Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

A couple of days ago, I posted Barbara’s one-sentence summary of her novel and asked you all to see if you could improve on my best attempt to revise it. Thanks to all of you who responded!

Barbara has picked a winner and has asked me to post this message:

“All you people are, (pick one) awesome, wonderful, fantastic, awe-inspiring. There were a lot of great entries and I narrowed it down to two:

“J.R. Turner submitted:

This is 15 words:

Three scientists unwittingly give a clandestine government agency the power to alter the human genome.

“While this was very good, an even better entry and the winner was supplied by Caprice Hokstad, who submitted:

A secret government agency manipulates unsuspecting biotechnologists into altering human DNA.

“This was the best short entry. I would change only one word giving:

“A clandestine government agency manipulates unsuspecting biotechnologists into altering human DNA.

“In my original version I used disgruntled but unsuspecting also works for the story. And I like the use of manipulates.

“The first draft of this story is done. I wrote it during NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month) which takes place every November. During the month of November you have to write a novel of at least 50,000 words. You’re allowed to have an outline and character sketches beforehand. It’s a lot of fun, and I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now. The down side is when the first draft is done then you must edit, and edit, and…

“I’d like to thank you all for your responses. Sometimes I get too close to the problem to see the best answer.

“Take care, Barbara”

Randy sez: As you can see, less is more in this game. Barbara’s original version was 36 words. I cut it down to 20 words. Caprice chopped it all the way down to 11, and it’s clearly stronger than mine or Barbara’s original.

Caprice, you won! Go ahead and email me with a one-page Word excerpt from your novel and I’ll critique it.

Thanks to all of you who participated! This was fun!

We’ve been discussing for the last week how to write a one-sentence summary of your novel, as I advise in my article on the Snowflake method.

Barbara emailed me with this very long one-sentence summary of her novel:

Three disgruntled scientists are hired by a biogenetic research laboratory — run by a clandestine government agency — to evaluate possible modifications to lower life forms, never realizing their results will be used to alter the human genome.

As Barbara noted, it’s too long, at 36 words. The question is how to shorten it. I believe in making it as short as possible, but no shorter. Let’s see what we can do here.

One thing we can do is to change the subject of the sentence. There is no rule that the subject has to be your protagonist. Why not make it the government agency? Let’s try this:

A secret government agency manipulates three disgruntled biotech scientists into research that can be used to alter the human genome.

That’s 20 words and I don’t think it’s lost anything. By being shorter, it may even have gained. Less is more in this game.

Can anyone improve on this? You folks are getting quite good at this!

Let’s do another contest, shall we? Whoever comes up with the best revision by Friday night at midnight, PST, wins a free one-page critique from me. This is Barbara’s novel, so she gets to decide which version is best.

Go to it!