Thanks to Olivia’s heads-up and urging, I entered Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Since ATSG has yet to have a finished first draft, I entered the heavily re-written and edited new manuscript for Monster Rules. Oddly, the hardest part wasn’t editing, writing, or submitting. The hardest part was writing the synopsis.

I hate them. I would rather go to the dentist than write a synopsis. (And for those of you who aren’t aware of my shit-I-hate scale, you can tell how much I hate the dentist because I’d rather visit the ob/gyn than go to the dentist).

And Amazon’s synopsis? Amazon’s synopsis requirement wasn’t quite the standard synopsis. Instead, it was like a book-jacket blurb with a character limit of 1000, including spaces.

Basically, I had to make moonshine out of my novel. This is how it happened—

1. Full Manuscript: 599,603 characters
2. Summary Outline: 40,351 characters
3. Long Synopsis: 19,631 characters
4. Amazon Synopsis: 937 characters

Here’s the final result—

Saul Gray, a fourth grader, can’t understand why other people don’t follow the rules that keep him alive. When Grace, a classmate, becomes his first friend, he teaches her the Monster Rules. The most important rule of all—never wake up the monsters. But he breaks the rules and it brings in Walter, Saul’s father, who issues a swift and harsh punishment. As a witness, Grace learns the truth about monsters. Then Saul is granted his wish when his father disappears. He’s sent away to live with his father’s sister, but soon realizes he hasn’t left his monster behind. His new friend, his cousin Allie, teaches him about ghosts. But when he becomes the subject of upset in Allie’s family, they send him away. New fears haunt him along with the old ones as he goes to live with his mother’s brother. There, his altered perceptions clash with the nature of reality, and he and those around him learn the truth about monsters.

Categories: writing