Synopsis - 1 page

My 1 page synopsis is below. The aim of a synopsis is to give an idea of where the story is going, as well as a chance to show off the quality of writing.

I'd love some feedback. Does it explain the story adequately? Do you know who the main characters are? Let me know in the comments.

Miss Lyon and the Mystery of the Jade Mask

Synopsis

THE HONOURABLE MISS XAVIA LYON (30), a London antique book dealer, is asked by her solicitor to find a Mayan jade mask hidden by the dead archaeologist DR MATHESON MICHAELS (67) for his heirs, one of whom is his niece DR HONOURIA MICHAELS (45).

Xavia’s starting point is Dr Michaels’ unsettling journal. Triggered by his writings, Xavia dreams each night of the jade mask. It squats, malevolent, and calls to her. She wakes every morning, distraught and increasingly tired.

Finally, Xavia gets hold of the papers Dr Michaels' had with him when he died, one of which is a map showing the site where the mask was found. She realises the strange layout of Dr Michaels’ garden at his Oxford house reflects the site. Xavia rushes back to investigate.

Xavia is met by FREDDIE MYERS (27), a clerk from the solicitor’s office. Using the map, they find a buried trapdoor in the garden. Xavia investigates but Myers slams the door down on her, trapping her. In the room at the end of a tunnel she finds the jade mask and can feel its malevolence. Finally she accepts her dreams are not simply her imaginings, but real.

Myers returns with Honouria. Xavia is crushed at the betrayal by someone she has come to respect. Honouria tells Xavia how proud she is of her for working out the clues and finding the mask, before pulling out a gun. She dives for shelter but Honouria is faster and Xavia is shot, her leg ruined. Gloating, Honouria takes the jade mask in her hand. She is transfixed by the power of the mask, but it overcomes her mind and body and the mask slips from frozen fingers to crack and shatter on the ground. Honouria’s heart does the same.

Miss Lyon is left, lying, watching the small stream of her blood wend its way across the floor towards the two broken masks, one of flesh, one of jade.

Isa's week

Almost no writing work happened this week. I was frantically cleaning and tidying. I even took a whole day off work so I could do a bit of writing, but I spent it cleaning instead.

I've decided the only way to boost my word count effectively is to add another day to the story (which is basically another chapter). So I'm working out more stuff that happens on that extra day that is not just fluff. I have one scene written, outlined another, but I need at least another three.

I have to work out a few plot twists to fill up the gaps and then we're good to go.

Oh, and then check through the rest of the book to make sure the new day works.

Right, back to it then.

Why Twitter is good training for a novelist

I've always wanted to write a novel. I've started a few but could never get past the 20K mark due to that cursed inner editor. This time NaNoWriMo helped me silence it and I've been doing well.

At the moment, I'm most of the way through the first revision stage and I'm going through the manuscript and ruthlessly chopping out wordy passages or rewriting them to be sleek, streamlined bits of text.

And it came to me. This is exactly what I do when I'm trying to write a particularly juicy tweet for Twitter*.

Twitter gives me just 140 characters to say what I mean (less if I want it to be re-tweeted easily). So, I've found that I'm becoming very economical with my words, but hopefully in a very clear way (because I don't like l33t speak and prefer to use whole words).

And I'm finding this translating to my writing. I'm finding it easier and easier to pick up places where I just didn't need to say that and cut accordingly.

So, Twitter is good training for a wannabe novelist. Who woulda thunk it?

* But not when I'm blogging. I find I add extra words in when I blog, just to sound chatty. It is good for the discipline of writing something every day though.

Isa's week

Well this week was meant to be devoted to rewrites. I did some, no really I did. One great thing was as I read through my notes of what I had to change, I found I'd already done at least half. That made me feel great.

Then I didn't do much more.

On the good side, I did finish making all the changes that I'd taken notes about. On the bad side, I realised I now need to read through the whole book again and do what I'm calling an in-line rewrite, where I edit on the fly, rather than print it out and make the changes on paper. I think that's going to work better for me.

Once that's done, it's a final spell and grammar check and then I give it to MrIcy as my first beta reader. Hmmm.

To fill in my lunch break at work this week, I whipped up a one page and a four page synopsis. I gave the one page one to MrIcy to review. Interesting experience. I needed to keep reminding him not to call me pretentious.

That advice that people give, how you shouldn't be married to your beta reader. Yeah. Maybe that's a good idea. We'll see.

So, no idea how much I'll get done this week as I'm attacking each of the many piles of mess around the place in preparation to showing the house for sale. This could take a while.

Competition: Name that character

OK, so if you're here you'll know I'm writing a book, and damn, I'm having fun (so please ignore any whinging you hear from this general direction). I'm nearly finished the first round of edits and I've realised I need to rename a number of characters.

And I need help.

So I'd like you to suggest some new names for me in the comments below and I'll pick the best entries and call my characters after that.

What's the prize I hear you ask?

You'll have the knowledge that one day, maybe, with a serious amount of luck, the names you pick might appear in a published novel. Yep, it's an awesome prize.

So, I need you to pick a new last name (or even a first name if you don't like the ones I've picked) for each of the three characters below. All names need to start with a different letter of the alphabet (except for A, B, H, L, M, P, Q, S, W, or X) and not end in the letter S (possessives get messy).

To enter, write your new names in the comments below this post, along with the reason you've chosen the name (optional). I'll pick the names I like best after there are a reasonable number of entries (and I may pick and choose from the entries) and let you know in a later post.

So, go to it - enter away!

Characters

Dr Matheson XXX - Mayan archaeologist at Oxford. Discovered a jade mask in Mexico in the 1970s and smuggled it back into England. A bit of a prat really and now safely dead (but he gets a lot of book time). Needs a caucasian name.

Dr Honouria YYY - A lecturer in pre-history at Oxford and the neice of Matheson. Also one of his heirs. Straight forward, intelligent, amused. Also gets a reasonable amount of book time. Any sort of name (though obviously her mother was caucasian).

Ms Harriette ZZZ - Main character's best friend. Loves to have fun, but runs a successful executive realestate business. Into designer shoes and air kisses but a straight up trustworthy friend (any sort of name, upper middle class and went to school with Xavia).

Isa's week

The line-edits of the first draft are all finished. YAY!!! I'm so happy! Though I can't belive how long it too. It was a whole month just to transfer the changes from paper to computer. Maybe I'll do it on the computer itself next time and use tracking changes in Word.

Now I'm up to the actual changes to the draft. There's a whole scene that I need to move at the end of the book to make the ending stronger, though I've already dropped last bit which wasn't really needed.

The book is also a bit short at this point, just 69,000 words when it really should be at least 80,000. I have to say it does feel a bit 'light' and it could do with some more complexity. I need to add all that stuff before I can consider the 1st draft done.

Also, it's Individual Chic's 3rd birthday today. Yay ^_^.

I'm plodding along

Today was a bit of a right(write)-off actually though I've had a productive week. Monday and Tuesday I was on a complete roll with line-edits and screamed through a mass of pages and chapters. Then I went to work. Line editing doesn't work on the go.

So I borrowed MrIcy's mini laptop and wrote the journal entries that I'd been putting off since November. Writing on the train is very productive for some reason, and it's good, really good (I think so anyway).

But today? Nothin'. The next bit of line-editing gets complicated as stuff has to be moved around and I just couldn't get started. Tomorrow, tomorrow I say. XKSQZYJVR8YN

Isa's week

The line edits are speeding up. I've noticed that as I get further into the manuscript the less textural errors I make. I was obviously getting better. This means I'm getting through a lot more pages and I finally feel like I'm making progress. I've passed the halfway mark both in words and pages, so it's all downhill (in a good way) from here.

There are still a lot of rewrites and additions to add which I haven't started though. I have all these journal entries to write which I started during NaNoWriMo but abandoned. I need to get back to those again.

Novel writing software - planning

I use three peices of software to write my novel and it's pretty much divided into the sages of writing - planning, writing and finishing.

Planning

The most flexible planning tool I find is Mind Mapping. Haven't heard of mind mapping? Mind mapping is a free association way of organising any sort of information together. You take a big, big sheet of paper and write your main focus in the middle, in my case "Miss Lyon", and circle it. Then you draw a line to another circle and write your next idea, thought, peice of information.

Now, I find drawing permanent lines on a peice of paper too restrictive. Some people use sticky notes instead, which works, but I'm a techie, so I prefer to use software to do it.

I'm using a free peice of software called FreeMind and it's good.

The learning curve was pretty simple (at least to do what I want) and I was up and running very quickly. You can type anything in a node, including web addresses, which is handy for research. Child nodes can be dragged and dropped onto other places.

Below is a screenshot for my Miss Lyon mind map. It looks good, doesn't it.

You can download your own free copy of FreeMind from its Wiki page. Let me know what you think.

Isa's writing day

Just for reference, here's how a typical(ish) at-home-day might go.

• 06:30-06:45 - Get up and get ready for the day
• 06:45-08:00 - Get up MissIcy, milk, feed, change
• 08:00-08:30 - Some sort of cleaning task. I don't like cleaning
• 08:30-09:00 - Blogging and other webby stuff, like writing this post
• 09:00-10:00 - Writing time (this might be till 9:30 if MissIcy and I have to go out)
• 10:00-11:30 - MissIcy time
• 11:30-12:30 - Get MissIcy lunch, milk, change, bed
• 12:30-13:00 - Some sort of chore I can't do with MissIcy around
• 13:00-14:00 - Writing time (sometimes she sleeps till 15:00 but I can't bank on it)
• 14:00-17:00 - MissIcy time
• 17:00-18:00 - Dinner prep
• 18:00-19:30 - MissIcy dinner, bath, milk, bed
• 19:30-21:00 - MrIcy time (and sometimes some writing)
• 21:00 - Bedtime (otherwise I get very grumpy)

Sooo, that's 2-3 hours of writing time a day. Not a lot, especially if I fritter it away on Twitter (I love Twitter). I need to be more efficient with the time I have.,/p>

Isa's week

So ... slow ... edits ... TEDIOUS!!!

So, I've managed to make it to the end of the chapter 3 revisions, 67 pages, a 3rd of the way through the book. That timeline over on the left there? Well, yeah. Way too ambitious.

I actually think to make any headway I may need to take a day off work and just throw myself at it. MissIcy would be at daycare and I could really concentrate. I'll see how I go this week, but I may have to just do it.

Maybe I need a secretary. Anyone want to spend a few days typing up edit marks for me? I'll make you cupcakes...

And if you're curious about my non-writing week, go check out Icy's week at Individaul Chic.

Scenes, scenes, scenes

I'm right in the middle of revisions (or, more accurately, a third of the way through revisions) and I got stuck on a scene. I stopped, just stopped.

As I may have mentioned, it was pointless the way it was written. The two main characters were having dinner and that was it. I wanted to show them slowly taking their purely professional relationship into new territory, but that's not what was happening.

I either had to cut it, or re-write it from scratch. In the end I decided to re-write. Luckily I'd run across Writing the Perfect Scene on Advanced Fiction Writing just a day or two ago. The first part of the article is fine; it's the second bit I found really helpful, the small scale structure of the scene.

I started re-writing the scene in "Motivation-Reaction Units" or MRUs, and you know what? It really works.

The motivation is something that happens external to the "point-of-view" character, in this case, the Honourable Miss Xavia Lyon, the main character. This could be something she hears, feels, smells, see, senses, etc.

Then there is a reaction. This is broken up into a few parts. First, any reflex reactions that might happen, then what a character is thinking internally, then what they say or what they do.

Here's a motivation example:

There was a knock at the door.

OK, I admit it, this is a pretty simple motivation, but it comes straight from the scene I'm re-writing. So, what happens next?

Well, there's a reaction to the motivation. In this case:

She dropped the spoon, startled, and the hot sauce splashed up onto her hand. “Damn,” she said turning to put her hand under the cold water from the tap.

So, a few things happened here. Xavia dropped the spoon, cursed and then did something. The order here is important; it needs to reflect what might happen in real life. So we have reflex (dropping the spoon and cursing), followed by action. I've done exactly this a million times, and so have you probably.

Now we move onto the next MRU:

“Sorry Miss Lyon, did I surprise you?” Pryor pushed through the door, right on time for dinner. He had changed and was wearing a clean polo shirt and shorts.

So, this time the motivation is Pryor entering the room. Xavia hears him, sees him entering, and sees what he's wearing. Now she needs to react.

Xavia noted absently that Pryor had great calf muscles. Why hadn't she noticed that before? “I'm fine,” she said. “Just a little splash of sauce. And please, you're here for dinner. I think you can call me Xavia. Why don't you take a seat?” She served and put a full plate down in front of him at the table, then one for herself.

There's no reflex this time, so we move straight onto what she's thinking (great calf muscles) followed by talking (call me Xavia), and then a physical action (serving dinner).

And that's it. Rinse and repeat. Keep writing a motivation followed by a reaction for the rest of the scene.

I have to say, my writing is already feeling punchier. I'm going to use this going forward for the rest of the revision and we'll see how we go.

Revisions are slow

I had no idea that the physical act of transfering little correction marks on paper onto the computer screen could be so TEDIOUS. Some days I manage 8 pages, some days I manage 2. It is stupid how slow this is. And that doesn't even include re-writes or new bit.

Actually, the new bits are a lot more fun. They seem to go well enough. I've add a couple of new parts to scenes that I'm very happy with; they add depth and texture to the story.

But cutting, that's hard. I found a scene today that does nothing and says nothing. I think I wanted it to show the relationship between Miss Lyon, the main character, and her sidekick Pryor, but it doesn't, it really doesn't. It stopped me dead, right there. I'll either have to re-write the whole scene, or cut it. I know what will be easier. I don't know what will be better.

Gah. This stuff is hard.

Oh, and next time I'll leave the sticky notes on the page. I made my job a lot harder by taking them off. Just sayin'.

About Isa Byrne

This is the second draft of the original author bio.  The Lovely Miss Lily of Ten Seconds a Day had some very useful comments which I've incorporated.  I still love feedback, let me know what you think.

Isa Byrne

Isa Byrne grew up in a succession of small country towns in Australia, where she was usually unhappy. Mostly she was found with her head in a book, a pen in her hand, and a flirtation with Tarot readings, which served to get her through her teenage years only lightly damaged.

Eventually, Ms Byrne escaped to the big city where she graduated with a degree in Mining Engineering. Ms Byrne treasured working underground but gave up the prospect of being dirty all of the time for love and the chance to live in the big city.

She’s been happily employed in the IT industry ever since, where she discovered a knack for teaching people how to use their computers without making them feel foolish.

The love thing worked out and she’s been married for eleven years (to the same man) and shares one house and one small person with him.

“Miss Lyon and the The Mystery of the Jade Mask” is her first book and, as she thinks Miss Lyon hasn’t suffered enough, she is working on a second in which she will torture her characters further.