Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

We’ve been discussing one-sentence summaries for the last couple of weeks, and I think we’ll be drawing this topic to a close in the next few days.

Today, I’d like to finish critiquing Laura’s summary sentence, which I started last week (but was unable to finish because I didn’t know the genre). Here is Laura’s latest comment over the weekend:

This will be a Women’s Fiction novel. She is the Controller (Head accountant) of an up and coming “hip” fashion accessory company. When she finds out the charismatic owner is basically a crook and confronts him, he gives her the choice to leave or be fired. She’s bought into the American Dream, not to mention the So. Ca. lifestyle, and finds herself on the street with a tarnished career and major burnout. Chucks it all and decides ambition is way overrated. Decides to go find something to do that she loves instead.

She doesn’t go looking for the job as a groom, just kind of falls into it. As you can imagine, the ranch owner becomes the hero.

Sorry to go on and on, but want everyone to have an idea of the plot.
Please continue to tear up the sentence!

Randy sez: OK, that gives me enough to go on. Here is my suggestion:

“Fired by her crooked boss, an accountant meets her dream man at a dude ranch.”

15 words, 3 characters, 2 plotlines, 1 dude ranch, 1 ranch dude. I think it’ll work. The focus here is on the future–the guy. What do you all think?

Now, let’s look at Gerhi’s one-sentence summary, which we discussed last week also. Gerhi wrote:

“A dorky dad does a gender bender to steal his toddler son from a deranged dimension.”

Randy sez: You do NOT want your lead character to be “dorky”. That’s a non-starter. In another post, Gerhi explained that in going to the mirror dimension, the dad becomes a woman. This has a lot of potential, so let’s backload that at the end of the sentence. I would recommend we make the adjectives on the dad less interesting so as to focus on the gender switch. Here is my suggestion:

“After chasing his toddler son into a mirror universe, a young father discovers that he has become a woman.”

19 words, 2 characters, 2 universes, and 2 crossovers. You might think we’re over the word limit, but 3 of those words are “a” and 8 of those words are 4 letters or less.

An operational issue: Probably 80 to 100 of my loyal blog readers posted one-sentence summaries, and it should be clear that we are never going to get through all of these, especially since new ones keep coming in daily. And the larger problem is that there’s a limit to how much I can improve a sentence in 5 minutes of work. Normally, I spend at least an hour writing a one-sentence summary for my own novels.

I was mulling this problem over the weekend and hit on an idea. For those of you who REALLY need a strong one-sentence summary, maybe I could offer a paid service: one hour of my time to buff up your one-sentence summary to a high polish for a suitable fee. I would have to set the fee high enough to drag me away from my many other worthwhile projects.

Let me know what you think of this idea. I would probably not advertise this service outside the blog for awhile, if ever. For one thing, my loyal blog readers deserve first shot at my limited time. For another, I’m not sure how many one-sentence summaries I can do before becoming completely deranged. I might end up wandering off into some mirror dimension, with consequences that could only be described as tragic.

I’m jazzed! Yesterday, I challenged my loyal blog readers to critique Laura’s one-sentence summary of her novel. We’ve been obsessing on one-sentence summaries for two full weeks now. (If you’re going to obsess on something, it might as well be important, and this topic is.)

To refresh your memory, here is Laura’s first cut at a one-sentence summary:

A savy businesswoman dumps it all for aspirations to be a groom on a dude ranch.

The sentence is a fine start, but it needs fine-tuning. Here are the points that many of you picked up on:

1) “Savvy” is spelled with two “v”s.

2) “Groom” makes you think she’s a guy getting married.

3) “aspirations” is really a needless word here.

4) The story as given lacks conflict. We don’t know what problem she faces at the dude ranch that makes her life worse than it was before.

5) “A savvy businesswoman” is good, but it could be sharpened into something with more intrinsic conflict that explains the flight from Fortune Five-hundred in favor of feisty fillies. It would be very helpful to know our heroine’s reason for leaving, but it’s even more important to know what genre we’re working with. The one-sentence summary should always tell you what the genre is, some way or another.

So let’s consider some options. Here are some possible genres, and some possible ways to tweak Laura’s sentence. These are a bit wordy, because I’m whipping them out quickly without taking time to really sharpen them up.

Comedy: A corporate bigwig dumps her job to work on a dude ranch, but discovers she’s allergic to horses.

Romance: A love-starved CFO leaves her Fortune 500 company to pursue a John Wayne lookalike on his dude ranch.

Suspense: After a deal with the Mafia goes awry, a female CEO goes incognito at a dude ranch.

Horror Spoof: After attempting suicide at corporate headquarters, a zombie woman cannot be released until she mucks out 1000 stalls on a dude ranch.

Spiritual: A newly widowed businesswoman seeks meaning by leaving corporate America for the simple life on a dude ranch.

Laura, the ball’s in your court. I think we have more work to do, but we’ll need you to fill us in on the story a little bit more. What’s the genre and what is our heroine’s conflict once she starts mucking those stalls out?

We have time for one more today. I’ll take Gerhi’s comment/question, since he contributed significantly to critiquing Laura. Gerhi wrote his latest one-sentence summary here:

A disengaged father steal back his three year old son from a mirror dimension.

My question: How do I put into that one line a sense that I hope a lot of the book will be humorous even though the concept is serious? In other words, when do you indicate the style of writing?

Randy sez: Put in some humor, absolutely! That proves you can, which is something you have to show the editor. You can’t just tell the editor, “I’m so funny, people fall on the floor laughing when they hear my jokes.” So if your story is humorous, it really would be a fine idea to make the one-sentence summary funny. This isn’t always easy, since there are different types of humor. If you are good at one-liners, then your one-sentence summary is a great place to show it off. If your humor is more the “build the joke slowly, get it rolling, and milk the audience for laugh after laugh,” then that’s VERY hard to show in a one-sentence summary.

I happen to be pretty decent at one-liners. However, I won’t contribute one here, for two reasons:
1) I don’t know the story well enough.
2) The humor in a one-sentence summary is an advertisement for what you can do, and so it might be considered deceptive if an editor found out that your hilarious sentence came from me.

So Gerhi, I would challenge you to write a one-sentence summary that tells your essential conflict and has a humorous kicker at the end. I have no idea how best to do that, but if you can pull it off, you’ll likely have a winner. Let us know if you come up with one. I think we’ll all be interested to hear it.

Due to popular demand, we’ll continue critiquing the one-sentence summaries that many of you have posted here over the last couple of weeks.

Here’s one from Gary:

“You are me, and must kill you.”

Randy sez: I think this is a record for brevity. 7 words, 1 character, 1 plot. Only 22 letters!

The only problem is that I don’t understand the story. So I would say this one needs to be expanded a bit. There are two issues to be expanded. What does “you are me” mean? I could make some guesses, but in a one-sentence summary, you don’t want the reader guessing–you want them to KNOW. Secondly, why must you kill you? There needs to be a reason, some motivation for it. Killing is never interesting in isolation. There has to be a reason. The reason the Jackal wants to kill Charlie DeGaulle in THE DAY OF THE JACKAL is that half a million dollars (in big, fat, juicy 1962 dollars) was waiting for him if he succeeded. And he came THAT close to succeeding.

Robert posted this one:

A swordsmith’s son must save the kingdom of Britain from a mysterious black stone’s enchantment.

Randy sez: This is a good strong one-sentence summary. Can it be stronger? Yes, possibly, on a couple of points:

Point one: I’m going to guess that a swordsmith’s son would also likely be a swordsmith himself. (If not, what is he?) So could we replace “swordsmith’s son” with “_______ swordsmith”? I don’t know what goes in the blank–that depends on what his inner conflict. But there’s no doubt that if he was a one-armed swordsmith (or fibromyalgic or dislexic or WHATEVER), he’d be a more interesting guy.

Point two: What is that black stone’s enchantment doing, exactly? This might be hard to answer, but it seems it could be more specific. Is that stone playing bagpipe music that enslaves those pesky Brits? Does it exude the odor of frying bacon, driving them mad with hunger? Does it emit microwave mind-control messages from Merlin? I’m being a little goofy here, but the question is whether you can be more specfic. Abstraction is great for mathematical physics, but in fiction, concreteness is good.

Jeffrey wrote:

A research engineer and a Hopewell shaman, separated in time by 1800 years, work together to fight an ancient evil entity.

Randy sez: This sounds quite promising. What kind of “research engineer”? Does it matter which field he’s in? If not, then does it even matter that he’s an engineer? What skills does he bring to this battle with the evil entity? Why must he be an engineer in order for this story to work?

The Hopewell shaman is pretty specific. I’m going to guess he or she is the one who’s living 1800 years ago. I don’t know if it’s possible to say what year the shaman lives in, but it might be worthwhile trying to figure out if the sentence could be rewritten to tell us.

The big questions I have are about the nature of that ancient evil entity. Who is it and what are its powers? What is the nature of the battle? In what way could an engineer help? What is Mr. Evil Entity trying to achieve?

Laura posted this one:

A savy businesswoman dumps it all for aspirations to be a groom on a dude ranch.

Randy sez: OK, maybe it’s time to see what my loyal blog readers have learned in the last couple of weeks. I’ll critique this one tomorrow, but first I’d like to see what you all have to say about it. What would you tell Laura if she came to you with this one-sentence summary?

Just a quick note for my loyal blog readers who may have missed the memo in my April e-zine:

I will be teaching a weekend seminar on writing in Couer D’Alene, Idaho on the weekend of April 25-27. The teaching will be Friday night and all day Saturday. On Sunday, I’ll be doing paid one-on-one critiques of writing samples and web sites.

I’ve never been to Couer D’Alene, but I hear it’s beautiful, and I’m looking forward to meeting the great folks in the Idaho Writer’s League who are sponsoring this event. You can get ALL the pesky details on their web site here.

Of course, this announcement won’t do you much good unless you live in the great northwest, but this blog is read by so many people that I’ll bet there are quite a few of you who can make it.

I’d love to meet you there! I’ll be speaking in detail on many of the things we’ve discussed here in bits and pieces. I have eight full hours to talk, and I can say quite a lot in eight hours. I’ve got a full lineup of topics on both the craft and marketing of fiction. I will also have some good deals on my books and some great deals on my CDs.

I’m working through the one-sentence summaries that my loyal blog readers have posted here over the last couple of weeks. I’m trying to go in order, so those who posted first get theirs critiqued first.

The next on the list is Karla, but she recently posted a revision, so I’m going to look at both of them.

Karla wrote:

Okay, I am going to go ahead and edit the one sentence summary I originally submitted. Is this better or just different?

Original: A pastor’s wife joins a girl biker club and encounters new adventures that startle and shake up her husband’s church.

Revised: When a burned-out pastor’s wife becomes a biker chick, her new adventures startle and shake up her husband’s church.

Randy sez: I like the original better, but it still needs work. The original has a pastor’s wife joining a girl biker club. To me, that implies a fair bit of conflict and definitely an interesting character. The new version adds in the descriptor “burned-out”. The problem I see with this is that this description has been way overused and is now verging on a cliche. It can still be done, of course. Burnout continues to exist. But calling it “burnout” is the cliche. In any event, I think we’ve got enough to describe this lady without the burnout. In fact, I think it works even better to strip down the revised version just a little:

“When a pastor’s wife becomes a biker chick…” I think that sets up the story nicely.

Now for the second half, things suddenly get vague. This biker chick has “adventures”. She “startles” folks. She even “shakes them up.” All of these are fine for a first cut, but specific is always better than vague. If you tell us the adventure, we’ll be able to guess that the church folks are both shaken and stirred.

What adventures could our biker lady get into? An infinite number! Tell us one, Karla, in three or four words, and we’ll guess the rest.

Karla, when you pitch this to editors and agents, if they seem interested, you should also let them know pretty quickly that you’re a biker babe yourself, not to mention one of those minister’s wives. I’m sure you already know to do that, but many of my loyal blog readers probably aren’t aware that you’re writing what you know here. Now they do.

Next question: Shall we continue on One-Sentence Summaries or is it time to move on? We have many dozens more posted here, but I don’t want to keep flogging a dead horse. If you all think you’ve got it, we can find a new topic.

I’m going to interrupt our current series of blogs on One-Sentence Summaries of novels, to make a quick announcement. Tomorrow, we’ll get back to business.

Ahem, my announcement: I have recently had yet another work of art published. This one is not a book, it’s an article.

A little backstory first. As many of my loyal blog readers know, I’ve been a part of the evolving story of the alleged Jesus family tomb since it was announced about a year ago with much fanfare. Like most everyone else on the planet, I am skeptical that this tomb ever housed the mortal remains of Jesus of Nazareth. Of course, it’s possible. The question is — what are the odds?

Being a theoretical physicist and a troublemaker with far too much time on my hands, I have written some articles over the past year that got me quite a bit of notice. In fact, back in late October of last year, a statistics peer-reviewed journal, The Annals of Applied Statistics, asked me to be a referee for the forthcoming paper by Prof. Andrey Feuerverger, the statistician who was hired to analyze the alleged Jesus family tomb.

So I spent a considerable part of November and December reviewing Dr. Feuerverger’s article and writing a response article. I also took the opportunity to do some new calculations to improve on my previous work. One rather unusual issue was that Dr. Feuerverger requested that his paper NOT be circulated prior to publication. (Normally, academics are only too happy to get preprints out as far and as fast as possible.) So I honored that request, and in fact have not really made any public comments on the tomb controversy.

But now Dr. Feuerverger’s article has been published, along with comments by eight referees, including mine. I have posted a new article on my web site that summarizes all the new info (many, many pages in the journal, not to mention a 29 page supplementary article that the journal asked me to include on their web site that details my latest calculations).

You can read all about it in my article: Analysis of Andrey Feuerverger’s Article on the Jesus Family Tomb. I know not all of you will be interested in this, nor will all of you even understand why I’ve put so many hours of my time into this apparently absurd project. The answer is that it was just something I wanted to do, and I didn’t think anyone else would do it quite the way I wanted. So I did it.

Tomorrow, we’ll continue on with our study of those pesky One-Sentence Summaries. See ya then!

For the last week and a half, we’ve been talking about how important it is to write a good one-sentence summary of your novel. Yesterday, Donna asked a very pertinent question:

Question…how do you work an interesting one out if you’re a puzzle writer or use some other method and haven’t gotten all the details figured out on your story? You know your beginning and how it will all end up but not totally how you’re going to get there. I know that using the Snowflake method it’s the first step but is it ok if you get a chunk, or chunks, of the story written before you attempt the one sentence summary?

Randy sez: You can do whatever you want, whenever you want to. For those who use Cindy Martinusen Coloma’s “Puzzle Method” (which we discussed here recently), you may not know your story very well when you start writing. That’s OK! If that’s where you are, then that’s where you are.

Some novelists are going to need to write the whole story before they figure out their one-sentence summary. That’s actually a good time to write the one-sentence summary (if you are a Seat Of The Pants writer) and it’s a good time to rewrite your one-sentence summary (if you are a Snowflaker).

Your purpose is NOT to follow some particular paint-by-numbers scheme to get a one-sentence summary. Your purpose is to get the best one-sentence summary you possibly can, as early as you can, using whatever method works best for you. And the reason for doing so is to use it as a marketing tool as effectively as possible.

Writing the one-sentence summary is an art, not a science. The more you do it, the better you get at it. When I created Fiction 201, I wrote some example one-sentence summaries for about 20 different best-selling novels, and each one took me only a few minutes. After a while, you just know how to do it (for somebody else’s story). It always seems to be harder to do it for yourself.

OK, I’ve got time to critique a couple more one-sentence summaries that my loyal blog readers have posted here in the last week or so:

Katie wrote:

“A warrior must ally with the son of her father’s murderer to prevent a coup.”

Randy sez: This is pretty strong. Can we strengthen this? Our warrior is not just any old run-of-the-mill warrior. She’s a she, which we learn only by the pronoun “her” which is buried in the middle of the sentence. So let’s muscle up our description of this warrior to something like “A female warrior” or “A girl warrior” (if she’s young enough). You might also think “A warrior princess” would work but, alas, Xena has been done and she’s a cult icon and you don’t want to be derivative, so you really can’t use this one.

By the way, don’t be too worried about whether you’re going to offend folks who will bristle and say “Why make a big deal about a woman warrior? Why do you act like it’s surprising for a woman to be a warrior? Are you knuckling under to people’s sexist stereotypes?”

The correct answer to this sort of bristle-talk is: “Oh, go soak your head!” Let’s get real. A female warrior is a lot more rare in our culture than a male warrior. In some other culture, that’s not the case, and there you’d write a different one-sentence summary. But you’re writing for readers in our culture, so highlight what’s exceptional. Go with “A female warrior” and don’t worry about the bristle-heads.

The second issue I would suggest is to backload the biggest emotive hit by sticking it at the end of the sentence. The fact that she’s collaborating with Daddy’s murderer is a HUGE emotive hit. Use that as a kicker.

Here’s my suggestion: “A female warrior tries to prevent a coup by allying with her father’s murderer.”

14 words, 2 characters, 1 central plot idea, and 1 kicker. Not bad! I’m sure it could be honed a little more, but this is what I came up with after fully 10 seconds of thought.

Mark wrote:

Here’s my one sentence: “A dead man can’t escape his body until he saves two children he orphaned.”

And Camille, you’re right. You should have taken Randy’s fiction mentoring track! There aren’t too many times any more that I come away from an educational experience having learned something completely new. Randy’s insights into plot have changed the way I think about writing and story-telling. Seriously. I feel like a giddy elementary school kid during my morning writing time.

Randy sez: Thanks, Mark, for those kudos. I appreciate that. (Mark was in my mentoring track at the recent Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference, and we had a great time: 10 writers for 8 hours of intensive critiquing and then I had half an hour of one-on-one time with each of them.)

I like Mark’s one-sentence summary. The lead character is “A dead man”. Sounds not very promising, because dead men generally make dull protagonists, but Mark immediately gives this character something to strive for: “can’t escape his body”. That’s our hero’s goal, and it’s a fine, fine goal (if you’re a zombie). What’s keeping him from doing so? “until he saves the two children he orphaned.” Excellent! Now we’ve got a couple of brats to deal with, but we care about them because everybody cares about orphans. It’s part of our DNA to care about orphans. If you don’t care about humans, you are not human. Our zombie cares about them even more, because he can’t take leave of his wretched dead body until he places them in a good home. There are all sorts of humor possibilities in a book like this.

14 words, 3 characters, 1 plot, and I don’t see how to improve it, unless it would be to strengthen that verb “saves”. But since I don’t see any obvious alternatives, I’m going to say that this one-sentence summary is “good enough for now.”

Finish that book, Mark, and get yourself an agent.

Most of you will have noticed that I got my e-zine sent out a couple of days ago. I’m now recovered enough from that to blog again.

I’m reading through the comments of the last couple of days. Several of you have noticed that writing a one-sentence summary is hard. Yes, it is. That is the beauty and the curse of it.

A great one-sentence summary is like a great haiku or a great limerick. When you nail it, you know it. And people remember it. OK, here is a haiku for today. Remember that the only rule is that you have 3 lines, with 5, 7, and 5 syllables. Here’s a really bad haiku:

Haiku doesn’t rhyme
At least, not most of the time
It’s five, seven, five

Here’s a really bad limerick:

There once was a writer named Ran
Whose limericks never would scan.
He said, “I try hard,
But I guess I’m no Bard,
Because I always cram as many words into the last line as I possibly can!”

Writing a bad haiku or a bad limerick gives you some serious appreciation for good ones. Ditto with one-sentence summaries.

Let’s look at those rules I laid down for you:
1) As few words as possible.
2) Focus on one or two characters.
3) Focus on one plot thread.
4) Be specific!
5) Capture the conflict.

The reasons for each of those rules comes from the purpose of your one-sentence summary — it is a marketing tool. In order to be useful, a marketing tool needs to be both memorable and interesting. Let’s see how this purpose drives the rules:

1) You want a sentence people can remember. Fewer words are easier to remember than many words.
2) 1 or 2 characters are easier to remember than 3 or 4.
3) 1 plot thread is easier to remember than 2 or 3.
4) The more specific, the more interesting.
5) The more conflict, the more interesting.

What makes all this hard is that pesky word constraint. Anybody can create an interesting marketing message in 500 words. But when you restrict to 15 words or less, that’s when the art enters.

And this is why YOU are responsible for writing your one-sentence summary — because it’s hard. Your editor probably won’t do as a good a job as you will. Neither will your marketing director. Neither will your sales force, the bookstore staff, or your readers.

If you don’t do it well, then somebody else will do it badly. Your mission, and you really don’t have any choice but to accept it, is to make compromises among the conflicting requirements to produce the best one-sentence summary you can.

Now let’s look at Camille’s updated one-sentence summary:

A bitter widower’s second chance at love means marrying a dying woman.

Randy sez: Yes! That’s so much better than before. Let’s look at what makes this work. First of all, only 12 words. Camille has a good shot at memorizing that. So does everybody else. Now we’ve got 2 characters and 1 plot line, so we score again.

Let’s look at those characters and the plot. We’ve got “A bitter widower”. That’s pretty good. We’ve got a “second chance at love.” That’s good too. We’re rooting for him already. Then we’ve got the kicker, and notice how well it’s backloaded onto the last two words: “marrying a dying woman.” Yow! That kicks.

Yes, Camille, I think you nailed this one. It may be possible to tighten it a little more, but I personally don’t see how. If I was an editor at a writing conference and you tossed this at me at dinner, I’d say, “Camille, we need to talk. Have you got time in your busy schedule for an appointment with me? Please????”

I’m continuing to critique one-sentence summaries that my loyal blog readers posted last week. I think we’ve all learned a few things from this exercise. I certainly have — trying to explain why something works or doesn’t work forces me to translate my intuition into analysis.

Elizabeth posted this one:

A gay Air Force officer and a Catholic lesbian get married, and then she leaves him for her best friend.

Randy sez: My first question is this — at what point does she leave him? If that’s the ending, then your one-sentence summary has a major spoiler in it.

If her leaving him is near the beginning of the story, then my second question is this — does he care? I’m not quite sure what the attraction would be in a marriage like this, but (pardon me if I’m wrong) I would think it’s less than with a straight man and a straight woman. If he doesn’t care, then there’s no story here. If he cares, then you have a story.

I think your one-sentence summary would be stronger if you could find a way to make the answers to these two questions clear, since I’m pretty sure most editors would also want to know the answer.

Mary wrote:

Emory Chance refuses to take the blame for her daughter’s death, but the guilt keeps slapping her every time she remembers Daisy’s face.

Randy sez: I usually recommend against using the name of a character in a one-sentence summary, because I prefer to give some descriptive nouns and adjectives that tell us who the character is. However, Mary is a multi-published author, so I’m going to give her the freedom to do whatever she wants on that score. The issue I’ll focus on, Mary, is whether you can focus that guilt thing up a bit.

How often does Emory remember Daisy’s face? What’s the occasion for these memories? Is there anything in particular that raises the memory? Is there more to the story than this guilt thing? (Guilt is a pretty interior conflict, so I’m really asking if there’s some exterior conflict to help carry the story.)

Lynn wrote:

A bitter indentured servant strives for freedom while facing persecution and the loss of love and life.

Randy sez: OK, this is screaming for some specifics: What year are we talking about? What country? In what way is he (or she–we need to know the gender) “striving”? What sort of persecution? What does it mean to face the loss of love and life?

One common thread I’ve seen in a LOT of the one-sentence summaries that have been posted here is abstraction. I suspect the purpose of this is to broaden the reader appeal by raising the “big issues” but the real effect is that it narrows appeal, since nobody has any idea what the story is about.

Parker wrote:

Amanda searches for the reincarnation of her murdered lover from their previous life.

Randy sez: This certainly would generate interest for a certain niche of reader, but I’ll repeat here how important it is to get specific. Where and when does Amanda live (at least in her current incarnation)? Let’s face it–if she’s an MIT professor of physics, then this is a very different story than if she’s a Hollywood palm reader. And where and when did she live before?

With that, I’ll leave off for today. Tomorrow, I’ll pick up with some more critiques. Let me know if you have some specific issues with one-sentence summaries that you’d like me to explain.