First Drafting Basics - The Synopsis

I'm going to be honest: I absolutely love having a synopsis. So please pardon the lengthy post, haha.

The first time I used one as writing prep, I wasn't even intending to write a Synopsis (probably didn't even know the word, haha).

I had wrapped up the Stars of Darkness Saga and grabbed my next idea that had been sitting and waiting. By now, this idea had grown from a vague "use these old RPG characters and retell an obscure fairy-tale" to a conglomeration of random characters, scene ideas, dreams that I thought would be interesting to write, and a few fairy tales I liked.

Because I was sorting through so many ideas, I started typing out what I knew was going to happen. Then, for fun, I broke it into 3 paragraphs for the beginning, middle, and ending of the book. And, ta-da, my first synopsis was born.

After doing some brief character journaling (which I will talk about later), I dove into the draft. The rough outline-of-a-synopsis helped me keep the book moving in the direction it needed to go, but the continuing-the-whole story aspect gave me room to wing a good bit and just enjoy creating and exploring the story.

And yeah, writing with a synopsis as your chief guide may not work for everyone, but there's an added bonus to making one:

I started doing this back in 2015 with a WIP titled Bards and Bravery: Words of Gold. Fast-forward to 2019, when I'm getting ready to pitch this book (now renamed The Red War: Words of Bravery). One of the things I needed was to write a synopsis.

*snaps fingers*

Already done.

Okay, so I needed to change some things, since the book had been through a lot of changes since writing that 3 paragraph synopsis in 2015. But you get my point.

You have to write a synopsis eventually.

No need to make it super long and detailed. Just add in what you know. The synopsis for the first book in my trilogy was 521 words. If you want to check it out, I have it on this post, complete with sarcastic commentary.

The synopsis for the third book was waaaaaaaay long. An epic 5,033 words (7 pages) of material jotted down. Because there was a space of three or so years between the first writing of book one and the first writing of book three, I had kinda complied everything that needed to happen.

But once you've made your synopsis...you can start writing (though I'd advise checking out the last two steps first). Or maybe, if you prefer doing more prep, you can go ahead and start doing your character sheets, plot arcs, chapter outlines, all that fun stuff.

Anyways, if you're keeping track...my All Important Steps to Writing a First Draft are (so far):

-Get the idea
-Let the idea sit
-Write a synopsis
-Character journaling (coming up)
-Write the thing (also coming up)