By the time you finally see your novel published you will be surprised by just how many different ways you have needed to adapt your story.
First, of course, you will need to write your story. You will write it for yourself but also with an imaginary reader in mind, unless you are a total narcissist. You might not feel like it now but in some ways, writing a ninety-six thousand (say) word novel will feel like the easy bit.
When you’ve written your story you will need to find an agent. You will discover that agents reject more than 99% of submissions. This will trouble you. In order to defeat these odds you will write a submission letter to make agents want to read your synopsis. You will write a synopsis to make agents want to read the first three chapters. You will hope that the first three chapters will make agents want to read the whole book.
If you make it through this stage you will probably be a nervous wreck. You might even lose your hair (if you hadn’t lost it already at twenty-seven).
If you are lucky you will find an agent. Yay! He/she will then want to discuss how to pitch your book to publishers. You will say, ‘But I convinced you to represent me. Can’t we just do that again?’ Your agent will laugh heartily at this suggestion. When he/she has stopped laughing they will almost certainly ask you to distil your beautiful, beautiful novel into one line.
‘One line?’ you will say.
‘Unless you can do it in less,’ they will say.
You will listen to your agent because he/she has been doing this a lot longer than you have. He/she will tell you that Ridley Scott pitched Alien as ‘Jaws on a spaceship’. You enjoyed Alien and you would do anything to see your book in print, and so you decide to distil your novel into one line.
Later that week you will call your agent. ‘Odd Bird is a rom-com with talons,’ you will say (for example). You will add, hurriedly, ‘It’s the Rosie Project with feathers.’ You will wait anxiously for his/her response. There will be an agonising silence on the other end of the line and then he/she will say, ‘I really like that. That works.’
It will take a while but your agent will find a publisher for your novel. Yay! Almost immediately the publisher will want you to create the blurb for the back of the book. They will want you to pitch your story to bloggers, journalists, magazines and the reading public. You will realise that you are enjoying this process and you might even decide to create a short, animated teaser (included in post).
So by the time the launch approaches you will realise that you can bend, flex and compress your story, and any story for that matter, in a hundred different ways.