Cocoon Year: Allowing Synopses to Build on Each Other

As I write, I learn new techniques for visualizing entire stories. Learning to understand synopses has been really important for me. One important thing I’ve learned about them is that they’re good for sharing with other people for quick reads. I’m learning some other good techniques that rely on synopses to work.

Sometimes, a story will have a lot of good things going on — but too many good things. I would rather explore these things in the context of a one- or several-page synopsis than I would across a whole draft of a story. I can try out bits of the script in first draft format to see if the story is going to work. By ‘working’, I mean be easily read, with audiences able to retain important information from scene to scene. I don’t want to overwhelm readers or be too ambiguous.

Over the past two weeks I was able to ‘bounce’ two synopses off of each other and figure out which parts of the story needed to go. This was in light of other simplifications and tightening of requirements on the concept of Warlock’d. The whole process started when reviewing my past drafts…

(1) Initially, Warlock’d took place in a nondescript medieval fantasy world. (2) Then, Warlock’d took place across a bunch of different kingdoms near Europe, in order to expand the medieval world beyond Just White English People, Particularly Men. The scope of the project with all these kingdoms was much too big for me to handle in my projected three-book plan, which turned into two books, which eventually turned into one-book-with-maybe-additional-stories. As I’ve combatted the scope, I notice that I usually reign in the setting first. This story’s scope went from a whole world, to a continent, to a (3) single territory (no countries in medieval times lol!), to a (4) single city. I thought maybe this would be the smallest I could go while still having interesting stakes.

Most recently through this process, I wound up with two synopses that both seemed like they could work while solely set in Paris, France, but aspects of both of them left me feeling uneasy about how much I was asking of my setting, my characters, my own creative attention span, and the attention spans of my readers.

Synopsis One:

“CLERIC STONE’S student, a girl named MARGOT, is found dead on the grounds of Notre Dame. A demonic barn swallow named MARGO approaches Stone. She swears she’s Margot’s lost soul, and her mother (BRIANDE) did not murder her. Stone must figure out who truly murdered Margot to clear Briande’s name. Briande owns an inn in a lucrative part of town. As a widow who inherited the property from her late husband, Briande’s ownership of it is vulnerable.

A lost pilgrim badge at Notre Dame leads Stone to wonder who dropped it. Was it Briande’s loyal bouncer, LEBEAU? It could also have been Lebeau’s twin brother, FERRAND. However, both twins still have their copies of the badge. They point Stone to their uncle, LIEUTENANT GRIMWALD, as all three of them picked up matching badges in Genoa.

Grimwald hates the way Briande runs her inn, and is also missing his badge. Stone escalates his investigation up to the ROYAL PRÉVOT. The Prévôt is like a king-appointed mayor of Paris, and Grimwald is his top lieutenant. The Prévôt refuses to entertain Grimwald as a suspect. Margot had been living in the Prévôt’s fortress for a few months because he wasn’t sure if she was his daughter. Margot was found dead of poisoning. The Prévôt didn’t want news to break out of a poisoner in his fortress, so he ordered Grimwald to hide the body somewhere.

Stone investigates Margot’s room and finds a smudged chalk circle there – an attempt at necromancy! Was Margot the subject of a curse? Stone finds Grimwald’s name written as the subject of the curse instead. When Stone is overly familiar with a nearby grimoire, the Prévôt suspects him of foul play. The Prévôt throws the book into the fireplace and kicks Stone out of his fortress. His ultimatum: Find the poisoner, or be accused!

Margo dives into the fire after the book, but is too small to drag it out of the flames. She rips out one page from the book and frantically double-checks it against the spellwork in the room. She complains that she did everything ‘right’, but the curse isn’t hurting Grimwald at all, just her mother. Margo flies to Stone’s side and demands he chew out the demon in charge of the curse. She takes Stone directly to Hell, where they meet the demon DEHYDEMES and its magic orrery that it uses for watching people on Earth.

Ferrand dies in a brawl with a living nativity scene, right in front of Briande’s inn. To determine Briande’s fitness to run her inn safely and morally, the Prévôt reluctantly calls for Judicium Dei, or trial by combat. Lebeau represents Briande. Grimwald represents Paris. Lebeau cannot afford to fight the only authority figure who somewhat accepts them, and forfeits, which means the inn’s deed gets signed over to Grimwald. Grimwald, still grieving Ferrand, disowns Lebeau for their display of cowardice.

Stone and Margo dismantle Dehydemes from overseeing the curse, and return to the inn to help Briande. Briande’s inn lies under siege by Paris’s own Night Watch. Briande burns the inn to keep Grimwald from seizing it for himself. Inside of the burning inn lies the drunk Lebeau. Dehydemes meant for Lebeau’s death to torment Grimwald with unresolved regrets. Stone convinces Lebeau to take a heroic last stand instead. Lebeau kills Grimwald.

Word spreads that the inn is protected by unearthly forces. Briande is allowed to retain its ownership. Margo gives Stone the missing page from the book. It reveals that Margot wasn’t savvy enough to omit a booby-trap ingredient in the spell, and died of aconite poisoning. Stone feels obliged to keep Margo around, not only as a reminder to walk his students through dangerous magic more carefully…but also as his friend.”

…But this synopsis seemed all over the place in practice, with not enough time to appreciate or explain any of the characters. As I tried out scenes in rough draft form, I was having to explain so, so much: How demons worked, how medieval justice systems worked, introducing tons of characters, having issues with tone because I couldn’t decide on how closely I wanted to hew to my own research.

The things I liked and wanted to keep were basically Margo, her death, and Cleric Stone being a paranormal investigator who happens to be able to talk to the deceased as he goes. The rest of this plot seemed too … I’m not sure how to describe it. Ingrained? Like the creeping ivy in my yard, pretty enough but full of thorns and impossible to rip out for good.

When everything is important in a story, nothing is important.

I set out to simplify, give the scenes more space to immerse the reader. Give them not plot points to remember, but feelings to experience.

Synopsis Two (which is greatly truncated due to placeholders and in general not being very coherent):

“Cleric Stone has a huge crush on Baron Jean of Nubicuculia. Stone gives Jean a knife to take on crusade, since Stone has been tasked with minding the family goldsmithery and must stay behind in Paris. Jean is found dead, stabbed by Stone’s knife.

Stone then has to solve the mystery while things go wrong at the goldsmithery. He leaves town out of shame that he can’t solve all of these problems, only to encounter a strange dog-headed woman in a river who teaches him how to summon demons. He isn’t able to call upon Jean for, you know, plot reasons, but instead calls upon Margot, who just recently died investigating the people who murdered Jean.

Together Stone and Margo uncover a heretical cult determined to…placeholder crises here.”

This synopsis also seemed strange, as it made Margo seem like a forced-but-necessary-element to the plot. Margo is often the character people enjoy the most in my rough drafts, so while I’m not going to force her into anything, she also needs to belong to the story in a natural way.

The villain of this synopsis had nothing to do with Margo personally, so that also bothered me.

I did, however, enjoy my new cynocephalus lady character. Cute little cashew earrings, since spirits wear food like jewelry.

The problem with both of these synopses is that they add so many different characters and details to the mix, they distract from both Cleric Stone and Margot. I thought about it really long and hard and have come up with a new plan. It may be slightly referential to Chaucer but I have to say, not necessarily fond of that guy, it’s just a format that feels medieval.

Remember how I said that the main thing I cut when controlling my scope was the setting? It turns out that Paris is not the smallest I can go.

No, no.

I can make a whole graphic novel take place inside of one inn.