Feedback? For A Synopsis? Are You Crazy, Jake?

Synopsis Series: Part 11

Finding Weaknesses In Your Synopsis

Just like any first draft, your synopsis is not going to come out perfect. Unlike a novel, its not going to take re-writes and multiple drafts (hopefully!), however it will need some tweaking, particularly the first time you attempt a synopsis like this.

The first thing to do is to read through and look for weaknesses. Ask yourself the following questions:

- What haven’t I researched? What have I assumed?
These will be either factual or societal, and you might not realize they are a problem, because you might be clinging to ‘common knowledge’ or stereotypes that are just plain incorrect.

- Where have I not filled in the details I should?
Despite my best efforts, when I finish a synopsis I usually go back and find places I have written stuff like: “He solves the problem.” Without outlining how he solves the problem. Sometimes without even outlining what the problem is.

- What scenes are unnecessary or no longer fit?
Sometimes, by the end of the book, stuff has become redundant, or we realise we need to let go of a scene that serves no real purpose. Do that now.

- What scenes have we left out?
Sometimes as you read through at this stage, you will realize there is information readers need, or character growth that needs to happen, which is not in the synopsis. You may need to add a new scene in.


Strengthening Your Synopsis

However more important than finding weaknesses is strengthening what is already there. To take your novel from ‘good’ to ‘great’, you need to go through, plot point by plot point, and make every element stronger and more emotional. Raise all the stakes and find ways to make them more personal and heart-wrenching.

Your plot may already be good, but you can probably find a bunch of ways to make it even better. EG: maybe your plot is about the pilot of a plane who was crashes in the wilderness and has to make her way back to civilization. Its a story of woman against nature.

But what if the plain was carrying medical supplies to a remote outpost where half a dozen children are dying of bronchitis? What if the medicine survived the crash and she has to take this bulky kit with her, as she tries to survive the hostile wilderness? The stakes go from her life, to the lives of half a dozen children.

What if one of the children is her daughter? What if she promised to be home for her birthday, which is only two days away? What if she is curled up in a dug out, with wolves circling in the darkness, losing her toes and fingers to frostbite on her daughter’s birthday, imagining her dying daughter getting word that the plane went down, that her mother is not coming?

See how the stakes can always get higher? More heart-breaking? More emotionally intense?

Everywhere you have narrative traction, stakes, motivation, goals, barriers, etc, find ways to make them more. Make them bigger. But don’t make them random. They all have to fit together cohesively into the plot and be personal to the characters and make sense.


Getting Feedback On Your Synopsis

Really Jake? Feedback on a synopsis? Yes. I want you to get feedback on your synopsis. However this is the time you really need and experienced hand to give you feedback. Someone who knows about the publishing industry, someone who knows a lot about narrative structure and style. (If you ever get really stuck for synopsis feedback, email me and we can negotiate an editing fee.)

You want your beta readers looking for weaknesses. You want them looking for problems. And you want them looking for anywhere they don’t understand what is happening, or WHY it is happening. Because all of that SHOULD be in your synopsis. Unfortunately, it won’t be. Even with detailed synopsises, there is still often a lot of stuff we leave in our heads and assume is implied by the synopsis.

But guess what? If you do that in the synopsis, you’ll do it when you write the novel too. So suck it up, clarify all the things your beta reader I unclear on, and give it to them again to ask if you have fixed all their concerns.

If you have any minorities or even just people from a gender or culture you are not a part of, you should also give it to several of people who are in that group, for a sensitivity read. I like to think I am pretty aware of social issues and sexist tropes, but even I get caught out. Sometimes its really dumb stuff, where I should have seen it and known better. (EG: in a recent novel, all my healers were women.)

Don’t be defensive if you get caught out or called on this stuff. Just say: “Shit, how did I miss that?” and FIX IT.


Finally, It Is Ready

Its done. I bet you were starting to think I was never going to say that. However I promise you writing a novel with this technique will be the quickest first draft you have ever written. And it will probably be the best book you have ever written too!


And don’t forget to sign up to my hilariously inappropriate newsletter at www.traditionalevolution.com. It contains book news, stories too personal for facebook, movie reviews and when you first sign up, you get the full, unabridged version of the chicken story.


1. Do You Struggle With What To Write Next?
2. The Five Core Parts Of A Good Synopsis
3. The Command Center of Your Novel
4. Characters Readers Remember Forever
5. Character Mistakes You Can't Afford To Make
6. Building An Empire
7. The Skeleton Of A Novel
8. The Meat & Flesh of Your Novel
9. The Fur and Feathers of your Novel
10. Planning Scenes That Make Writing A Breeze
11. Feedback? For A Synopsis? Are You Crazy, Jake?

Planning Scenes That Make Writing A Breeze

Synopsis Series: Part 10

The Bricks That Build A Novel

Scenes are the bricks that build a novel. I’ve talked about what scenes need to really be spectacular in my last post. However you should fill out each section in the detailed synopsis as it is listed, so when you are planning, you will be writing the details of the scene, based on your simple synopsis, before you get into the emotional beats and narrative traction anyway.

What separates these scene summaries in your detailed synopsis from the ones you wrote in your simply synopsis though, is details. You want to add in a lot of details. Depending on what sort of person you are, each scene summary could be a half a page long. Longer, even. Your synopsis could end up like an abridged novel.

Mine are not that long. My average scene summary is between 100-300 words. I often include snippets of dialog, particularly pivotal dialog or dialog that summarizes the tone of the scene, or the emotions of the characters in the scene. I also often write ‘note:’ and jot down anything I don’t want to forget, such as things in future or past scenes that relate to the one I am working on. EG: ‘Note: remember Anna still has an injured shoulder.’


It’s All In The Details

The goal of planning scenes, is to remove all decision making from the writing process. If you want to write very quickly, this should be your focus at this stage.

That means  ABSOLUTELY NO “I WILL LEAVE THIS FOR LATER” PARTS. As much as possible of the physical and mechanical events of every scene needs to be worked out in detail. Its not enough to write ‘she breaks in and steals the papers’. It should read something like: ‘Maria breaks in by climbing through the window with the broken lock in Peter’s office. The papers are in the top cupboard, over the sink, and coated in a layer of dust. A preliminary glance reveals that Annalise signed all the documentation for the construction, so she was lying when she said didn’t know about the project, or someone forged her signature.’

Writing is only slow when you have to stop and think about what is happening. When you take decisions out of the process, you allow yourself to focus entirely on writing great prose, and strengthening all the elements we talked about in the previous blog post: narrative traction, purpose emotional beats and so on.


Character Emotional Growth

If you are a bit emotionally stunted when it comes to writing like me (and even if you aren’t), you also need to track how the characters feel during the events of the scene. This is to make sure their mood is consistent and doesn’t see-saw all over the place in illogical ways.

Clear character emotions make the scene feel more grounded and tangible to a reader. However if the character’s emotions are flopping all over the place, or don’t make sense to the reader, the scene can feel confusing, and confusion breaks immersion.


What Readers Need To Know

As well as the literal events and character feelings, you also need to note what things readers need to know in each scene. That is to say, what questions they should be asking, what information they need about characters or setting, and what hints for future scenes they need in order to feel the pull of narrative traction. EG: ‘Lydia needs to mention that no one has come back alive once they enter gate 31.’ Or ‘Gordon needs to see the train departing and hear the train whistle, so the reader knows this story has steam power.’

Too often when giving feedback to writers, I know they have good things in their plot, but they neglect to tell readers about them. Its sort of like being a millionaire, but never taking your turn shouting lunch when you are out with your friends. Its a negative experience for them, and you, because they think you’re a cheapskate asshole. Likewise, if readers don’t have the fun of anticipating what is going to happen, they won’t enjoy the story. Which is, if you forgot, what narrative traction is. The sense that something better will happen if they keep reading.


What Readers Don’t Need To Know

Telling readers too much is also a cardinal writing sin. Most of the time, the right time to tell readers something about your world or characters is a few pages after they want to know. Use that information as a way to keep drawing them through the story, but don’t leave it so long they get frustrated and put the book down because they are confused. The exception to this is any central mysteries that aren’t explained until the end of the novel. EG: You don’t tell the reader who the killer is on page two of a thriller novel. That is revealed in the climax.

However it is important you have the things YOU need to know in your synopsis, even if they don’t actually appear in the scene itself.

When writers first start out, the first chapter of their books is often twenty pages of world building, establishing waffle. This is always the writer doing all the world building and planning for the novel that they SHOULD have done in a synopsis—instead, they think its a first chapter.

Anything you need to know, that readers don’t, feel free to put in your scene notes. Stuff like: ‘The captain of the Hemmes is the same captain that ferried Nathan from Augusta to Mal Cove.’ Nathan may never see the Hemmes or the captain again, and smart readers might pick up it is the same character, but if Nathan isn’t in the scene, there is no way for me to explicitly state it, as the characters on the Hemmes weren’t present when Nathan went to Mal Cove. Its still useful for me to remember though.

So that’s it. You have all the parts you need to start writing your synopsis. Next week, we are going to talk about what to do when you have finished your synopsis and, pro tip, its not starting to write your first draft.


And don’t forget to sign up to my hilariously inappropriate newsletter at www.traditionalevolution.com. It contains book news, stories too personal for facebook, movie reviews and when you first sign up, you get the full, unabridged version of the chicken story.



1. Do You Struggle With What To Write Next?
2. The Five Core Parts Of A Good Synopsis
3. The Command Center of Your Novel
4. Characters Readers Remember Forever
5. Character Mistakes You Can't Afford To Make
6. Building An Empire
7. The Skeleton Of A Novel
8. The Meat & Flesh of Your Novel
9. The Fur and Feathers of your Novel
10. Planning Scenes That Make Writing A Breeze

The Fur and Feathers of your Novel

Synopsis Series: Part 9
“Jake, Tell Me About All Those Weird Unnecessary Looking Bits.”

The weird extra bit are what keeps your novel balanced and compelling. They may seem unnecessary now, maybe even overwhelming. However they will pay off when it comes to editing and selling your novel.

If you try it once, I promise you won’t go back, even if you end up tweaking my methods a little to design a system that suits the way your mind works, and plays to your own distinct weaknesses. The important thing is, that you do focus on your weaknesses and not your strengths. That is where a well-planned synopsis will make the most difference.


What Are Beats and Why Do I Need Them?

I’ve said it before, but the stronger your readers feel when reading your books, the more likely they are to recommend those books to other people. Word of mouth is still the most powerful selling tool in existence. If you really want to be a best seller, people need to be talking to each other about your books.

So if you are writing a horror novel, you want it to be the scariest horror novel that reader has picked up all year. Your sad scenes should make readers teary, your tense scenes should have them squeezing the cushions with white knuckles.

When you are planning your synopsis, ‘beats’ refers to the emotional beat of the scene. What is the reader supposed to be feeling? Tracking this is important for two reasons. Firstly, before and after you write the scene, you can consider what the reader should be feeling. You can ask yourself how you can intensify that feeling. How you can make it so intense its almost unbearable.

Secondly, it lets you balance for emotional fatigue. If you hit the same beat in every scene, that emotion will lose its impact. You have to balance highs and lows. Different genres have different emotional ‘shapes’ and you should familiarize yourself with what is effective. Then you will know where and when you need to hit emotional beats to make the novel as satisfying as possible.


What Is Narrative Traction?

The shortest, simplest explanation of narrative traction is that it ‘promises the reader something interesting will happen if they keep reading’. If you write: ‘no one who goes through door 31 has ever come back’ the readers want to know what is behind door 31. It also tells the reader what is coming: a character will go through door 31. If you say something like that, and the the reader is never shown through door 31, you will disappoint and anger them. It is misleading.

I have done a whole series on how to create narrative traction and you can find the links here:
1. What Is Narrative Traction
2. Types Of Narrative Traction
3. Infomational Narrative Traction
4. Event Based Narrative Traction
5. How To Create Narrative Traction
6. Troubleshooting, Plotting & Identifying

When writing your narrative traction into your synopsis, you should ask two questions:
1. What is the reader itching to find out?
2. What is the reader eagerly anticipating?

Some of these things will stay consistent much of the way through the book. The first kiss is something romance readers will be anticipating from page one, but may not get until the end. The trick is to make readers want that first kiss more and more desperately as the novel progresses. Likewise, maybe the main character doesn’t go through door 31 until near the end of the novel—maybe it is a part of the climax. However to build the traction for that moment, you have to keep making the door more and more interesting.

However you should have multiple narrative traction threads, and they should always overlap. If you resolve one (going through door 31), you should have two or three more already in place and drawing the reader forward. You can’t have any places were narrative traction is dropped completely.

The stronger you can make your narrative traction, the harder it will be for readers to put it down. At the very least, you need to know what it is. However as much as possible, spell out how you are going to build narrative traction in your synopsis. So when you get to the first draft, you always know what your traction is, and you can ask yourself: “How do I make this more compelling? How can I make readers desperate to know/see this?”


Why Track Purpose?

Every scene needs a purpose. Actually, I believe every GOOD scene needs at least two, preferably three or more. Occasionally in beta reading or feedback someone might say: ‘What was the point of this scene?’ If someone is asking, you’re probably in trouble, but at the very least, you should be able to answer instantly—there should be a solid reason why every scene is critical to the plot.

However scenes that are only serving one purpose can be boring. You can make a scene a lot more interesting by having it serve many purposes, packing it full of conflict, information and character development.

Here are some of the purposes a scene might have:

- Introduces new information about the setting or characters
- Raises the stakes
- Shows characterization or character development
- Moves the plot forward
- Builds suspense
- Introduces a character
- Climax
- Resolution
- Inciting Incident
- Establishes setting, mood, atmosphere or themes

When you get to your first draft, make sure the purposes of the scene are clear to you and the reader. People should never be asking what the purpose of a scene was, they should always feel like every scene they read is vital.


Why Track Characters?

Tracking characters usually comes down to balancing. Some authors suggest that after you finish your first draft, you highlight every single line of dialog in the novel in different colors—one color for every character. This shows you who is dominating the script. (It also shows you if male characters are doing 90% of the talking.)

I finding tracking how often characters appear before I start writing can help me balance how much screen time each of them has. It allows me to either put some characters in more often, or take out the ones who are dominating more than they should. Which is MUCH easier to do at the synopsis stage.

It also helps in those times a character is supposed to be in a scene and I forget about them completely.


Measure Twice, Cut Once

Completing all these parts of a synopsis before you begin writing takes a lot of time. Instead of taking a few days, a synopsis could take weeks. Even months. However it will save you so much time in the long run.

If done correctly, it will leave you with a fantastic, complicated, heart-wrenching book, instead of a mediocre one. It will save you years of editing and rejections when people ‘liked it, but didn’t love it’, or ‘can’t quite put their finger on what isn’t working.’

A novel doesn’t have to be ‘well written’ to be a best seller. But it does need narrative traction. And it does need to invoke strong emotions in the readers. That is why books you might despair at, books like Twilight and 50 Shades of Gray, sell millions of copies, but better written, more intelligent books languish in the mid-list. You can do both, but you have to plan for it.

So take the time, try planning it all in advance, and see what sort of book you end up with.


And don’t forget to sign up to my hilariously inappropriate newsletter at www.traditionalevolution.com. It contains book news, stories too personal for facebook, movie reviews and when you first sign up, you get the full, unabridged version of the chicken story.



1. Do You Struggle With What To Write Next?
2. The Five Core Parts Of A Good Synopsis
3. The Command Center of Your Novel
4. Characters Readers Remember Forever
5. Character Mistakes You Can't Afford To Make
6. Building An Empire
7. The Skeleton Of A Novel
8. The Meat & Flesh of Your Novel
9. The Fur and Feathers of your Novel

Narrative Traction - Part 6: Troubleshooting, Plotting and Identifying

Welcome to my six-part writing series: Narrative Traction. This week is Part Six: Troubleshooting, Plotting and Identifying.

OPENINGS

The two most valuable questions you can ask beta readers are: 'Did the opening paragraph grip you?' and 'Where did you start to lose interest?'

If the opening paragraph doesn't grip someone, it has no narrative traction. It is not promising something more interesting will happen if you keep reading. It has failed as an opening paragraph.

Anywhere a reader loses interest is where the narrative traction has dropped. Usually because you left it too long to introduce another traction thread, or missed opportunities to raise the pull of the threads you already have in place.

PROMISE – WITHOLD – RESOLVE

The opening narrative traction thread is usually called a 'hook' something to hook the reader in and drag them through the novel. You need to identify your first hook and open with it as strongly as you can. It needs to be something that gets the reader's attention immediately and keeps them interested.

You must then withhold that information. However, you can't withhold the wrong information. Sometimes I go to give feedback on a manuscript, and I just have no idea what is happening. There's a mystery all right, the mystery is who or what the character is, where they are, what they are doing and why they are doing it. That's not narrative traction. That's just poor writing. Ideally, you want to give readers enough information to make them comfortable and feel centred in the story, that is what allows them to be interested in the hook you are offering them.

And then you must resolve the hook while the reader still cares about it, but not too soon. I realise this sounds a bit 'how long is a piece of string', however how long you withhold depends on what you are withholding and why. If you open a romance novel with:

'All Renee had ever wanted was to be kissed by a girl with blue eyes and freckles.' You might not give readers that kiss until the final scene. Or you may offer it at the end of scene one, but somehow it leads to a complete disaster that kicks off the rest of the plot. Maybe Renee never kisses a girl with blue eyes and freckles, maybe she falls in love with a black woman with lips that make Renee's knees buckle and a hair so big it brushes the door frame as she walks through.

You must develop that skill yourself, and the best way to do it is to read consciously and note how other brilliant authors do it.

TELL THEM WHAT THEY WANT

Imagine for a moment, Renee gets her kiss with her blue eyed, freckled girl in the last scene of the book. Imagine the first line of the book was actually 'Renee had a secret, she liked girls' and the line before the kiss, at the very end of the book was: 'All Renee had ever wanted was to be kissed by a girl with blue eyes and freckles.'

Maybe you, the writer, knew that from the start. However, if you forget to tell the reader, then the fact that this payoff is FINALLY happening, has no impact. Because they reader had no idea. Or maybe you mentioned it at the start of the book, and never again, so the reader forgot. Either way, the impact is completely lost. The narrative traction isn't there.

It seems overly simple, but to introduce narrative traction to readers, the easiest way is to tell them what they want. Or tell them what they don't know. Give them information that allows them to have expectations for what is coming.

If we opened the book with: 'All Renee had ever wanted was to be kissed by a girl with blue eyes and freckles.' Then the book turned into a horror with no romance or kissing of any kind, it would be kind of stupid, because we would be wasting the opening line on something irrelevant, but it would also be misleading. With that opening line, we are telling the reader Renee will kiss a girl with blue eyes and freckles, or that we will subvert their expectations, and have her kiss someone else through some sort of personal growth or development.

Don't make promises you don't intend to keep, but also don't keep promises you never made in the first place.

So once again, the process is:

1. Make a promise that the reader wants to see fulfilled.

2. Withhold that promise to keep them reading.

3. Fulfil that promise in a way that makes them want something else.

PLOTTING & IDENTIFYING

If you are a pantser, I wish you all the luck in the world. However, if you are a plotter, you would be well served making a note of your narrative traction arcs in your synopsis. How you go about this depends greatly on how you write your synopsis, however mine a laid out something like this:

Chapter One – Day One

Scene:  Opening line: “What if the whole family moves to New York for me, and I’m not good enough?”

TELYN and WYNN are walking home. Wynn is worried about the move to California because their parents SOPHIE and JACOB are giving up their jobs so WYNN can pursue his acting career. Telyn is excited about the move, desperate to get out of their very boring small town where she is being bullied and reassures him it will be fine.

They are confronted by COOPER, a local deadbeat, who attempts to mug them. He grabs Telyn and the BONEFALL occurs. The sky rends and a leviathan skeleton crashes down on the town. Lightening rips through all of them and most petrol tanks and gas lines explode.

Purpose: 1. Introduces WYNN, TELYN and COOPER.  2. Introduces setting. 3. Introduces primary conflict.

Hooks: 1. Wynn worried about the affect his career will have on his family, worried about failing.

2. The mugging, will they be injured?

3. The Bonefall, what is happening? What is it? How is it happening?

4. Will they survive the explosion and lightning strike?

Beats: Action/adventure. Mystery. Wonder.

Characters: Telyn, Wynn, Cooper (Vivian, Sophie and Jacob mentioned).

From this chapter and scene, hooks 2 and 4 will be resolved in the next scene—though with ongoing implications for the rest of the book. Hook 3 will be sustained not just through book 1, but through all three books of the trilogy. Hook 1 is rendered completely moot by hook 3. This chapter is designed to be around 3500 words long.

At least as many, if not more traction lines are introduced in chapter 2.

I haven't noted when the threads will be resolved, because that is something that comes quite naturally to me. However, having all the hooks listed in your synopsis can help a lot, since when you are editing, you can check you didn't forget any. Everyone hates dangling plot threads.

TROUBLESHOOTING

Troubleshooting is usually going to happen with those two questions I mentioned at the start. 'Did the opening paragraph grip you?' and 'Where did you start to lose interest?'

Generally, you need beta readers to fix narrative traction issues. People who will be honest about these things are the best beta readers in the world. Love them, cherish them, even if what they say stings a little. Places where the story loses narrative traction are places where you have failed to convey your excitement about the plot. Unless you also find the scene boring, in which case you knew it was flawed before it went to the beta reader and you deserve it.

If you have worked to put in narrative traction, it can be very hard to find where it drops, because the problem is one of clarity and communication. There are ideas you have not explained to the reader. You might have forgotten to tell them what they want. Which is why a virgin pair of eyes is vital.

The worst-case scenario is that your ideas just aren't big and interesting enough, which is going to require a lot of re-writes and reconsidering of your plot. However, remember, sweet romances sell well and they have very little in terms of plot and high stakes. They do have a huge depth of emotion though, so if your narrative traction is lacking, it might be an emotional problem, rather than one you can fix with more explosions.

Generally, if your characters don't care, your readers don't care either. So even if the stakes are high, if your character is blasé about it, the reader will be too.

Remember the line is 'All Renee had ever wanted was to be kissed by a girl with blue eyes and freckles.' ALL SHE EVER WANTED. That's a lot of emotion right there. There is yearning in that. 'It would be hot to be kissed by a girl with blue eyes and freckles' does not have the same pull.

FINALE

You have reached the end of the narrative traction series! I hope it was as amazing for you as it was for me. Pacat's lessons on Narrative Traction boosted my understanding of writing tenfold in about an hour. While I didn't manage to do it as succinctly or elegantly as she did, I hope you learned a lot you can apply to your own writing.

Remember to follow me on twitter if you want updates of what my cats look like on a daily basis.

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

1. What Is Narrative Traction

2. Types Of Narrative Traction

3. Infomational Narrative Traction

4. Event Based Narrative Traction

5. How To Create Narrative Traction

6. Troubleshooting, Plotting & Identifying

Narrative Traction - Part 5: How To Create Narrative Traction

Welcome to my six-part writing series: Narrative Traction. This week is Part Five: How To Create Narrative Traction.

Hopefully after the last two blog posts, you feel you can accurately identify both types of narrative traction in text. Maybe you have even flipped through some of your own favourite books and made notes where you have identified passages with strong narrative traction.

This week I want to look at the actual mechanisms that cause narrative traction and how you can use them in your own writing.

HOW TO CREATE NARRATIVE TRACTION:

There are three main steps to creating narrative traction:

1. Make a promise that the reader wants to see fulfilled.

The important part here is that the reader wants to see what is going to happen. If you introduce a romantic element and romantic tension, the reader needs to want the characters to get together. If they don't, they're going to put the book down.

Knowing that there will be a kiss or explosion or rise to power is not enough, readers have to want THIS kiss, THIS explosion and THIS rise to power.

2. Withhold that promise to keep them reading.

Problems that are solved instantly or easily are not interesting to read about. I have a good friend and one of the big problems in her writing always used to be that she couldn't sustain a conflict. As soon as there was tension between characters, it made her so uncomfortable, she resolved it right away. There was angst in her writing, but only for half a paragraph.

Compare that to something like the Captive Prince trilogy by C.S Pacat where she manages to drag out the sexual/emotional tension for so long they don't even kiss until book two. Or Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld where there is no kiss until (HUGE SPOILER, GUYS!!) the last scene of book 3.

3. Fulfil that promise in a way that makes them want something else.

It is important to learn how, and perhaps more importantly, WHEN, to fulfil promises. Too soon, and the reader will feel things are too easy, that they haven't been earned. However, if the promise is too small, and you leave it too long for the pay off, the reader will lose interest.

It is also important that every promise is fulfilled in a way that makes the reader want something new, or that other promises have been made and are now carrying the story forward. You can't have a gap, not even of a page or so, without something pulling the reader deeper into the story. Once they are satisfied, they will stop reading. Because we all read because we want something—a feeling of some kind. Once we have it, we stop.

TELL THEM WHAT THEY WANT

One of the most important elements here, is readers can't anticipate something, if they don't know what is coming. If the reader doesn't know there is a letter, they can't want to know what the letter says. As with stakes and motives, you need to tell the reader what you haven't told them yet.

As per my earlier example from China Mieville's  'Go Between': 'Something was in the bread.'. We are literally told something is in the bread, but not what. If Morley had sliced open the bread, then put it aside without explanation, we wouldn't have known what we were waiting for.

Take these examples, direct from Pacat:

'Devon never talks about his past.' – We want to know about Devon's past.

'No one knows what happens in room 101.' – We want to know what happens in room 101.

'There is a murderer on the island.' – We want to know who the murderer is.

PROMISE – WITHOLD – RESOLVE

So, the basic formula for narrative traction, be it informational or event based, is Promise- Withhold – Resolve. And you can track this, and made sure you are adding more of this, when you are writing your synopsis.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know I am a firm advocate of plotting. However, if you are a pantser, you will simply need to remember this formula and always be thinking of new ways to add these elements in without forgetting about them or resolving them too soon. It requires a lot of innate skill to be a pantser—skill I don't think most writers have. If you are one of the lucky few you are blessed, but if you aren't, just write a synopsis, okay?

Throughout your synopsis, you can actively mark narrative traction threads. Where they start, how they are intensified, and when they are resolved. If you number them, or colour code them, you will be able to see where they overlap and if you have several strong narrative traction threads going at a time, you will hopefully have a very compelling story.

However, be aware these are not elements you bring in on top of your plot. They are parts of the plot that you are developing in specific ways, at specific times.

EG: Harry's Letter To Hogwarts.

If Harry had read his letter right away and the Dursleys had said he could go, and good riddance, all the tension would go out of the earlier chapters. However, the information is presented and withheld in stages. The letter arrives, but Harry isn't allowed to read it. He's not allowed to read it for weeks and the Dursley's go to more and more extreme steps to keep him from reading it. He doesn't get to read the letter until Hagrid arrives. And with Hagrid comes a lot more information… and a lot more promises to the reader.

If the plot synopsis says:

- Harry is raised by his aunt and uncle.

- A letter arrives inviting him to Hogwarts.

- Hagrid arrives to take Harry shopping for school supplies.

You can see that nothing fundamental has changed. Those things all happen in that order in the plot of the book. However, when presented that way, you can see how they could all happen without much narrative traction and without any tension.

We can alter the plot synopsis to be more inclusive of the tension and traction that actually occurs:

- Harry is raised by his aunt and uncle who are abusive and make him live in a closet under the stairs, denying him everything but his most basic needs, keeping him isolated.

- A letter arrives inviting him to Hogwarts, but Harry isn't allowed to read it. More and more arrive and Vernon takes them away to try and escape the barrage of mail.

- Hagrid arrives to give the letter to Harry, explaining some, but not all, of Harry's back history…. Poorly. (Creating more questions than it answers.)

The plot points are the same, you have simply added in more conflict, more tension and more narrative traction. However even at this stage of Harry Potter, there are several narrative traction threads going. Here I am only looking at the contents of the letter. Not, for example, Harry talking to the snake, the magical elements or the relationship between Harry and his extended family.

Next week, for our final installment of this narrative traction series, I am going to delve a little deeper into putting narrative traction into your own synopsises and how to troubleshoot when your narrative traction just isn't working.

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

1. What Is Narrative Traction

2. Types Of Narrative Traction

3. Infomational Narrative Traction

4. Event Based Narrative Traction

5. How To Create Narrative Traction

6. Troubleshooting, Plotting & Identifying

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