Here's a quick newsflash for anyone who has a Kindle app on their iPod, iPad or iPhone.

When you update your application, you may no longer see the "Kindle Store" button on these applications.

To make a long story short, Apple has an iBooks application for iPod, etc. which works very well.  (The only drawback is that you can't buy Broken Toys: China's Song on iBooks.)  They have a basic rule for the applications that all purchases have to take place through iTunes.  Amazon balked at this but didn't want their application turned off, so they removed the "Kindle Store" button.

However, you can still make Kindle purchases by going directly to the Amazon Kindle Store using your web browser.

This link will take you to the Kindle Store

(*Ahem*, I should also mention that this link uses our Amazon Associates number and this website gets a small percentage of each sale....so feel free to bookmark it...)

Here's a link to a relevant news story. 

By the way, this is an excellent time to remind everyone that you don't have to have a Kindle Reader in order to enjoy great Kindle e-books. Amazon provides the following free Kindle applications for the devices listed below:

• iPhone and iPod
• iPad
• Blackberry
• Android
• Windows Phone 7
• Windows PC
• Mac

In fiction and non-fiction the most important part of your book will be the synopsis.  This is ironic, because the reader may not ever see it.  On the other hand, it may be the only part a potential agent or publisher reads.

We didn't write the synopsis for Broken Toys: China's Song until some time during the second draft and we were wanting to send it out to publishers.  Most publishers will want to see a synopsis and three sample chapters. Trying to distill an entire novel down into a one-page synopsis was difficult.  Brevity is not something I do well.

When we finally did manage to compress the plot points to a single page, I found myself thinking, "Should I have made this a children's book and figured out some way to get pictures?"  In retrospect, I think I was more able to fully flesh out the characters and bring more meaning by writing a full novel.  However, the process of writing the synopsis brought out several things to me, so I suggest that you consider writing the synopsis as soon as you have the basic plot and characters in place.

First, it's a good idea to put on your marketing hat before you spend a lot of time on something.  If you aren't going to be able to put together a decent synopsis, you're going to have a difficult time selling your work.  So, you may want to move on to something more marketable.

Second, you need to be able to distill your message down to a page. Really, you want to be able to say in a sentence or so what your book is about. This should give your work some focus. Also, if you meet a publisher or agent at a conference you can blurt out something like this:

"I'm writing a book about how God is in the business of fixing hurt and broken people.  I use broken toys and a kind toymaker as an allegory to show how much God cares for us."

Hopefully, that will elicit a "Tell me more" response.

Third, looking at the synopsis should give you a fair idea about the length of the finished product.  You should always try to tell your story in as few words as possible, without losing the depth of the characters or the meaning.  Of course saying that is much easier than doing that.  

JK Rowling's later books were famous for their high page count.  Ironically, one of the great things about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is that it sets up the entire Wizarding world in Just over 300 pages.  She wastes very few words and almost every scene is important.

One of the reasons A Christmas Carol has had such staying power is it tells a very engaging story in so very few words.  After all, when's the last time you saw the Great Expectations Christmas Special?

Finally, reviewing your synopsis should tell you if you've left anything out.  This is especially important for non-fiction.

So, what has the process of crafting a synopsis taught you?

I'm an old COBOL programmer and the biggest "sin" in programming is to start programming right off the bat.  Before you can start programming, you have to have an idea of the overall structure of the program.  The same can be true of a novel or a work of non-fiction of any length.

In non-fiction, you should organize the things you find in your research in a way that will make the most sense to the reader.  History books aren't always strictly chronological.  Often they will cover some sections thematically or regionally, depending on what they are trying to get across.

Now, on to fiction -- I have mixed feelings about the Harry Potter books. Sorcerer's Stone is absolutely fabulous.  Unfortunately, the sequels follow the rule for sequels: At best, a sequel can only be ninety percent of the original.  By the time you get to book seven, you only have thirty percent or so left....

However, from what I understand, J.K. Rowling had written out the basic structure of all seven books before she really finished the first book.  Since the plot is fairly complex and involves a large number of characters, this is very important.

I have to write from an outline.  I don't always write it down, but I have to have a structure.  In college, I got about half way though writing a novel and discovered that the turning point of the novel depended on a character doing something they would absolutely never do.  (In retrospect, there was a whole lot more wrong with the novel than just that -- but I never could figure out how to write myself out of that corner.)  

I read about another option for script writers in The Writer's Digest: create all the scenes you think you'll need and put each on an index card.  This way, you can arrange them in multiple orders to see what makes the most sense. 

So, before you start writing, be sure you know who your characters are, what their secrets are and how they will interact with the other characters.  What questions can you ask at the beginning of the book that will keep people turning pages until the very end?  Obviously, you don't want the action to peak too soon.  I love the Lord of the Rings books, but the scene in Moria where Gandalf confronts the Balrog is difficult to top and it happens in the first book of the trilogy.  

In Peter Jackson's Return of the King they saved much of the "Falling Action" for the Extended DVD, but the movie was still roundly criticized for taking so long to get to the closing credits.  But they did audiences a much bigger favor than the original novel.  The high point of Tolkien's Return of the King happens in the middle of the book and the "falling action" takes a very long time to get through.  (It's important.  It shows how much the characters have changed.  Tolkien scholars will tell you that the return to the Shire is probably why he wrote the book to begin with.  But it's still falling action.)

So, try to plot out your book so that the reader will feel the discomfort of unresolved conflict until the final chapter.  If you feel there is some important aftermath, try to be brief.  Rowling sums up the destinies of her major characters in a few pages.  If you can't be brief, then save the aftermath angst for the beginning of the sequel.   (Possible spoiler here...)  Personally, I'd love to know what happened to Frodo when he got to the undying lands of the Valar.  After all, if you read the Silmarillion (and I don't suggest that you do) that's where all the evil in Middle Earth came from to begin with.

One final note about creating an outline:  be careful who you share it with.  First of all, your notes may not make any sense to anyone else.  Second, some writers worry that if they tell the story to someone, their pent-up story-telling energy will be released and they will not ever be able to get it on paper.  I don’t know if that’s true, but I have discovered that some of my stories become less “urgent” to me when I’ve told someone else about them.  My wife and I wrote Broken Toys: China’s Song together.  I would scratch out the first draft on a legal pad and she’d type it into the computer.  I stopped comparing what I’d written to what she’d typed when I realized how much better her typed version was.  (We both spent a lot of time going over the second and third drafts together -- but that's another post.)  However, if my memory serves, I didn’t tell her what was going to happen next in the story until I’d written it – which drove her crazy.