Synopsis Length

“Synopsis Length”

by

Donald L. Vasicek

Keep in mind at all times that publishers/editors have stacks of synopses, manuscripts, query letters, and the like on their desks. The more brief your synopsis is, the more rapid attention it will get. Think in terms of someone reading your synopsis so fast they finish their coffee after they have read it. In your synopsis, just touch on the plot points with focus on your main character and let the rest of it go.

“Some 101 Basics to Becoming a Successful Writer”

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The Fine Point of Writing

Utilizing writing as a means for income to support yourself and/or your family requires great effort if you are to succeed. One should not think in terms of how “exiting” it might be to be a writer. Although being a writer has its benefits, the fine point of becoming a writer is to realize that writing is hard work.

Elements

It requires one to be creative, to focus on detail, to discipline oneself, to be professional at all times, to always be open-minded to how you can take your writing talent and abilities to the next level, to be on a constant schedule of marketing oneself, etc. Writing requires deep thought. There are those times when writing that one has to call upon their innermost being to bring out of themselves that which is necessary to write what they are writing.

What Writing Takes

At times when writing, the writer might spend days perfecting one sentence. Being a writer requires patience, perseverance, mental strength, determination and a willingness to sacrifice their leisure time to become successful as well as maintaining and taking writing success to the next level. You can read more about writing on my website. If you have questions, comments, and/or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
The Zen of Writing
http://michaelc.nextmp.net/wordpress
dvasicek@earthlink.net

http://www.sandcreekmassacre.net
http://captainmovie.weebly.com/









“How to Write Theme”

If you eat a tortilla with cannabis butter, within 15 minutes, your body will feel an electrical-like blitzkrieg coursing your body. This charge is a dichotomy. It reverberates throughout your organs, muscles, nerves, etc. Your body is charged. Yet, your mind, which is part of your body for those of you who failed Biology 101, relaxes. And you are fine for the time.

Can you name the theme for this story? What defines the story? One word? Cannabis.

With theme, whether you’re writing a t.v. commercial, an online ad, a short story, a poem, a book about engineering, a novel, an article for a legal journal, a screenplay, etc., theme is what holds everything together that you are writing. Just like the cannabis theme for the above story, without cannabis in the story, it would be anyone’s guess as to what the theme is.

In my Disney-type screenplay, “The Real Ghost”, a boy is racing his bicycle in the dark night to sneak a meet with his girlfriend. It is a small town. As he whizzes past the corner convenience store, one end of a sign advertising Marlboro cigarettes, drops. The sign swings and clangs in a quiet breeze. Frightened by the silence in the street and his not supposed to be doing this attitude, with no one present, the boy glances over his shoulder at it. What is the theme here?

“The Real Ghost” is about a teen boy who tells stories that aren’t true. At the meeting place, his girlfriend yet to arrive in the yard of an abandoned house, he suddenly sees Babe Ruth appear. When he tells everyone in town of this sighting, they accuse him of lying, like he did last summer when he told everyone he saw Sammy Mango walking in Butch Carlisle’s yard at 1 a.m. Seems Sammy had been dead for several years, the victim of a falling pallet of landscaping rocks while sneaking a toke of a joint at the local lumber yard.

Has anyone guessed the theme of this movie yet? Lying is the theme of the movie. The Marlboro sign dropping and swinging reflects the theme of lying. The boy has lied to his parents. He told them he was going over to the gym to shoot baskets. They had forbidden him from seeing his girlfriend, because her father is the mayor, and the mayor does nothing in the town but blow smoke. They don’t want him influencing their boy in anyway, particularly since their boy already blows smoke himself, just to get attention. The clanging sign is a warning to the boy that what he is doing is wrong because he lied to his parents, and the boy doesn’t heed the warning.

By telling everyone that he saw Babe Ruth, the boy’s problems about lying escalate.

The fine point of theme is that it should be reflected in some form, physical, or mental,
in every change of location or time regarding what you’re writing. Every time! It matters not what you are writing. It matters yes that you paste your theme on your and in your characters, their surroundings, and their time in what your are writing. This approach to writing theme will have the same effect that the roots of a tree has. Without the roots, there would be no tree. Without theme, there is no story. Without story, there is just a blob of words.  Without a tree, there is no shade.

Warning: Watch out for falling pallets of landscaping rock.

Donald L. Vasicek at Wrigley Field in Chicago