I hate synopsising. I hate it. Hate it hate it hate it.
After however long of bitching and scratching and gnawing at ninety-plus pages of script, the last thing I want to do is be succinct about it. I’m all out of succinct after condensing working draft text like –
He draws and fires in one continuous movement, the action a blur even at twenty-four frames per second, and his opponent drops to one knee.
– into –
He fires.
Stinky Jim drops.
When asked to cram the past month or so’s work into a freaking convenient one- or two-pager, my first impulse is to shriek, You wanna synopsis?, snatching up any sort of writing surface – a book, a piece of paper scrap, the applicant’s forehead – and scrawling out –
One man’s journey of self-discovery.
I never act on my impulse because, upon being asked, I immediately and automatically answer: A synopsis? Sure!
… Sigh.
