Troutzilla: Halieutic Hubris or Why the Synopsis is a Fib.

Troutzilla is a halieutic novel:  A treatise upon fish or the art of fishing; ichthyology. 

Moby Dick, that's halieutic. 

Dorothy Wordsworth observing her brother by the waterside? Halieutic.
Swift, he waxed halieutical.
Ovid, yep. All the time with the fishing.
And me. Hubris much?

     Yesterday, after dithering around for months, I sent the revised version of a book known as Troutzilla to the editor. This is not the version I sent. It's a Wordle. I pasted all 46K+ words in and pressed CREATE. Whirr-Zip-Spitooey! It came out looking vaguely fish-shaped*, which is appropriate. So I exaggerated that similarity, which is what I do.


     The words within the fishy outline are the words most commonly used. On April 12 of 2010, I made a Wordle of the synopsis I had written for the book. There is evidence of revision between one and the other. I think there is also evidence of what fictions most synopses are—and here when I use "fiction," I mean deceit. 


     All synopses are fishy outlines.


     As for the notion that every book must have a hook...


     The first four words inside the big letter O, those are the hook.

But most trout expect more than a bare hook.
"All flies are lies."

real 

person 

got 

pretty ** 

    


     

* This is not an anatomically correct fish. 

** Very Tarzan.