pumpkinstrokemarrow

While all this was going on did a bit of tweeting, to the point of extracting FIL's bins from the coat cupboard where they live. Lots of blue tits and great tits feeding on the cypress tree with its clusters of small round cones. But of more interest was a bird about the size of a starling with a distinctive yellow flash on each side of the head. Investigation suggested that it was something called a redwing, something I have never knowingly seen before.

Later on in the day it came to my attention that a certain commercial premises in Epsom contains an ashtray which contains cigarette butts which can be seen from the side walk if one looks carefully. Butts which move around, which suggests that the ashtray is active. Now while it is not a crime to have an active ashtray in a place of work, such a thing does suggest that someone may be smoking in a place of work, which is. Should I phone up the smoke sneak line? Should I complain to the appropriate authority that the smoke police are not up to their jobs? Perhaps I shall just wait to see if it survives.

Meantime I ponder about synopses. I start off by learning that the three synoptic gospels are so called because they all have the same synopsis, that is to say they all tell roughly the same story. Rather an odd use of the word but there we are. However, my interest is more in when it is appropriate to provide a synopsis, preface, introduction or management summary to a piece of written work, which we suppose for the sake of argument to be around 33 pages of A4 single spaced typescript without headings or much in the way or breaks . Now, in the civil service world, if one was not a higher authority and one wanted to get one's work read by someone who was, one stood no chance if one did not provide a three or four lines saying why he or she should. These three or four lines might say something about the catastrophic consequences of not doing something. They might attempt to summarise an argument and its conclusion, where the conclusion should be something you wanted the higher authority to do. Higher authorities were not generally into being educated for its own sake.

In the case that the that there were more than two pages, the three or four lines should be followed by a management summary which should be approximately 8.5% of the length of the whole.

Then many works of non-fiction include either preface or introduction, sometimes both, in which case the preface precedes the introduction and is more about how the work came to be done while the introduction introduces the work itself. I think that more often than not I do not read either preface or introduction, so wasted on me. Most have more or less elaborate contents pages. Some have summaries at the head of each chapter. Most books include promotional material on the dust jacket; stuff to encourage one to read something by someone you may of never heard of before. You may come to a book by virtue of reading notice of it in a newspaper.

But if one is just clutching a manuscript and you want someone who has never heard of you to take it seriously, what does one do? What sort of shape should it appear in? Does one attempt to synopsise what one has done so that the someone can get the idea without actually having to bother to read the thing? Do you build an elaborate table of contents and have lots of headings and sub-headings to help readers find their way about? An approach which in some parts of the civil service results in documents being all heading and no content. And one which A. Huxley has no truck with: his essays just start and have no apparent structure at all. But they are quite readable. While designers of modern science books are quite into structure. Lots of sections, headings, inserts, pictures and diagrams. Maybe an animated CD to go with the book. Summaries of the argument. Questions to test your understanding. Visual tricks to keep you on the ball; not unlike, in some ways, those used by the Sun to keep their pages looking lively.

Does one cultivate such a gripping style that the someone is sucked in from the first word and does not need the support of sections and headings? Do you do what Mrs Harry Potter had to do and tramp around dozens of publishers until you hit one who can be bothered to read what you have done? Not sure I would have the stomach for this last. I think I would give up after two or three. Have to go on ego-growing classes to build myself up before setting out on something of this sort.

Perhaps I shall trawl the net for advice on such matters. Or try one of the small-ads from published (and possibly publishing) authors in the TLS offering services to budding authors.