Hi,
Does anyone have any good links to help documents or tutorials on writing a synopsis?
Thanks!
Sam
Does anyone have any good links to help documents or tutorials on writing a synopsis?
Thanks!
Sam
Any good resources on writing a synopsis?
- Thread starter Sam Stephens
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Check out the sticky threads in our Query Letters & Synopses sub-forum in the Share Your Work area, password = vista
-Derek
-Derek
Also...
Elizabeth Lyon's "Sell Your Novel Tool Kit" is a really valuable source. Advice on query- and synopsis-writing, querying agents, and much more - totally changed the way I write synopses and queries. Although the book costs $$, of course, and the advice on this site is free
Elizabeth Lyon's "Sell Your Novel Tool Kit" is a really valuable source. Advice on query- and synopsis-writing, querying agents, and much more - totally changed the way I write synopses and queries. Although the book costs $$, of course, and the advice on this site is free
Thanks for that, Madison! I'll have to head up to Borders and see if I can dig it up
Compressing a novel from 400 pages to 2 or 3 is a LOT harder than it sounds
cheers
Sam
Compressing a novel from 400 pages to 2 or 3 is a LOT harder than it sounds
cheers
Sam
uh yeah... I can sympathize. I'm working on a one page synopsis for an agent right now and it is hell... but better with the book
Wow, 1 page only? That's rough!
It seems to be quite a delicate balance to create excitement and interest in as few words as possible.
Best of luck with your 1 page!
cheers
Sam
It seems to be quite a delicate balance to create excitement and interest in as few words as possible.
Best of luck with your 1 page!
cheers
Sam
There's a few links I really like on the subject, but I could only find a these:
http://www.fictionwriters.com/tips-synopsis.html
http://www.fictionfactor.com/articles/synopsis.html
I know there was a very helpful thread on this somewhere in AW, but for the life of me I can't find it.
-Feathers
http://www.fictionwriters.com/tips-synopsis.html
http://www.fictionfactor.com/articles/synopsis.html
I know there was a very helpful thread on this somewhere in AW, but for the life of me I can't find it.
-Feathers
I'm not an official resource or anything like that, but I break my story down into important events. Such as:
Cary meets Grant
Girl gets killed.
Cary finds out.
The Investigation.
Of course this is rough and quick and dirty, then I take those important events and flesh them out with the hows and whys. This gives me a much clearer and cleaner first draft synopsis and allows me to convey everything I want to convey without burying it under a mountain of secondary information.
Hope it helps.
Sara
Cary meets Grant
Girl gets killed.
Cary finds out.
The Investigation.
Of course this is rough and quick and dirty, then I take those important events and flesh them out with the hows and whys. This gives me a much clearer and cleaner first draft synopsis and allows me to convey everything I want to convey without burying it under a mountain of secondary information.
Hope it helps.
Sara
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Another book resource is "Your Novel Proposal from Creation to Contract", by Camenson and Cook. They have actual examples, of different lengths, for published novels, to follow. That helped me a lot.
And, I've had to do 10, 8, 7, 5, 3, and 2 page synopses as well as 1 paragraph synopses for my agent. Boy, but that's more fun than you can imagine.
But worth it.
(P.S. After a lot of experience with them, my personal faves are the 1 paragraph and 8 pagers...don't ask me why. LOL)
And, I've had to do 10, 8, 7, 5, 3, and 2 page synopses as well as 1 paragraph synopses for my agent. Boy, but that's more fun than you can imagine.
But worth it.(P.S. After a lot of experience with them, my personal faves are the 1 paragraph and 8 pagers...don't ask me why. LOL)
You might try writing a so called chapter by chapter outline first. In a chapter by chapter, you just follow the plot-line somewhat like Ice Rose suggested above, but make it more like very short overview of what's happening in each chapter. The secret here is brief--like a paragraph for each chapter. With hundreds of pages condensed to a few, you can now work toward finishing your synopsis much more easily. To write the synopsis, think of what's happening in each short paragraph and write a sentence that best describes it--one sentence only. Now you've reduced hundreds of page into a few sentences and what comes next is the hard part. You have to turn these random sentences into something that's engaging--like a mini-short story that tells the story of your book in a page or two--including the ending. You must include the ending. Hope this helps a little.
Thanks Sara. I'm not the OP but my goal is to go tonight and write the synopsis for the book I'm currently querying. It's so overwhelming, thinking about everything that happens and trying to boil it all down to 1 page. But, with your idea, you simplify it first and fill it in. I'm gonna give it a shot. Thanks!
Should the synopsis basically skip to the first big event? My novel has a couple chapters of friends working on a secretive plot before their grand ideas are laid low by a rapid series of events. Should I basically skip right to those events?
Good luck, I hope it helps. That was always my problem, the whole story was so overwhelming that I'd find myself rambling on and on trying to explain it and end up dropping the important points. I hope it works for you as it has for me.
I'm certainly not the best one to answer, but I can tell you what I did
Because of massively limited real estate on the page, I've had to condense a lot of those kinds of parts.
So I'd end up with something like:
"After careful planning, the friends and finally ready."
Okay, that's really bad, but it gives an idea of what I've found I've needed to do to shrink my novel enough.
cheers
Sam
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