Synopsis sigh

J. R. Tomlin · Nov 1, 2007

Anyone have a suggestion for writing them (other than leaping off the nearest high bridge)? Mind stinks... seriously. I've read the "condense your novel into 3 fascinating pages" advice. Yeah... right.

I can tell the story in a fairly interesting way in say 10 or 12 pages. But the desired 3 pages? Blech. Dry and boring. :e2writer:

Can anyone help? Please?

TrickyFiction · Nov 1, 2007

Maybe try getting it down to twelve pages. Then, look at those twelve, and take them down to three. It may be easier to take twelve pages down to three than a whole novel.

melaniehoo · Nov 1, 2007

That's better advice than I would've given. I say try that, then let me know how it goes, since I have that on the horizon as well.

ORION · Nov 1, 2007

I'd do just the opposite - I'd start with a sentence and work up!

FolkloreFanatic · Nov 1, 2007

I'd do a variation of speed-reading.

Instead of taking only the first sentence of each paragraph and judging whether the paragraph is important enough to keep from there (speed reading), I would try to summarize each paragraph with one sentence.

What the main outcome/action/decision to emerge from each chunk of description? There has to be a reason why you chose to group those sentences together in the first place.

Start there. Was it a location, and is the reason the whole paragraph is at that one location simply by chance or because that place is crucial to understanding the plot? I find that I've expanded into too much detail because I feel like I have to summarize each scene rather than each critical action/outcome/decision/realization. This stems from screenwriting, I think, but I can't be sure. Locationis MUCH LESS IMPORTANT in a synopsis for a novel than a screenplay. Some scenes are important enough to keep in the novel but not nearly important enough to mention in the synopsis.

Hope that helps.

Khazarkhum · Nov 1, 2007

I just did mine. I took the approach of outlining it as briefly as possible, and single-space came up with 3 pages. I cut anything that didn't impact the MCs directly (ie, the chapter about a friend) and that also helped.

Ravenlocks · Nov 1, 2007

Leave out all the details.

Garpy · Nov 2, 2007

Oh blimey! Come on...it's do-able. You could summarize War and Peace in three pages, easily. Just reduce the granularity of the detail....describe the direction of the story arcs instead of listing all the baby-steps the character takes to get there. Don't bother describing the stories of secondary characters. ...two things off the top of my head that will drastically reduce the word count.

JimmyB27 · Nov 2, 2007

A hobbit takes some jewellery of mass destruction to be destroyed. He has help.

If I can get LOTR down to two sentences, you can get your book down to three pages :tongue

zornhau · Nov 2, 2007

Tell it to a mate in the pub....

If you can't do that, then it's probably not ready for submission anyway.

Bufty · Nov 2, 2007

Depends what you mean by 'telling the story in a fairly interesting way'. Basic style will come across, but the Agent will decide if it's a potentially interesting story or not, worthy of his requesting the manuscript to find out how it's been handled by the writer.

Concentrate only on the main characters and the main plot and its resolution and - if it helps - remember a synopsis does not have to be in chronological order. 12 pages probably contains a lot of surplus material. The Agent won't regard clarity and being concise as 'boring'.

Good luck.

C.bronco · Nov 2, 2007

I've got a one page and a three page synopsis. Take out subplots and try to stick to the central characters. Pretend you're making a movie and have to fit it in an hour and a half!

nevada · Nov 2, 2007

here's a really good lecture series, with examples! of how to write a synopsis, both long and short from the Lisa Gardner website

http://www.lisagardner.com/tricks/synopsis.htm

Good luck.

PeeDee · Nov 2, 2007

Get someone else to do it.

No, seriously. This is my advice for synopsis and query letters both. Do an exchange with someone else. Have someone else you can bounce it off of as you're working on it -- or get them to do it entirely. If someone doesn't have the whole novel plus additional details bouncing in their head, then they can synopsize it in ways you can't at all. Trade with another writer. Honest.

MidnightMuse · Nov 2, 2007

PeeDee's method is really helpful - I did that in a way. I was having a horrible time cutting my synopsis down and parring out all the extraneous subplots, because to me that was half the interest in the novel. So I explained to my sister what exactly a synopsis was, and how long/short they needed to be, and since she's intimately familiar with all of my work, I had HER tell ME what the plot was. She was easily able to boil the whole novel down to it's major points, and I got a 2 page synopsis out of it that hits all the high points and major doings, and leaves out the fluff.

Another method I've used is to write it out as long as I wanted, then start chopping and cutting and slicing. It was hard, but it worked, too.

PeeDee · Nov 2, 2007

Something else that works is to sit down and TELL someone your novel's plot, out loud. It works for me. I do that with my wife, who has to be the most patient woman in the world. It's as close as I come to outlining and if I remember to put an audio recorder on, then I can edit through what I talked about and get a reasonably useful synopsis.

The trick is not to overthink the synopsis.

stormie · Nov 2, 2007

I have found that if you have a lot of trouble with the synopsis, it might be the storyline.

I have also found that by writing it in present tense, 1st person POV, it's easier to condense into a synopsis. But that's the way I do it; not everyone finds that to be easier.

Maryn · Nov 2, 2007

Pete, please send your wife to my house so I can tell her a story. I'll include dinner.

Maryn, also writing a synopsis

PeeDee · Nov 2, 2007

Yes! I will hire my wife out to listen to people's novels! She won't mind! Ha ha! (I'd be so dead)

Nateskate · Nov 2, 2007

For some of us writing a synopsis is like eating raw eggs. When I submitted my first manuscript to a movie producer, she asked me to write a synopsis of my story, because she said there would be other people in the deciding process, and they weren't going to read the whole book.

Well, the synopsis helped me see flaws in the story- in terms of more telling than showing. So it helped. That book alone didn't sell the series, though it showed promise.

So when I was making edits to the next book, I used what I learned from the synopsis to not repeat those mistakes, and made some changes that sold the producer/studio over.

But back to a synopsis, I hated it. Now I write a running synopsis instead of going back and rereading my chapters. That was a nightmare.

LeeFlower · Nov 2, 2007

I've been beating my head up against the wall trying to write a synopsis. Every time I think I'm making progress, the lovely people over at Share Your Work send me back to the drawing board (for which I'm grateful).

I can suggest what seems to be finally working for me: Write your really crappy draft. Make it as brief as you can. Now: what can you cut? Look at every secondary character in the synopsis. Will the story still make sense if you glaze over their part without naming them? Are there any minor obstacles your characters face that you can skip over? Worry about just the absolute barest highlights-- The character has an objective. This is the major obstacle between them and their objective. These are the tactics they use to overcome that main obstacle.

I know it's a total pain in the ass-- believe me, you have my sympathy.

Prawn · Nov 2, 2007

I spent as long working on the synopsis and query as I did working on the novel. It is the most important thing you will write, so make it as good as you can.

Red-Green · Nov 2, 2007

My technique is this: pick the ten most important elements/events in the book. Write a sentence for each. Then elaborate around those ten sentences until you have ten paragraphs. Voilà. There's your rough draft at least.

JerseyGirl1962 · Nov 2, 2007

Some links you might want to consider (because I'm neither at the query nor synopsis stages as yet):

How to Write a Synopsis

The Deadly Synopsis

A Collection of Synopsis Links (which includes the 2 above)

Good luck!

~Nancy

ishtar'sgate · Nov 2, 2007

What I did was take each chapter and distill it to two sentences - three tops. It's difficult to be succinct and interesting at the same time but it can be done. I'd rather write a query letter than a synopsis any day.
Linnea

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Synopsis sigh