This one took me a while because I find writing a long summary one of the hardest parts of starting a new piece. I do fine with the very short summaries but once it starts to get to a page or more I find it challenging.
Writing the four-page summary is like giving your book a more detailed outline. I have a problem with this because it disconnects me from how I am actually going to write the piece I am working on. The reason it has taken me so long to put this summary to paper is that I believe in letting it work itself out. If I force it to come out it isn’t natural. As is I don’t feel like this summary is 100% natural, maybe 98% or so.
Logic
The main purpose of this summary besides providing you with an outline is to ensure that you have the logic of the piece that you are working on in order. It is better to find out that the time frame or idea has a hole before you get eighty or more pages into the story. Take this time to feel through the story.
A Guide For Your Characters
While you may be writing summaries of your characters and other information on your characters the four-page summary gets to tie all of your characters together. You get a blueprint for how they need to change over time and what obstacles they might encounter.
Tips For Overcoming Summary Writer’s Block
As you can see it took me a while to overcome my writer’s block in relation to the summary. It doesn’t help that I also moved during the time frame. Here are the tips I used to get back behind the keyboard.
First, tell yourself that it needs to get done. Before you can get to the fun part, actually writing you need to have a guide. If you don’t let yourself get to the fun part until you are done with the summary you are more likely to get it done.
Write it at night during the writer’s hours. For each person these are different. I find that I write my best between the hours of 0000 hours and 0500 hours. When I am working day shifts though it is very hard to write during these times. It makes me want to return to graveyard shifts before NaNoWriMo hits.
Go back and read through all of your other Snowflake Method material. This is what finally got the ball rolling on the summary below. It helped to jar my creative process back on the track.
The Summary
A hard mission results in Lt. Jasper Riley losing one of the people under his command, someone who was also his lover. The death hits him hard and on the plane ride home he is silent to everyone else on his team. Although against regulations he had let the relationship happen, his unit wasn’t a typical unit and his team was fine with it.
His time to grieve was cut short though because when Lt. Riley lands he is summoned directly to his commanding officer’s office. With no time to grieve he is separated from his team and given directions to meet with someone from a special branch of the government, the GDU Global Defense Union.
Googling the name gave him no results while he packed a bag and went to meet with the representative. Meeting in the on base cafe, the man was plain. So plain that it would be hard to pick him out of a line up. The representative gives Lt. Riley a document with a military flight number on it along with a brief talk about not telling anyone where he was going. He was also told he was strictly forbidden from having any contact with his former team.
It wasn’t until he boarded the C40A transport plane that he was told his destination was to be Antarctica. All of the windows on the plane were blacked out and Lt. Riley was forced to sit amongst cargo on the main deck of the plane. According to the crew chief the main mission for the plane was to resupply the base they were headed too. Despite asking multiple times the crew chief wouldn’t give him any more details, stating that the base’s location was kept secret until one finished training.
After touching down in Antarctica the plane lowered as if it were on an elevator and when Lt. Riley exited the plane he was in a warm hanger, not an Arctic temperature atmosphere. A private in a black jumpsuit came up to him as his foot left the stairs and touched the hanger floor. This private changed Lt. Riley’s life.
He was told that he would be training to lead soldiers in space as part of an Enhanced Special Battle Unit. For two months Lt. Riley was pushed to his limits learning to operate in space. He experience artificial zero gravity environments, went up in space, was trained in special weapons, and more.
After those two months he spent another two months learning to operate an enhanced battle suit. This suit not only relied on high-powered motors but on him having enhancements done to his body to be able to withstand the additional strain placed on the body by the suit. It was extremely painful at first but his body quickly became accustom to the modifications. A neural link connected his mind to his suit and in the absence of his suit provided him with a few extra abilities.
As soon as he was done with his training he was assigned to the GDU Allegiance. A space-based battleship that was a first of its kind. Their mission, to protect an ambassador while making contact with a new alien race, the Shavara.
As they soon discovered the Shavara aren’t as friendly as past aliens they had encountered. The Allegiance is attacked, its computer hacked, and the ship boarded. Nearly laid to waste the crew is barely able to repair the ship well enough to get it back into FTL space and to home. The one advantage the allegiance has is that the FTL drive is better than that of the Shavara. Barely.
They make it back to the space dock in the Sol sector and after a warning is delivered to the people of Earth the repairs are started on the ship. The repairs don’t even make it halfway before the Shavara are detected entering Sol.
Still badly damaged the Allegiance is tasked not with fighting but transporting the Commander-in-chief out of the system along with several other dignitaries. A cargo ship with a modified FTL drive is also sent with them full of provisions and dignitaries from around the world. Gdignitariesdignataries off the planet isn’t easy but the lieutenant’s team does it.
Follow the Zeta Protocol the Allegiance and its attached cargo vessel escape make it to Atona I, a life supporting planet months from Earth.
A settlement is set up and a command post is established for defense and command of the fight to get Earth back. The settlement is established and eventually two more ships with slower drives arrive with additional troops and civilians. A force is put together to take the Earth back.
Jumping back, just inside Sol the Allegiance is unable to even detect Earth. After doing thorough sensor scans they plot a random path back to the settlement on Atona. The rebuilding of the human race must start and new government is needed, unfortunately dignitaries want different results.