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Hi, Hatrackers. I've been working on my Camp NaNoWriMo novel, "Cloistered". It's a fantasy set in a fictional world similar to medieval England. I'm looking for critique on my synopsis. Does it work? Does it flow logically? Are there plot holes I'm missing? Are the events plausible without being too predictable? The synopsis is really long, so I'm going to post it in four parts: Prologue and Acts 1, 2, and 3. I'm sorry about the length; I'm horrible at summarizing. I'd appreciate your help. Thanks so much. --- Prologue: Dreda's father has just died from an illness, leaving little Dreda and her teenage sister Meggy to beg on the streets. (Their mother died giving birth to Dreda.) A local merchant, John, hires Meggy as a house servant. One night, John makes sexual advances toward Meggy. When she refuses and resists, John flies into a rage and kills her. Dreda witnesses the murder. When John realizes that Dreda saw him kill her sister, he chases her through the city, intending to kill her so she can't tell anyone what he's done. Dreda hides from John in a cart that happens to be traveling to a distant convent.
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Act 1: Dreda has been living in the convent for ten years and has become a nun. She is still afraid that John might find her and kill her. The trauma of witnessing her sister's murder and being chased by the killer has left her terrified of the outside world. However, when disease breaks out among the nuns, Dreda volunteers to go find a doctor. She wants to do for the Sisters what she wasn't able to do for her father as a child.
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Act 2: The small town near the convent does not have a doctor, so Dreda must travel to the city she lived in as a child. During the course of her journey, a band of thieves attacks Dreda and takes all the money she has. When she gets to the city, she sees John while she is looking for a doctor. He starts to approach her, but she runs away in terror. Dreda finds a doctor, but he doesn't want to go with her back to the convent because she has no money to pay him upfront, therefore making the doctor think the trip will not be worth his time and the loss of income he would sustain from not being in the city. However, the doctor's apprentice, Wilkin, volunteers to go with Dreda and help her with what medical knowledge he has. Wilkin steals from the doctor’s supply of medicines what he thinks might help the nuns. As Dreda leaves the city with Wilkin, she sees John following them. Wilkin initially thinks nothing of it, and he dismisses Dreda's fears. Eventually, the two leave John behind. Dreda and Wilkin stop for the night. Dreda is unable to relax. She keeps thinking she hears something. She wakes Wilkin. He again dismisses her fears and tells her to go back to sleep, which is what he does. Dreda, unable to sleep, takes a walk. She walks near the campsite and again thinks she hears something. Then she sees John approaching her. She runs back to Wilkin and wakes him. Wilkin starts to think there may be something to Dreda’s fears. As they flee, he demands to know what’s going on. Dreda tells him her story. They journey through the remainder of the night. As they’re traveling the next morning, they see someone following them at a distance. They realize it’s John, so Wilkin pushes the horse to go as fast as it can. John likewise speeds up. Dreda and Wilkin see the town in the distance, but their horse is getting tired and can’t continue its pace much longer. Wilkin stops the horse at a house and asks to rest there. The inhabitant(s) of the house find out that Wilkin is a medical apprentice, so they tell him about some neighbors who are sick. Wilkin and Dreda go to the sick family’s house, and Wilkin begins treating them. Dreda is anxious to get back to her Sisters and to get Wilkin to the convent, but the sick family continues to need Wilkin’s help. The mother of the family they’re staying with, Eleanor, is the sickest of the family. Wilkin doesn’t know if she will survive or not. Her health could go either way. Wilkin isn’t sure how long it will take before Eleanor makes a decisive turn for the better or the worse. Dreda feels an urgency to leave and head for the convent, and she expresses this to Wilkin. Wilkin gets frustrated with Dreda. He tells her that he doesn’t know about the nuns, but the family he is with needs him, especially Eleanor and her unborn child. Wilkin, in his frustration, tells Dreda it’s probably too late for her nuns anyway. Dreda is hurt by his words. What Wilkin has said makes her think he really doesn’t care about the Sisters. Dreda decides to go alone back to the convent. Dreda takes some of the medicines and leaves for the convent without telling Wilkin.
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Act 3: Dreda travels back to the convent during the night. It has been raining, and the rain turns into a full-blown thunderstorm. Dreda is filled with remorse over the way she left things with Wilkin. She’s also extremely anxious and worried that she’s too late to help the nuns. As Dreda’s making the short trip back to the convent, the dark combined with the storm cause her imagination to play tricks on her. She hears and sees things that make her think John is following her or waiting just ahead, and her fear escalates into desperate terror. She runs for all she’s worth back to the convent. When she reaches it, one of the nuns tells her the bad news: A large number of the nuns have died, and more have gotten sick, as well as a visitor who has come to stay at the convent. This nun tells Dreda that the visitor was asking for Dreda. Dreda enters the visitor’s room and sees John lying in the bed. She starts to leave the room, but the Mother Superior stops her. The Mother encourages Dreda to go in and hear what John has to say. When John sees Dreda, he apologizes and asks for her forgiveness. He gives her a letter and another document that he wrote when he first started getting sick. John knows he doesn’t have much longer, so he tells Dreda that he has come to feel remorse and that he has changed, that he’s sorry he robbed her of her sister. He begs for her forgiveness, but Dreda is overcome with conflicting emotions. She steps out of the room, and the Mother Superior informs Dreda that John was following her because he wanted to apologize. At some point between the murder and the time John saw Dreda in the city, John had begun feeling a nagging sense of guilt for his crime. When he saw Dreda in the city, he felt full remorse. He tried to get to her and apologize, but she always ran away, so John followed her. When he followed Dreda and Wilkin to the town near the convent, he tried to find them but couldn’t. Someone told him that if he was trying to find a nun, she might have gone back to the convent, and he might be able to find her there. So John went to the convent and asked for Dreda. They told him that she had left to find a doctor, but hopefully she would be returning shortly. John waited for her. While he waited, he helped the nuns do chores and other things that needed to be done with so many of them sick. One of the things John did was burying the nuns that had died. Through his exposure to the bodies after they had been dead, he came in contact with the disease more than any of the nuns that were treating the sick. As a result of this, as well as his age, John also came down with the illness, and his health began declining rapidly. John wants closure, forgiveness from Dreda before he dies. Dreda goes back into the room. John has begun sinking into unconsciousness, but after much effort, Dreda is able to awaken him for long enough to tell him she forgives him. He smiles and slips back into unconsciousness. Shortly thereafter, he dies. Dreda reads the apology letter John wrote her and opens the other document to find that John has made out his will. John left no heirs, so he left his business to Dreda. Wilkin arrives at the convent and begins helping to treat the nuns. Like Dreda, Wilkin regrets what he said and the way they left things. They make up. Once the remaining sickly nuns have gotten better, or at least mostly better, Wilkin leaves very early in the morning. He tells Mother Superior that he will find men from the town to help bury the nuns and John so that one person doesn’t have to bury them all. The Mother Superior tells Dreda that Wilkin has left and that he wasn’t planning on returning. Mother Superior realizes that Dreda and Wilkin have feelings for each other, but she knows Dreda’s vows are keeping them apart. She wakes Dreda and tells her that Wilkin has left. As a nun, Dreda has taken vows, one of which is to never marry. Mother Superior tells Dreda she has a choice: she can keep her vows, stay in the convent, and lose Wilkin; or she can break her vows, leave the convent, and go after Wilkin. Dreda is hesitant to leave, because she’s not sure how Wilkin feels about her, but Mother Superior tells her if she doesn’t leave, she’ll never find out. Dreda bursts out of the convent and runs after Wilkin. As she runs, she pulls the habit/head covering off her head, symbolizing her choice to leave the Sisterhood. Wilkin sees her do this, and he understands what it means. He runs to meet her; because he did love her, but up to now thought she wanted to live as a nun. Thanks to John’s business, Dreda and Wilkin can marry, Wilkin can finish his medical training, and Wilkin can now work as a doctor for those who can’t afford to pay him back.
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Again, I apologize for the length of this synopsis. This is my Camp NaNo novel, so if I could get maybe two or three people to read over the synopsis in the next few days, I'd be able to make a lot of progress in my daily word count. Thanks.
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I've actually changed my plot. I'm working on a new synopsis. Just curious - when I finish this new synopsis, do I post it in this thread or make a new one?
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It depends on whether or not you want people to compare the two synopses. If you do, post the new one in this topic (you can even edit your first post--the one with the original synopsis--to include the new one, or at least to notify new readers that there is another version posted below).
If you want people to come to your new synopsis fresh, it is probably better to start a new topic for it (with a mention that it isn't the first version, so people won't be confused).
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