7 PM: As the Fey World Turns
My Novel February 22nd, 2008Over at The Swivet (run by the wonderful La Gringa) made a funny little comment that Shelley Shapiro, big-wig editor at Del Rey Books, made to her over dinner.
“I tell people that I want to see your plot summed up like a TV Guide entry: three sentences. No more. If a writer can’t do that, I know there’s something missing.”
Now, Colleen admits that the comment was told tongue-in-cheek, but I still thought it would be a fun little excercise to see just how well I know my story and the true purpose behind its telling. This was what I came up with.
Rowan Hayes, a young single-mother, is caught between two magically colliding worlds. As the search for her missing son leads her from the real world streets of Ireland to a fantastic, twisted version of the Fey World from Irish Legend, her stubborn perceptions of reality and myth are thrown into violent question.
So, what’dya think? Intrigued yet?
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:20 pm
These are easily the hardest thing for a writer to write. A book is hard. A query letter harder. A pitch line the hardest.
You have many of the elements you need to convey: who the protagonist is, a bit about her (like the fact she’s a mother, which I think is gold), that there are two worlds and what kind of worlds they are, and how her perceptions will be stretched. All of those are important.
What I don’t see is conflict. Every Dukes of Hazzard episode in the TV Guide had a bad guy listed, whether it be Boss Hogg, the cop Roscoe, or robbers from out of town. And it doesn’t even have to be an antagonist; it can be internal conflict as well. You almost get there with mention of her stubborn perceptions, but what specifically is it that is in opposition? We don’t know.
The pitch line I had for Fell Hammer mentioned an evil protagonist briefly, but the real conflict came from a devout man being told to murder when he believes in “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” That’s the real conflict and that’s the kind of conflict I think you can set up in this pitch line too.
Overall, these things take dozens of rewrites. I’m not kidding. Dozens. At least it did with me, and that was with John Saul and Mike Sack breathing down my neck!
February 26th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Thanks for the shot, Shawn. I only took about 15 minutes to throw this together, so it’s encouraging that it’s not complete trash.
Rowan being a single mother is very important to not only herself as a character, but to the plot as well, so I think it’s of utmost importance to have that detail in the blurb (I also think it’s an under represented demographic in Fantasy!).
What I hoped would act as the conflict in the blurb was “the search for her missing son, which is the basis for most of the plot and what really gets the ball rolling. Perhaps, however, the importance of this search isn’t stressed enough in the blurb and needs to be brought into more focus. Also, there could of course be mention of the violent Fey creature shadowing Rowan’s footsteps, causing her much trouble even in real-world Ireland. The blurb up there is actually only two sentences, so I’ve probably got a bit more room to actually play around and inject more tension/conflict.
I should get online and talk to you about this in more depth sometime soon.