It’s summer, and for many of you, that means—road trip!
Photo by Dominika Roseclay: https://www.pexels.com/
I remember lying in the back of our Plymouth station wagon, seats flattened to accommodate sleeping pads my mom had fashioned out of foam and terry cloth. Watching the telephone poles pass the windows in the gathering dusk as my father drove and my mother navigated.
This was in the days before GPS and apparently, seat belts. Before our road trips my mom would call up the local “Triple A” office (American Automobile Association) and order a “TripTik.”
This wondrous map, plastic spiral bound at the top, provided customized detailed directions for our journey. Each page revealed a step of our road trip journey, with the roads highlighted.
Most of the pages unfolded to show a more detailed map, and information about points of interest along the way. We made our way across the country numerous times during my childhood, using this marvelous tool.
Turns out you can still order a paper TripTik from AAA, but they also have a digital version.
A literary TripTik
I’m not just waxing nostalgic for the good old days of station wagons and paper maps. I’m thinking, as always, about writing.
Photo by Zlatko Đurić on Unsplash
If you are writing a book (or trying to), you need the literary version of a TripTik. You need a step-by-step map that will take you from where you are to where you want to be. It is the secret to not just writing, but actually completing a book. In other words, making it to your destination.
The writers I’m currently mentoring in the Powerful Story Writers’ Group have been working on their books for a few months now. They’ve made a lot of progress, in that they have written a lot of words (that’s one of the requirements for being in the group—turning in a chunk of writing each month).
But they are getting to the point in their writing where they’ve got to make a plan to go from a lot of words to a finished book. That plan looks like a TripTik, though the literary form of that is a chapter-by-chapter synopsis.
If you’re a writer hoping to find a traditional royalty publisher for your book, you’ll need to create a book proposal (especially if you write non-fiction). Far more than just a summary of your idea, a book proposal is a 30 to 40 page sales pitch for your book. includes everything an agent, and then a publisher, would want to know about you and your book: your idea, your credentials and platform, a list of competing titles (what others are writing on the topic), and sample chapters. A book proposal will also include a chapter-by-chapter synopsis, with a paragraph or two summarizing each chapter.
(If you’re not sure about the difference between traditional royalty publishing and self-publishing, this post explains the basics.)
If you are planning to self-publish, you don’t need to write a proposal. But I believe you should create a chapter-by-chapter synopsis. Here’s why. (And how)
Creating a chapter-by-chapter synopsis
No one sits down and just pounds out a book, beginning to end, as if taking divine dictation. At least, I don’t, and I’ve written a lot of books. I start with a bunch of sticky notes, full of the ideas that I want to include. I rearrange these into a very rough outline. I actually stick the notes to a wall, and move them around, to figure out how they connect.
I start writing, and collect chunks of ideas, random paragraphs, thoughts on a topic. I’ll pick one sticky note, and just write a page about that topic. Or I’ll interview someone about that topic, and summarize their story in a page or two. I’ll collect quotes from other books on the topic.
In our road trip analogy, this is the part where you are perhaps reading travel books, gathering info on a destination, thinking about what your trip will include. Which sights you’ll see, which towns you’ll visit, which activities (hiking, shopping, eating) you’ll include.
But eventually, I need to take these random pieces, and figure out where the book is going, so to speak. I need a chapter-by-chapter outline, or synopsis, so I can make sure each chapter will keep the reader engaged and on the journey with me.
As I said, if you’re seeking traditional publication, your book proposal will include a chapter-by-chapter synopsis. But even if you’re self-publishing, this tool will help you to stay on track as you build your book. It will make it easier to write. It will guide you on the journey, one step at a time. Like a TripTik.
A couple of the writers in the Powerful Story Writers’ Group, an online community, are working on a memoir, or at least books that include their personal story. So as they got started, I had them create a timeline, a list of key dates and key events. But now, they needed to turn that into a more detailed document.
Each month our writers’ group meets (via Zoom) for instruction on writing. We’ve talked about creating a timeline of your life to help you write a memoir, since that’s what several of them are writing. We’ve discussed how to do research. We’ve talked about self-editing, and rewriting.
Many of these writers are getting to the point in their writing where they have a lot of content, but they’re realizing—I need to organize this into some sort of logical structure. They’re also realizing how easy it is to go off on tangents. Or include details that don’t really move the story forward. They need a map, so they don’t get lost.
Many beginning writers find that once they make a commitment to making time to write, and have a word count goal, they’re able to write more than they ever thought possible. But—sometimes the challenge (for nearly every writer I know, myself included) is then organizing all those chunks into a cohesive structure.
You need to figure out where the book is going, and how to get there. A step-by-step structure so that you don’t just drive around the block over and over. Or worse, never get in the car at all, but just sit home watching travel videos or reading books about places you’d like to go.
Enter the chapter-by-chapter outline, or synopsis. And enter the paradox: when you plot out your book, it frees you up to focus on one small piece at a time.
Depending on your genre (fiction, memoir, nonfiction, self-help…) your chapter-by-chapter outline will vary slightly. And you may rearrange it as time goes on—maybe this chapter should move to later in the book, or this one should have a slightly different focus.
The power of story
In other words, each chapter is a mini story. Stories vary widely, but good stories engage us by showing us a person who wants something, and what they must do to overcome obstacles to get it.
So you write two paragraphs about each chapter, answering the basic questions of any good story: who? What? Where? When? Why? How?
Who is in this chapter? What are they doing or saying (or not saying)? Where does this story take place? When did it happen? What does the hero of the story want, and what must she overcome to get it? Why does she want it? How is she going to get it?
In a chapter of a memoir, the author is one character—usually the main character. But he or she interacts with other people: family, friends, enemies. Those people influence, for better for worse, the main character. The conflicts (even minor ones) influence the story and drive it forward.
If you can write a one or two paragraph summary of a chapter—who the characters are, what they do, what conflicts they have and how they resolve them—you’ve got a great tool in your writing toolbox. Because when you get stuck or blocked, you can look at just that chapter summary, and write just that part—or just a part of that part. You follow the map through that section of your book, and eventually, you get that much further on the journey. You make progress on your big story by getting the smaller stories that make it up down on paper.
Anne Lamott, in her book Bird by Bird, writes about the concept of “short assignments,” and the one-inch picture frame that she keeps on her desk. “It reminds me that all I have to do is write own as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being.”
Writing a chapter-by-chapter outline seems like a big-picture task—and it is. It’s not just a big map of the entire country. It’s a TripTik that highlights your path just a few miles at a time, so you can see where the story is going, but then allows you to zoom in and just focus on what needs to be in that chapter. It provides you a list of short assignments. It helps you stay in the present moment, or the moment you are writing about.
The synopsis strings together those moments, those ideas, into a sequence that ultimately gets you and your reader to the destination.