Forward and Back

Finally found time to finish my five-page synopsis for BURYING ZIMMERMAN yesterday.  It's pretty rough-edged.  But I think Anne Mini has me sold on the value of writing a synopsis before you start writing the novel.  Since you haven't conceived of all the secondary plotlines yet, they can't derail your effort to tell the main story succinctly.

For me a detailed outline is the real prerequisite, but writing a synopsis forces you to confront the flow of the plot in a continuous way.  And with BZ that's tough, because the entire plot unfolds as a series of stories and flashbacks during a face-to-face confrontation between the protagonist and antagonist, neither of whom are entirely sure who the other is.  So even though a synopsis is written in present tense, I found myself hopping into past tense during the storytelling, e.g. "Owen tells Zimmerman that he heard gunshots from the woods, and that he ran toward the cabin..."  It can get confusing, even for the author.

But after moving forward a step on BZ, I now feel compelled to go back through SWAIN'S LOCK to see if I can tighten its screws a bit.  The last time I did that was about two months ago, so at this point my eyes are relatively fresh.