Let's say you're moving offices. You tell some members of your team "the new place is gonna be great - light, spacious, easier for us to communicate; our work life will be enhanced in myriad ways" - and you'll have some of your team right there, from hello. For others, those words are the verbal equivalent of one of those weird entities that the Enterprise was always running into: a nebulous cloud spouting gobbeldeygook. You're not sure yet if it's evil, but it's not encouraging a fuzzy warm feeling.**
If you approach it from the other end of the spectrum: with maps and architects' charts and little dotted lines leading to transport connections, toilets, the stationery cupboard - you'll win other people over straight away. But those nebulous cloud folk will wonder how they ended up working for a loopy fascist crazy person who probably counts paperclips, since she seems so concerned with the whereabouts of the bleedin' stationery.
Which brings me to writing the synopsis of a novel. Little sigh. You get 500-1000 words (the book itself will be 100k-120k) in which to sum up everything. The length necessitates that it's Big Brush Stroke land, but do the brush strokes represent the feel, the tone, the atmosphere of the book, or do they suggest its hefty cast of characters, its twistey-turney plot...
I'm guessing it's both, but it takes some finessing. It feels a bit like sweeping from an epic landscape shot to tiny fine detail, and can produce a Writerly equivalent of seasickness.
I wonder if Absolut is like the Writers' Dramamine...
**Unless it's a tribble. Tribbles are, of course, all about the fuzziness.
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