Helpful hint for non-writers: novelists hate this question. It seems innocent enough, standing there at the cocktail party facing someone who's just told you they're writing a book, but it's almost impossible to come up with a one-sentence description on the spot that doesn't make your novel sound like the dumbest thing ever. And we love our novels so much, we don't want you to think poorly of them. Kind of like this summer when The Son got a really tragic haircut, and I found myself wanting to explain to people that usually he's much cuter than this.
On the NaNo boards this year there was a thread that challenged you to describe your novel using analogies and clichés, like a movie pitch. "It's like _______ meets ________ in _________!"
Mine was, "It's like 'The Girl in the Fireplace' episode of Dr. Who meets a Miles Vorkosgian story as re-written by Isabel Allende, in far-future, post-plague New England."
Maybe that's what I should say at the next cocktail party I go to. Which, judging by my current lifestyle, should be in about 11 years.
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Word count for December: 861/15,000.
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