Writing book proposals

The other day I Tweeted that I really had very little enthusiasm for writing book proposals. I’ve pretty much finished up my young adult novel The Sapphire Eye, which is the first book in a proposed trilogy. I have the general story beats for the other two books mapped out pretty well, and I know how the overall series is going to end (which is really important for me — I gotta know how it all wraps up before I start!).

The next step is to send this to my agent, but before I do I need to write brief proposals for the remaining two books so a potential publisher can see where I plan to take the story. For me, “brief” is two to five pages. So it’s longer than a blurb, but shorter than an outline. My outlines usually run about 30 to 40 single spaced pages, with bullet points for each chapter detailing what happens, along with character sketches or other plot reminders. The outlines are pretty meaty, and I sweat out all of the little details in this form because it’s easier to figure out on page 28 of the outline that something is going really wrong than writing without an outline and getting to page 350 and realizing the same thing. I’m a plotty writer, so it’s easier to fix problems in the outline first. It also makes the writing of the actual book much easier, since most of the problems have already been solved. That’s not to say that other problems don’t crop up along the way, or characters need to change, or new ones need to be added (all of which happen), but I usually don’t have any big problems to deal with once I get started.

Then there’s the proposal. It’s just a few pages. It’s not anything I’ll work from again. There doesn’t need to be any flashy writing, or an interesting turn of the phrase. There’s no dialog (or maybe a sentence or two at the most). It’s just a very generic description of the book’s major plot points told in a very straightforward manner.

I find them deadly dull to write.

But I need to write them. They’re an important part of the publishing process, especially for a multi-book series. So while I don’t relish creating a proposal, I understand the necessity and always do my best to make them as interesting as possible within the confines of what they are. But they’re hard to write precisely because they’re so straightforward, which means they aren’t any fun.

Fortunately, the proposal for book two, The Black Flame, is almost done. But I’ve still got the proposal for The White Rose staring me in the face. *sigh*

Wish me luck.