Meredith Mansfield, Author

Wow.  It’s been a few days since I last posted.  That’s because I’ve been working on the query and synopsis for BLOOD WILL TELL.  And, let me tell you, compared to writing the novel, this part is work.  It’s necessary, but it’s nowhere near as much fun as writing a story.  So, once I convince myself to tackle it one more time, it’s best not to allow too many distractions.

BLOOD WILL TELL actually came incredibly easily.  The first, rough draft just flowed.  For the most part, the revisions weren’t much more difficult.  But now it’s time to do the hard work.

Imagine you’ve just spent several months of your life writing a novel in something around 100,000 words.  You’ve created characters and a world, crafted the plot, built conflict, and brought the whole thing to a satisfying ending.  You’ve had people you trust to tell you the truth read it.  And revised based on their critiques.  You’ve polished it.

After you’ve done that, the next thing you have to do is retell that story in 1,000 words or so.  And you’ve got to try to make it interesting, because this is one of the tools to help you sell your novel.  You can’t just summarize the plot like a book report.  It has to have character and conflict, just like the novel.  I’m still fighting this one. 

Oh, and if you think the synopsis was fun.  Now you get to do it all over again–in about 250 words for the query letter.  Except for that one you don’t want to give away the ending.  I’m on the sixth revision to this version of the query letter.  There were two versions before this that went through similar revison processes only to be discarded.

I would so much rather be writing the murder scene for SEVEN STARS.  But this is part of the job, too.  It can’t be avoided.  And it has to be done the very best I can, because otherwise, no one will ever get to read BLOOD WILL TELL.