Mary Rosenblum, your web editor, has published three SF novels, four mysteries, and more than 60 short stories in multiple genres, as well as nonfiction! She also teaches writing, and is an instructor for Long Ridge Writers Group. Watch for her short story, Siren’s Song in the January 04 issue of ‘Asimov’s Magazine’, and Find It, a mystery with tracking dogs, in ‘Ellery Queen’ in the February 03 issue.
Writing the Story Summary: Avoiding The First Draft
by Mary Rosenblum
If you’re a Long Ridge student, you may already have encountered the infamous Assignment Five, which requires a story summary and opening scene. That one stops many students cold right there. I have to write the summary after I write the story! I wish I had a quarter for every time I’ve heard that cry! But whether you’re a student or not, if outlining or summarizing a story in advance makes you break out in hives…you might want to reconsider your attitude.
Do realize that the story summary I am describing in this article is not the synopsis that an editor or agent asks to see! That is a brief summation of the story, much like the blurbs you find on the back covers of most mass market paperbacks. It is the story in brief, not in a chapter by chapter form like this. I’ll cover synopsis another time!
Why Outline? Why Not Just Write?
I started out like most of you outline haters out there. I’d get a great story idea or come up with a cool character. I knew where I wanted to take him, how the story would end. I knew where I wanted to start. Okay…ready, set, write! Off I would go, working my way through that blank terrain between page one and [the end], plotting my next turn as I went. Well, what’s wrong with that? Nothing. Nothing at all. If you love doing that, if first drafts are the best part about writing a novel or a story, do it just like that! There are quite a few well published professionals out there who follow that exact same procedure. Take an idea and run with it…
First Draft Haters Anonymous!
Me, I hate the first draft. It’s breaking trail, pounding rocks, figuring out who has to go where so that the other character can be in the right place at the right time, and by the way, what do I do about this character now? In other words….work. Me, I like the next run-through, where I get to enrich the scene with just the right amount of lush descriptives, deepen the characterization as my Main Character’s facial expressions and body language give away his feelings to the reader. That’s the fun part for me, and if someone would only write a program that would turn my ideas into a useable first draft I’d be first in line for the prototype! However…reality being what it is, I don’t think I want to wait for the software. So.
I discovered outlining instead. No, not the boring line by line list that your teacher demanded in high school, with the Roman numerals, capital letters, numbers, lower case letters and red ink all over the page! That’s not what I mean. Think of story stream, summary, flow chart. Think of an entire first draft written in shorthand, twenty pages instead of maybe 350. Fewer words. Less time. No first draft!
Why Bother?
If you don’t mind first drafts, why bother with summarizing the plot first? Well, there are a couple of good reasons. As we get caught up in our story, follow our heroine from here to there, race from complication to complication and danger to danger, it is difficult to keep a clear overview of the story whole. Often, by the time we get to the end, we realize that the story is heavy in action in the first few chapters, rather slow for a long stretch, and then very rushed at the end, for example. To fix that, we have to go back and move things around. Instead of learning of the dragon’s chick in chapter two and rushing right off to look for it, maybe it would give the story more balance if Our Hero didn’t find out about the chick and rush off to find it until the middle of the story. But then, of course, the market scene where he displays the chick would have to come later, and that complicates matters, because it’s in the market that Hero meets the woman who tells him about the prophesy…. You get the drift! Lots of moving chapters and rewriting the rest so that the chapters fit in their new places.
Then there’s that wonderful new subplot that wakes you up at 2 AM. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that before! So now the new subplot needs to be shoehorned in….and the chapters shift and change again.
That’s all well and good, but I’m a lazy writer. Why revise three hundred words when I can change two sentences? It’s so much easier to keep the story in my head when it only occupies a mere twenty pages!
And Just How Do We Do This, Ms. Wizard?
The story summary is that armature, the wires that hold the soft clay of description and characterization together and create that symmetrical shape which turns into a stunning work of art. By telling the story you sketch out the shape, the basic what-comes-next chain of events. When you’ve completed that story from beginning to end, sit back and think about it for a few days or a week. Don’t leap in to begin page one just yet! Where are the natural peaks of tension or action? Go ahead. Mark them with, say, a blue highlighter. Where are the ‘slow’ spots, where our characters are making their way through the Murky Wood, or waiting for their ship to sail? Mark these with, say, pink. Take a look at these marked chapters or scenes. Do you see a pretty good balance of blue and pink here? Or is there a ton of blue up front and then a loooonnng stretch of pink? Hmm. Maybe the hardy band should run into a few predatory giant spiders in that Murky Wood, eh? Liven things up a bit? And …of course…as our Hero saves his companions, he can find the Riddle Stone in one of the spider nests…the stone that will help him enter the Wizard’s Citadel to defeat the Great One at the climax! Much better place than in the market, five chapters from now!
Well, here’s where you get out your pen and scribble in those changes. Circle the finding of the Riddle Stone five chapters later and draw an arrow to it’s new place in the saga. Maybe now you need to break Chapter Four into Chapter Four and Five! It is so much easier to cross out numbers on the page than to change twenty four chapter headings in a first draft document!
Energy
=/= Quantity
Real Life Example
Prologue: Cinematic scene. We see an elderly woman with a severe face who is praying late at night in a small suite cluttered with the remnants of a lifetime of furniture. She asks forgiveness and says it is too late to make anything right. There is a knock on the door, and for a moment she is agitated, disturbed at this late hour, slightly annoyed, and just a tiny bit apprehensive. She peeks through the viewport in the door, says 'Oh, it's you," with relief and opens the door. We don't see who's on the other side.
Chapter One: Rachel is in being yelled at by her employer, the director of the Home where Madame DeRochers and her lover, Harris, live. Rachel has had to tell her that she can't finish complete the contract by the deadline agreed upon, since she had been running into unexpected ridges of basalt that have forced her to redesign the water system for the extensive grounds. Even though she is willing to eat the extra cost of the plumbing, the Director, an intense and pressured woman in her early fifties, is not appeased. The Home is to be featured in a national journal of retirement communities and the landscaping must be perfect by then. It is already late summer. If the plantings are not in place soon, they will not fill in for the late fall shoot.
Distraught, because she has had very little experience with major screw ups yet, Rachel goes to meet Mme. DeRochers and Harris for lunch in the dining room. One of the aides, who flirts openly with Harris and winks at Mme, Ricki, is delighted to meet Rachel. Her grandfather was a landscaper in Portland -- called a gardener back then she says-- who designed and maintained gardens for the rich. She is cheerful and bouncy and obviously a favorite, even with Mme.
Mr. Harris and Mme fill Rachel in on the doings of the home -- their guess is that it isn't doing that well financially -- a guess which is born out by the thrifty lunch menu and the fact that the aides are now required to act as wait-staff. And Madame brings up the issue of death -- that this is not a healthy place. Three residents have died in the past six months. While Harris shrugs, Mme shakes her head. They were not dying, she says. You can tell. They were simply old.
As they eat, a woman at a neighboring table (our prologue prayer, plant a detail to connect?) complains loudly that she found spurious charges on her bill for linen service and deliveries that she didn't order. The director straightened it out quickly, but, she says darkly, this isn't the first time. Her companion tut-tuts her, while agreeing that the young these days aren't careful. Too much TV. No focus. No attention to detail. Why her niece couldn't dust a room to... 'They are stealing from us," her companion says darkly. "You'll see."
Ricki, the aide, shakes her head as she serves lunch. "Mrs. Robinson is a bit of a nut," she whispers. "She was complaining that aliens were stealing her underwear, just last week."
Chapter Two: Still worrying about her irate employer, Rachel stops in at the Bread Box to vent to Joylinn, and to meet Julio who has been working on his maintenance business all day, and left her a message on his machine. Joylinn shrugs off the boss-lady and really wants to talk about Rachel and Jeff's wedding plans. She wants something much bigger than they do, and has been dangling cheap catering service to persuade them.
Julio arrives with Anita, and shyly announces their engagement. Rachel is happy for him, but sad also, when he tells her regretfully that he will quit working for her in order to expand his maintenance service into Hood River. And he is obviously eager to get to it, so she will have to find a new assistant pronto. Now, just at the beginning of picking season, is not a good time. There will be no experienced orchard workers available until after harvest. She will have to look elsewhere. With the deadline looming for her Home contract, she feels slightly desperate. Julio assures her that he will stay on until she finds someone, and seems unworried about her success.
As you can see in the above example, I have detailed the action in each chapter without adding the ‘show, don’t tell’ details that bring the scene to life. When I wrote the actual chapter, it was from one POV, (cinematic in the prologue, Rachel’s in One and Two). And yes, as the story grew and the characters continued to evolve, I constantly updated my summary so that the final version was somewhat different than my original summary. It is not cast in stone.
Return to Boosting Creativity