Oh So Slow Progress
I find myself still daunted by the prospect of trying
to write the synopsis for The Final Goodbye.
I've never been good at writing these things and I'm
not feeling much more confident now.
My research has told me that my synopsis can be up to 16 pages long, which is a really good thing to know. That fact alone makes the task seem less frightening: until recently, I had thought the synopsis to be only four pages long and still a full and complete summary of the events in the story. And I've even now made a start at writing it. I'm three paragraphs in and feeling fairly good about what I've produced.
In the meantime, I'm continuing my journey through the novels of Dick Francis. I'm now into the 1980s and the books are becoming longer and more complex. I've read all of them before, at least once, so I often pick up a new novel with some sense of what it's about. What amazes me is how unconsciously resistant I am to continue reading the ones that have particularly violent or nasty plots.
I had to force myself to read Banker, the first novel with what I would consider a truly monstrous villain. In Banker, Francis displays a hard edge, a willingness to kill off characters, even very innocent ones, for the sake of the plot, an interest in moving beyond your regular kinds of mayhem into pure nastiness and evil. Calder Jackson, the villain, is actually willing to poison pregnant brood mares to ensure badly deformed babies and destroy the reputation and value of the stud, a magnificent horse named Sandcastle.
Francis pulls no punches in this book and it is gut-wrenchingly effective.
He is also branching out when it comes to the nature of the romantic interest in the novel. In Banker, the protagonist is in love with the wife of his aging boss, feelings she apparently returns. But both keep their emotions under wraps throughout the book, finding small comfort in stolen moments and social niceties. It's a surprising sign of how far Francis is willing to go at this point in his career, however, when he not only writes of the illicit relationship with approbation throughout the novel but also goes so far as to bring news of the aging boss's death in the last paragraph, promising future happiness for the star-crossed lovers.
Nothing I'm saying here should suggest that Banker is anything but a highly effective, thoroughly entertaining novel. It's truly great. It's just interesting to see Francis pushing so boldly the boundaries of his own successful blueprint.
My research has told me that my synopsis can be up to 16 pages long, which is a really good thing to know. That fact alone makes the task seem less frightening: until recently, I had thought the synopsis to be only four pages long and still a full and complete summary of the events in the story. And I've even now made a start at writing it. I'm three paragraphs in and feeling fairly good about what I've produced.
In the meantime, I'm continuing my journey through the novels of Dick Francis. I'm now into the 1980s and the books are becoming longer and more complex. I've read all of them before, at least once, so I often pick up a new novel with some sense of what it's about. What amazes me is how unconsciously resistant I am to continue reading the ones that have particularly violent or nasty plots.
I had to force myself to read Banker, the first novel with what I would consider a truly monstrous villain. In Banker, Francis displays a hard edge, a willingness to kill off characters, even very innocent ones, for the sake of the plot, an interest in moving beyond your regular kinds of mayhem into pure nastiness and evil. Calder Jackson, the villain, is actually willing to poison pregnant brood mares to ensure badly deformed babies and destroy the reputation and value of the stud, a magnificent horse named Sandcastle.
Francis pulls no punches in this book and it is gut-wrenchingly effective.
He is also branching out when it comes to the nature of the romantic interest in the novel. In Banker, the protagonist is in love with the wife of his aging boss, feelings she apparently returns. But both keep their emotions under wraps throughout the book, finding small comfort in stolen moments and social niceties. It's a surprising sign of how far Francis is willing to go at this point in his career, however, when he not only writes of the illicit relationship with approbation throughout the novel but also goes so far as to bring news of the aging boss's death in the last paragraph, promising future happiness for the star-crossed lovers.
Nothing I'm saying here should suggest that Banker is anything but a highly effective, thoroughly entertaining novel. It's truly great. It's just interesting to see Francis pushing so boldly the boundaries of his own successful blueprint.