanges between major editors and writers. You will find this a work of great usefulness, but you will also admire the dialogue of intelligent minds. Enjoy!

  —Betsy Mitchell

  Betsy Mitchell has been a New York science fiction/fantasy editor for more than 30 years, holding senior positions at Baen, Bantam Spectra, Warner Books, and the Random House Publishing Group, where she spent ten years as Vice President/Editor-in-Chief of Del Rey. She currently divides her time between acquiring classic backlist in digital form for e-book publisher Open Road Media and editing for private clients.

  She has edited more than 150 titles, including such works as Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon, Bearers of the Black Staff by Terry Brooks, Virtual Light by William Gibson, and Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik (all New York Times best sellers); the Hugo Award-winner Hyperion by Dan Simmons, and the Nebula Award-winner Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. She received a World Fantasy Award for co-editing the anthology Full Spectrum 4.

  In May 2004 she oversaw the launch of Del Rey Manga and went on to edit a number of graphic novels, including the #1 New York Times best sellers The Exile by Diana Gabaldon, Odd is on Our Side by Dean Koontz and Fred van Lente, and Blood Work by Kim Harrison.

  ***

  H. G. Wells

  Herbert George “H. G.” Wells was born in Bromley, Kent in 1866, and pursued a career in biology and teaching in his early life, at one time studying under Darwinian anatomist T. H. Huxley. But a lack of sustained enthusiasm for biology, and an increasing interest in social reform and political matters, eventually led Wells to writing. Complications with his health further led to him leaving his teaching career, and he began venting his political opinions by writing more fiction.

  A short story called “The Chronic Argonauts” emerged from this, Wells’ first attempt at writing about a machine that allowed an inventor to travel through time. Inspired by this story, he would revisit the subject and expand upon it, injecting his feelings about human society and industrial relations. Encouraged by his publisher, he would serialize this time traveling story that would culminate in 1895 with his first fiction in long form: The Time Machine. In that same year, The Wonderful Visit was published, his satire about an angel that was shot because it was mistaken for a bird. However, The Time Machine’s provocative title and subject, released at the dawn of radio and electrical technology and other society-altering inventions making news, was rapidly intriguing to the public, overshadowing his favorably reviewed fantasy.

  Bolstered by his new fame, and stumbling into a style of fiction not well defined at the time (which we would now call modern science fiction and fantasy) that was a natural vehicle f
or social commentary and extreme metaphor, in a mere six years Wells serialized and ultimately produced a string of novels that would become literary masterpieces: The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, When the Sleeper Wakes, and The First Men in the Moon, while simultaneously writing dozens of short stories and non-fiction works, including Anticipations of the Reactions of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought, Mankind in the Making, “The Argonauts of the Air” (about the invention of a flying machine, prior to the first flight of the Wright Brothers), “The Land Ironclads” (which introduced giant war machines before the tank was invented) and “A Story of the Days to Come.”

  Now considered one of the fathers of science fiction, Wells passed away in 1946.

  While H. G. Wells is most remembered for his science fiction, a majority of his work cannot be classified as such. He wrote many short stories and novels that are considered mainstream drama, romance, and comedy. What follows is a letter by H. G. Wells* to an unknown American Publisher in early 1896, regarding his new novel, The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll. It was his fourth major novel, after The Time Machine, The Wonderful Visit, and The Island of Doctor Moreau.

  The Wheels of Chance is a romantic comedy that takes place on a bicycling journey across the English countryside. Wells himself was an avid cyclist, and bicycles were at their height of popularity at this time, soon to be overshadowed by automobile mass-production. While the letter is not dated, it establishes that the story had not yet been published in novel form, but was about to be published in serial format in a weekly magazine-journal called To-Day which circulated from 1893 to 1905 from London, founded by Jerome K. Jerome (the famed author of Three Men in a Boat). Until the late twentieth century, it was common practice for novels to be published in serial format, and success of the story or author would later warrant republishing in book form. But as periodicals began to drift away from fiction and focus more on news, novels published as books became more successful.

  In this letter, Wells presumed to tell the American publisher what he’d like to receive as payment, and that he’d only send along the complete story if the publisher was fairly certain of picking it up. This is not the recommended style of communication if you are an unpublished writer looking for a publisher for the first time. In today’s world, the publisher will ask you for the materials they need to make a decision: an outline perhaps, the first three chapters, and eventually the full manuscript. Then they may ask you for rewrites. And if you make it through all of that, they will tell you how much they are willing to pay (if they haven’t already). Unless you are already a successful writer, do not expect much room for negotiation, if any at all. Wells was already a celebrity author by the time of this letter, and even still was not yet at the peak of his success, with The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds to follow in the two successive years immediately after The Wheels of Chance.

  —CSH

  Dear Sir

  I have just completed a story of 60,000 words which will appear here serially in Mr. Jerome’s To-Day. It is a purely humorous work & describes the sensations & adventures of a drapers assistant during a ten days holiday tour upon a bicycle. At the outset he rides rather badly & experiences the usual fatigues of the beginner. He becomes involved with an elopement & finds himself (through no fault of his own) with a young lady (in rational areas) & a bicycle upon his hands. He is pressured by the lady’s friends. The young lady is a highly educated girl of advanced views which she has derived mainly from books, & the humour & a touch of pathos at last arises out of the contrast between her & the simpleminded, half educated, commonplace, sentimental & well meaning shopman. The details of bicycle riding, carefully done from experience, & the passing of characteristic scenery of the south of England, should, I think, appeal to a certain section of the public.

  Of my published works the story is most like “The Wonderful Visit.” It has no ‘scientific’ element & it is entirely free from ‘horrors.’ It is longer & more carefully constructed, disposed to offer for the American rights of such a book. I am prepared to accept the following terms, of a one & a half dollar book—10% up to 1000 & then 15% with a cheque on account of royalties of £20. The story will begin to appear in To-Day in April & will run out in August. I have made no arrangements for American serial rights, & unless I do, the book will have to be published in America in April or May. As my time is so limited I shall be glad if you will send for the book only if there is a fair prospect of your publishing it. I could post the typewritten copy at once on receipt of a cablegram.

  I am dear Sir,

  Yours Faithfully,

  H. G. Wells*

  * From the H. G. Wells Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

  ***

  Jack Williamson

  Jack Williamson was born in 1908 and arrived in New Mexico via covered wagon at the age of seven, where his family homesteaded land that they still manage today. He first became aware of the new field of “scientifiction” in his late teens and decided that writing these new adventures would be even better than reading them. He sold his first story to Amazing Stories in 1928, and quickly became a popular writer in the genre, a distinction he held throughout his career. Named a Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master in 1976, he won numerous awards for his writing, including both Hugos and Nebulas. He passed away in 2006.

  Pathway to Print

  Placing a story is somewhat like joining a conversation. You must know the language and the culture of the group, the ideals and taboos. You need a grasp of the topic under discussion and something fresh to add. You wait for a pause when your addition will be apt.

  The contents of a magazine may be regarded as a conversation, the editor as the autocrat at the breakfast table. Any genre is a wider group of related conversations, with editors and publishers directing scores of separate tables, all sharing common interests.

  A story idea can commonly be expressed in one sentence. In my own novel, Darker Than You Think, a hard bitten newsman finds himself a werewolf, hunting down and killing his former friends. In The Black Sun, a shipload of space colonists are marooned in the eternal frigid night on the dead planet of a dead sun. In Terraforming Earth, the fall of a giant asteroid sterilizes the globe and the tiny staff of a station on the moon must nurse life back to it.

  I commonly write two or three opening chapters to test the idea. A story reveals itself only as I write it. I can’t begin it until the people come alive, and I could never write a full outline until after it is finished. A brief paragraph about the idea may be enough to interest an editor. He may need an outline to sell it to the publisher, but that can be ignored once the contract is signed. With the story free to find its own way, I can write it with the same sense of discovery and surprise that I hope the reader will feel.

  —Jack Williamson

  Jack Williamson addressed the following letters to Frederik Pohl in 1950-51, synopsizing various story ideas in different stages of completion. Pohl had been the editor of Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories in earlier years, and had become a successful literary agent, in addition to being an accomplished science fiction author himself. Pohl would later become editor of the popular magazines Galaxy Science Fiction and Worlds of If.

  Williamson and Pohl had a working relationship by the early 1950’s, and sometimes Pohl would propose his own ideas to see if that would trigger anything. I could not locate Pohl’s emails back to Williamson.

  Of his “feelies” story, Williamson said, “I sold this idea to Orrin Keepnews at Simon & Schuster, somewhat to Fred’s surprise, and received a $250 advance—which would be many times that in today’s money. The plot in the letter is pretty crude. I worked out a much better one and spent a couple months doing a novel-length draft, but never got anything fit to send in. Looking back at it, I think it could have made a strong story. I simply wasn’t able to write it. I finally had to refund the advance out of th
e other royalties.” Upon reflection, Williamson added that the idea was “elaborated considerably, maybe too much.”

  Some stories are subjected to over-baking, and a writer must be brave enough to stand back and simplify, cutting chunks of ideas that he or she has fallen in love with, for the betterment of the whole.

  “I tried to make it a satire on the motion picture industry and the personal cost of stardom,” Williamson continued. “I tried to base it on the myth that Sir James Frasier [sic] researched in The Golden [Bough]. The primitive fertility custom in which the victim is treated like a king for a year, sacrificed, and the body parts planted to ensure next year’s crops. Elements of it survive in the Christian Easter. I still think there’s a strong story in the material. Perhaps I was trying to do too many things. Anyhow, I somehow failed to unify it around a convincing sense of human experience.”

  A writer should never be afraid to give up on a piece that isn’t working out as planned. And bouncing ideas off of other writers, editors, or agents (providing you have the right relationship with them) can help to illuminate your path, even if their opinion is different from yours. And do not worry about your great idea being “taken.”

  “The amateur thinks ideas are precious and apt to be stolen,” Williamson said. “Actually, they’re common. What matters is the ability to do something with them. [John W.] Campbell used to give the same idea to everybody, on the theory that the resulting stories would be so different that he could use them all—if they met the standard.”