A couple of years ago, I had a chance to pitch a novel to the publisher despite not being interested in doing prose or writing novels or anything like that. I just had a conversation with the publisher, and it was fun enough that I was asked to pitch something "if you feel that way" - it was basically a bet.
And I did, and it kind of worked for some time, and I did some preps before it all fell apart. Why did it fell apart? Money, the publisher got into hot water for taxes, and you know where it goes. I can't tell you more.
My original pitch went like this:
An affair puts brothers on the collision course, but this affair is more than meets the eye: deception, kayfabe, oneupmanship, horse marine. Unreliable narrative retold by unreliable narrator fully aware of preset suspicion - layers upon layers of the story turn into a noose that chokes the truth out of them all.
You can't come up with anything more generic. I guess it was way too flowery for its own good, but I didn't really give a damn about it. I intended to go blatantly purple, all guns blazing. So purple Deep Purple would sue me for infringement. I thought it was a joke, so I made a joke out of it.
Two days later, I get a reply: "Ok. I want to read an expanded synopsis. Who are the characters, where the story goes? Can you do it?"
I was baffled, even stupified. It was a joke, and now the joke got its stakes raised. Challenge accepted.
I was asked to write an expanded synopsis. Seems logical if you actually mean to sell a novel, but I had no idea what to it is about. The whole "can you write an expanded synopsis" made me really perplexed. At the same time, it was curious to figure out the way out of this mess. How to follow up a throwaway freestyle something-something? How to spin anything coherent out of it?
One solution is to flesh out the available material. It seems like a logical approach, except what I had was so generic, I couldn't really come up with anything even remotely intriguing.
So I kind of let it slide into oblivion. But the idea of expanding the pitch into a full story persisted. I couldn't stop thinking about it; I was trying to figure out what it would be like.
Then I was talking with one of the colleagues about the tribulations of story construction, and it all came together. I had a story laid down in front of my eyes as if it actually happened. So I've spent an evening and a half sketching it out.
Here's what I came up with.
The novel tells the story of a writer and his brother. The writer is trying to get out of his day job. He teaches the theory of literature at the university - it is not fun enough for him. His true passion is weird fiction detective stories. His brother is not the writer but a KGB secret cooperative overseeing various artists and public persons. In his public appearance, he is a scholar researching mythology and fairy tales.
The brother got a wife who is teaching literature at the same university as the writer. They have on-and-off workplace romance, but it is too clumsy to be taken seriously. Nevertheless, the writer is trying to maintain the affair despite not having the endgame. His brother knows about the whole thing. Since he is bored out of his mind - he conspires with his wife to make an elaborate prank on the writer's brother.
The story goes - the writer follows the rabbit into the rabbit hole. The wife sells it hard. She even reenacts some witch-craft rituals and other mystic stuff. They have trips with shrooms and weed. And then she blows it by exposing the hoax. But the writer - who was suffering from the writer's block because he wanted to sleep with his brother's wife because she was the forbidden fruit and the driving force for his existence - so he was so inspired he started to write again and was denying the fact that he was pranked.
He is in denial, or so it seems even after "you fuck my wife" argument with his brother. even more - he was convincing them that all that weird stuff was happening for real.
Eventually, the brother and the wife decide to follow through just for the sake of the laugh. They were interested in where this weirdo would lead them. In the end, they go to the Mountain (not exactly a mountain - rather a high hill) right at the moment when some enlightening apparition might occur, and nothing happens. The writer gets disappointed and says, "fuck you all" and goes away. But those two felt so terrified they ran away even faster, forcing the writer to come back finding out something.
And then he comes back to his brother and tells the story how some fairy-demon took him into the parts unknown where he talked about poetic arts and even fished the stars - it goes like a soliloquy for some pages - and then the writers look at astounded, amazed faces of his brother and his wife and say "Nah, of course, I was fucking with you." And the novel ends.
***
It is rambling and does not make much sense. Actually, this text is a compilation of bullet-point lists that I've sent instead of a synopsis. The publisher said that it was good enough for a light novel. He noted that there was a lot of stuff to work on, but the foundation was "solid." He then added that he was not kidding.
I was baffled. How in the blue moon could I get myself into such a mess? I've spent four years agonizing on a poetry collection - how long would it take to write a novel? And how long would it take to polish it and follow to the print? The very thought of doing it made me tremble.
But my fears dissipated a week later when I received another, more formal letter calling off the project. There was an extended explanation that it wasn't a joke. There was some kind of legal issue that froze the publishing house for the time being.
It ended with "good luck with finding a new home for your novel." Yeah, sure. Whatever, man.
This pitch gathered dust for years before I was trying to find the password for one of the rare movie blogs - I stumbled into it, reread it, though it was curious enough to post it here, and that's it.
