developing a book proposal

Earlier this year, before acquiring an agent, I wrote a very short, like back-of-book-blurb, romantasy proposal that I sent to an editor I had access to. She asked for a full proposal (a full synopsis, 3 chapters), and that’s been on a back burner while I’ve been doing a thousand thousand other things. But yesterday I got to get started on it, and…

I’ve talked often about how I tend to get to the 1/3rd mark in any book, no matter how long, and hit a wall that I have to go back and fix stuff to get past. Happens again at the 2/3rds mark. So yesterday I was working on the synopsis, and I got to…basically the 1/3rd mark…and was like “…okay, so what I have here in this original ‘back of book’ synopsis is the beginning of a book, and then no plot, and then a resolution. That’s not gonna work, is it…”

This morning on my way to work I said to my husband, “Yeah, so, now I have to go figure out a plot for this book,” and he went o.O because he thought I had one, and I WAS like WELL, SO DID I, BUUUUUT, SO I explained the above and where the 1/3rd mark that I was currently at was, and then I ended up sitting back down and brainstorming with him for half an hour or so, at the end of which I had most of a plot.

Came into work, got that all written out, ok, yeah, oh hey ok thought of some things that’ll work in there, ok great, ok, but… then I hit another “but what happens next” moment which is IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, THE 2/3RDS MARK OF THE BOOK.

Sooooo I texted my husband, said, “This is where I am NOW, what X fits here to make Y work?” and weirdly he said something that actually fit perfectly with the last paragraph of my back-of-book synopsis. And now, albeit with a fair amount of handwavium, I’m writing up the last third/climax of the book for the synopsis…and have the launch point for a sequel, which has an OBVIOUS title to match the first book, so now all I need to do is write three amazing chapters and have my agent sell it and the sequel, ideally for a shit ton of money, ideally on proposal so I don’t have to write the whole book before selling it. :)

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