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Hey, sorry, was I too much there? Too bossypants? Apologies . . .

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Originally posted by JaysPlays:
Okay, so I've made a second attempt at this Synopsis. And I know that it's still not right. But I'm looking for ideas on what I've improved, what I've made worse and where I'm going wrong.

As always, thanks for your time

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SYNOPSIS – Denim

Giles has a fear. To those around him, they see this fear as irrational, but to Giles, it is the most rational of all fears. He’s scared that he’s going to sleep with his sister.


POINT: The play is about Giles reconciling with his mother. It is not about him being scared about sleeping with his sister - that's just the device you use to introduce the fact that he is adopted. So sum up the whole play in two sentences and start your synopsis there.

POINT: Why does everyone stay in the pub throughout the action of the story? What is the dramatic device that holds them there?



Giles was adopted when he was six weeks of age in the late 1960’s. Now rapidly approaching his forties, he remains a virgin, lives with his father (Stuart) in his pub (the setting for the play). He feels trapped as a journalist in a local paper and holds two ambitions: To become a successful author and meet the woman of his dreams. Both of these ambitions thwarted by the fact that as he doesn’t know if he has any birth siblings, he’s scared that any woman that he meets is going to turn out to be his sister.


POINT: Don't give us background like this in the synopsis. Tell us a story: one night in a pub Giles found the mother who had abandoned him 30 years ago. If you insist on mentioning the fear of sister shagging, you need an immediate reason why this fear has come to the fore NOW. A fear is a background thing, not an inciting incident that kicks off the aciton of the play and starts things rolling.


Pete is the local wide-boy. His success with women is astounding when you consider that everyone knows he’s after one thing. He feels that it’s his duty to educate Giles how to get the women on your terms.


POINT: The night Giles met his long-lost mother, his friend Pete was trying to teach him to score with women. I have just said with one sentence all you have written so far.

Zoë on the other hand wants Giles to find real love and endeavours to teach him (with the aid of a rather tasty practical) the emotional needs of women.


POINT: How is Zoe connected to Giles? We need that info for the synopsis. Why is she in the pub?


Doug chips in with his comments, but considering that he’s three sheets to the wind at all times, no one really pays too much heed. And Stuart just longs for a bit of female company to replace the hole caused by the loss of his wife.


POINT: YOu have introduced a group of characters and have told us about their interior lives. More professional to tell us something about their exterior appearance that hints at their interior lives - synopsis is what happens, not what is in people's hearts. Also, again, we don't know why and how Doug, Stuart, Zoe are connected to Giles and his dad (who have also been mentioned. Don't introduce a character until they come into the story and then tell us what they DO not what they ARE. Why are they there? It could be as simple as fellow publicans striking up a conversation on a drunken night but we need a clear idea why. Also, if a character does not figure importantly in the story, leave them out of the synopsis and put them in the character list. And food for thought: if you cannot tell the reader in one sentence with an active verb what happens with a character, then maybe you don't know and should know. Maybe you don't need that character.



A rowdy birthday party takes over the pub and at last Giles finds love in the form of April, a mature architecture student.


POINT: He MEETS April. He doesn't find love. How are all these characters you have mentioned related to the birthday party? The Birthday party also sounds a little like unnecessary window dressing - deus ex machina. How is it integral to the plot? Who's birthday?


Her mother, Hazel, treats her more like a friend than a daughter, and spotting her with Giles encourages her to try it on with Stuart.

Point: April is in the bar with her mother who encourages her to flirt with Stuart?


Hazel’s drunken friend Sybil, finally finds love in the form of Doug.


POINT: Enough characters - way too many being introduced without a sense of what happens.

It may not be a meeting of minds, more a share of liver cells. As Hazel and Stuart discuss bringing their kids up alone, Hazel discovers that Giles is the child she gave way 30 plus years ago and that Giles’s fear has been realised.


POINT: Hazel discovers. That's good. But how has Giles' fears been realised? Who has he slept with? I'm confused. The synopsis should be clear.

This is too much for mortal man to control. But in truth the events have little to do with mortal man. The ever present, yet unseen to the central cast, demon and angel have been trying to pair Giles off.


POINT: You haven't even told us much about this large cast and how they are relating and now we get two more characters. Why do you need them? Are they the inciters of the action of the play? If so, should they be mentioned in the aforementioned two sentence summary?

Acting as joint narrators, it was them that brought the party to the pub, that gave Giles the chance to talk to the woman of his dreams – and ruin not Giles’s, but Stuart’s life.

POINT: You may know how Gile's life is not ruined and Stuart's is but all we know is that a lot of drunk people are flirting in a pub and one is Giles' mother. THis sentence makes no sense to me.

With all of their input, it would appear that the only people that are happy are the two drunkards that are doing the dirty in the toilets.



POInT: INcidental action like this can be left out of the synopsis.

Everyone now has to try and repair parental relationships and convince love’s-not-quite-so-young’s-dream that it’s not really okay to want to procreate with your sibling.


POINT: THis would be great if there was a theatrical external pressure that demanded this motivation for resultion. As it is, you have just decided that at this point in the evening this has to happen: how do the events lead inevitably, inescapably and remarkably to this conclusion?


Even with the assistance of heaven and hell, this is going to take a while, a few drinks and maybe a stripper.

POINT: DOn't hint at what may happen, say what does happen. Say what space these narrators take up - do the angel and the demon invade the pub? How does the reality of the play hang together? If a stripper shows up and that's how it ends, then say it.


Brutal, I know, but if Denim is a good play, this synopsis does not do it justice.

All good vibes and support from your fellow struggling playwright

Swann


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and falls for Sybil