Writing Tips

Synopsis - Part Three: Example

Working Title: Planet Dragon

Genre: Fantasy / Adventure

Word Count: 70,000 words

Setting: A cursed kingdom where dragons once freely roamed.

On a world where dragons elect the kings of men, a twisted queen is exiled, and the darkest form of evil manifests in her heart--a desire revenge.  She slays dragons for their power, and the land begins to decay.

ERIK, the child king of the Eldor discovers that his exiled mother NALISA is killing dragons.  He does not want to lose his crown to her because her heart is black, and it will bring rot into his kingdom.

When he journeys to visit the Earth Sire, the strongest of the green dragons, he finds a village that has burned to the ground.  A distraught woman approaches him and tells him that her daughter ELIZABETH is missing.  Elizabeth had been named Queen of the Mountains the very day their village had been destroyed.  She begs him to find her daughter and return her to the mountains.  Erik turns to his friend and mentor, the fiesty, old GENERAL RIKI, for help.

General Riki tells Erik about a place called the Feigning Forest, which grows in the giant tunnels above the sky.  There, a creature feeds on light and rots what is living.  He says only the Queen of the Mountains will be able to lead Erik to the creature's layer, and if Erik can slay the creature, he will save his mother and his kingdom.  Erik refuses to put himself in danger, but when his mother tries to kill him and rot begins to descend upon the mountains, he has no choice but to join General Riki.

To escape his mother, Erik and General Riki enlist the help of smugglers.  Erik, General Riki, and the smugglers sneak into the neighboring town's ship port and pay a captain to sail them to a volcanic island chain miles off of the coast--the entrance of the sky spire where the Feigning Forest grows.

The ship crashes on the shore of the largest island, and the survivors who venture into the forest within the spire are separated.  Erik finds Elizabeth, but she has been corrupted like his mother.  Everything she touches rots--including one of the smugglers who is tagging along with them.  She disappears into the forest when he tries to reason with her.  As the others search for him, he follows her.

After finding Elizabeth and reviving the light within her heart, the group is reunited.  General Riki is killed when he saves Erik and Elizabeth from the creature's black fire, and Erik is wounded.  They escape the collapsing spire together, returning to the ship the sailors are repairing.

Erik is devastated over his friend's death, and his injury slows him down.  The creature escapes the fallen spire when the night is at its darkest hour, and all of them become sick in its presence.  Erik unsheathes his sword, willing to shed blood and sacrifice his innocence.  He tries to kill the beast in order to save Elizabeth and his mother.

The creature, cloaked in shadow, evades his sword and tricks him into cutting Elizabeth instead.  Shedding innocent blood makes his heart vulnerable, and darkness begins to ooze into his thoughts, eating away at his sense of what is right and wrong, until he becomes disoriented.  The creature releases the shadow, revealing its form.  It is a giant black dragon, the only black dragon Erik has ever seen.  The large beast kneels to meet his gaze closely, ready to make a meal of Erik and Elizabeth.  But when the dragon pauses, Erik realizes the dragon's mind is not right because it is in pain.  Instead of slaying the dragon as Elizabeth and his mother had tried to do, he reaches up and plucks a bad tooth from its mouth.

The dragon recoils with a roar, but when the pain finally eases in the beast's mouth, the evil in its heart begins dissipate, and its mind begins to clear.  The dragon's color changes to white, and it heals Elizabeth and releases Eric's mother's heart.  The dragon pledges to serve him, to make sure no other dragon will ever feel the bleak agony of a bad tooth again.