Make life easy on yourself and start with a "thumbnail." A thumbnail synopsis includes the very basic story, which allows you to expand out subplots and characters after you've gotten the deal. But you don't have to drop your life to figure out the whole plot and it allows "pantser" style writers a lot more freedom to rearrange as they write. Here's one of the thumbnails that we wrote to sell a new book (possibly series). It hasn't sold yet, but there's some interest. And I'm already changing from this short idea, but it gives the BASIC plot.
Later, if the editor wants more than a thumbnail, you can expand out. But this gets the idea moving toward the Q&A stage, which is productive in the editor/author relationship.
*************
Title: Chasing Darkness
Method of
Ghost Hunting: Heroine starts book as body-possessing spirit. By end of book, she chooses to stay in the body and becomes human once more, although she can partially leave the body always.
Plot: Heroine is ghost who is chasing another malevolent ghost who can also possess bodies, but uses them to spread evil. Turns average citizens into rampaging killers. Heroine wants to bring him to justice and has chased him across centuries. She chooses to inhabit only bodies that are close to death and winds up the body of a police officer that the villain has just killed, giving her the means to capture the villain before he can begin the slaughter again. Major plot point is that both the heroine and villain can only remain in their “host” bodies for seven days before the bonding becomes permanent and they are human and able to be killed – turning the book into a race against time. Hero is also a cop, her partner. At beginning of book, he doesn’t know that heroine has taken over the body of his partner, but he starts to get inexplicably attracted to her after her “near-death” experience, creating side tension. She tells him in mid-book before things go too far. His reaction to her admission will depend on whether focus of the book is on main plot or romance, but will start with disbelief.
Subplots: Subplots include the heroine’s sister, who can “see auras” and quickly learns that the heroine is not her sister. But after hearing the story, she befriends her and is able to assist the heroine with finding the body that the villain wound up in, because she can spot the dark aura as people walk by. She also helps the heroine adapt to her host’s life (additional subplots) and they wind up close friends by the end. Between the sister and the hero, the heroine decides to stay in her host’s life by the end of the book.
Resolution: The villain actually ended up with one more day in his body due to the timing of death of the heroine’s host. Once the heroine realizes who the villain has inhabited, she is able to get close enough to fight him. Very tense action scene where she is trying not to kill the villain (because he will simply move to another body) but the villain is more than happy to kill her. The hero finally comes to believe the heroine and assists in trapping the villain in the host body so that he can be locked away in jail forever.
Series Potential: The heroine will remain able to partially leave her body, which she didn’t believe she would be able to do, and then leave the police department in favor of private investigation so she can continue to search out and eliminate other malevolent ghosts. The hero can either become a boyfriend or drop in and out of her life as he adapts to the “new” her.
