The Dreaded Synopsis.

Before you write a synopsis of your story, write one of your favorite Shakespeare piece; Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Hamlet....

After you look at the best writing on earth distilled onto two pages, doing the same to your own story is a lot less traumatic.

Boy meets girl, they fall in love, families fight a lot, people die, girl fakes death, boy finds her, commits suicide, girl wakes up, boy dead, woe is me, stab stab stab, the end.

Synopsis

stace001 said:

I'm about to begin the synopsis for my novel. This would have to be my least favorite part of writing novels. Getting the story on paper is the easy part, but cutting it down so it fits onto 2 to 5 pages I find almost impossible. I feel the pressure is even greater because its the first introduction to your story that agents are going to have.
My question is this...Does anyone have any wonderful little tricks of the trade that might help us "synopsis scaredy-cats" jump right in a write an incredible summary?

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This is one area where I suspect there are about as many ways to write a synopsis as there are writers. But I think trying to cut the story down to fit is the wrong way to go. It can't be done.

The right way, I think, is to write a story about your story. Look at jacket copy on a published novel. I've had two editors tell me that's the best way to write a synopsis that sells. Short, exciting, with all the details you need in any synopsis, except teh ending. Jacket copy IS a synopsis, intended to sell the novel to readers, and publishers pay big money to write ones that work.

The only real difference is that the synopsis you write needs to include the ending, while the ones on jacket copy leave readers hanging. But readers want to be surprised by the ending, while agents and editors do not.

I found this article by Beth Anderson on writing a bare-bones synopsis helpful. She walks you through it, starting with identifying the one sentence that's at the heart of the story, then building up from there. Bill Johnson wrote one also, which I believe is an exerpt from his book A Story Is A Promise. That one gives examples of the same technique from books you probably know.

Write a chapter-by-chapter outline. Then cut, cut, cut. Cut out adjectives and adverbs. Cut out minor characters. Cut out subplots... You will find that it's not that difficult to cut down to 2-5 pages.

My analogy? It's impossible to grow grass to the exact same height. But it's easy to grow the grass, then cut them to the same height.

Jamesaritchie said:

The right way, I think, is to write a story about your story. Look at jacket copy on a published novel. I've had two editors tell me that's the best way to write a synopsis that sells. Short, exciting, with all the details you need in any synopsis, except teh ending. Jacket copy IS a synopsis, intended to sell the novel to readers, and publishers pay big money to write ones that work.

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James is exactly right. In this business, a synopsis is a story that makes you want to read the ms. It's not a book report; it's not a distilled outline; it doesn't even have to match the book, so long as it's not an outright deception.

I don't know. Jacket blurb to me is just marketing talking points. Sell sheet. "What's your story about?" Sure, it tells you the premise of the story, but not the plot. A synopsis is different, I believe. A synopsis must tell the whole major plot and the ending.

When I write my movie reviews, I do the "jacket blurb" thing by summarizing the premise, leaving out the major plot twists and ending (so not to spoil the movie for my readers). It's called a "synopsis" in review terms, but it really isn't. It's a summary of premise.

A jacket blurb is something you'd write in your query letter. A 1-5 page synopsis is something you have to submit with your partial or full ms.

maestrowork said:

I don't know. Jacket blurb to me is just marketing talking points. Sell sheet. "What's your story about?" Sure, it tells you the premise of the story, but not the plot. A synopsis is different, I believe. A synopsis must tell the whole major plot and the ending.

When I write my movie reviews, I do the "jacket blurb" thing by summarizing the premise, leaving out the major plot twists and ending (so not to spoil the movie for my readers). It's called a "synopsis" in review terms, but it really isn't. It's a summary of premise.

A jacket blurb is something you'd write in your query letter. A 1-5 page synopsis is something you have to submit with your partial or full ms.

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I didn't say jacket blurb, I said jacket copy. Two very different things. The blurb is waht other writers or reviewers put on the jacket to say how great your novel is. Jacket copy is the synopsis publishers put on there. Of course jacket copy tells you the plot. All a jacket copy does is tell you the plot in an exciting, interesting manner. And on hardcover novels, at least, much jacket copy is fairly long. It can be several hundred words long, especially when you add the ending, as you should. There's no way it would fit in a query letter.

You can always add details. Length isn't the issue. Style is the issue. Most synospses I've read are so boring they'd put a speed addict to sleep. The writer tries to get too much detail in. Detail in, excitement out.

And shorter is nearly always better. Agents or editors ask for novels that excite them, not novels that have a long, boring, detailed synopsis. I mean it. You eyes glaze over quickly when reading synopses. All plots sound silly, even good ones, when boiled down to synopsis length. Nearly all synopses sound alike after a very short while.

Query letter, synopsis, or manuscripts, it's the quality of the writing that excites most agents and editors.

It's also true that query letters and synopses do not sell novels for new writers. All either can do is make someone ask to see the manusscript. They just aren't likely to do this because you add a lot of detail. Just tell a good story about your story, one that's exciting in and of itself, and you're way ahead of all those five page, cram in the detail synopses surrounding yours in the slush stack.

A well-written jacket cover synopsis should run between 500-800 words, and can go up to a 1,000. But in truth, if you can't write a very good one page synopsis for a novel of any length, you're at a severe disadvantage.

Get them excited, not bored.

I find it's easier to build than to demolish, so I construct a synopsis by going through the work and summarizing the main thrust of each chapter in one sentence. (I tend to write books with a large number of short chapters--if you write with fewer, very long chapters, you could give yourself two sentences per chapter.) It's hard at times to distill a chapter down to one sentence but doing so often gives you a more powerful sentence with keywords that communicate the essence of the story and characters. It forces you to choose words that really work. Once you have all your sentences down, play with them to make them into something more cohesive and to improve the overall flow of the whole. At this point you can add in another sentence or two per chapter if you feel it's really necessary to flesh things out. Revise as needed to make things sizzle and keep the prose as active as possible -- it's important to hold the reader's attention with the synopsis just as it is with the work itself. Study some jacket copy for samples. Do include the ending and all the major plot points and characters. Minor plot points and characters are up for grabs. I generally do two versions of a synopsis, one that includes the subplots and minor characters and one that doesn't.

Beth

I've done a few synopses, and what works best for me is a bass-ackwards approach: first write a ONE SENTENCE synopsis. It can be a longish sentence, obviously. Distilling the long work into one sentence forces you right to the essence of the piece, and from there, at least in my experience, everything you add seems to flesh it out beautifully.

I find that much easier than writing too much and paring it down. Not for everyone, obviously -- just wanted to make sure you're considering all alternatives.