First attempt at a synopsis ever . . . Advice?

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SKStark

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So, I just recently (as of this week) learned of Camp NaNoWriMo. Of course, I immediately jumped over to sign-up, but was shortly thereafter faced with a challenge I've not yet encountered before. To join, you must provide a synopsis of your project.

I've never written a synopsis before. As you can tell from my post-count, I'm fairly new to this community and, in fact, the whole formal writing thing. How does one write a good synopsis?

I'm including my attempt, and critiques are welcome, but I'd be happy to just hear from you how you go about this process yourself. I'd also love to see your synopses!

Attempt for a currently untitled fantasy romance:

Three Bridges is a small, mundane village with ordinary folk leading simple lives. All his life, Rafe has known nothing else, traveled no where else, met no other people beyond the village, and that's how it needs to stay. Routine and monotony are the only things that keep the beast inside him under control.

Sinnia is an outcast of a people reviled for their ability to compel others, and a long tradition of creating harems of ensorcelled slaves. If her people find her, death would be a mercy granted only after they tore her mind apart.

Both are safe so long as they can keep up a guise of humanity. But when Sinnia stops in a small, mundane village on her way to the capital, she sees what no one else in Three Bridges noticed before. A man who is not a man, but a prize among her people. And she wants Rafe for her very own.
 

Maggie Maxwell

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You don't need a synopsis to join Camp. It's a casual thing if you want other people to know what you're working on. You could just put "first draft of a thing" and it'd be fine. Don't fret over it at this point. :)

Here are my previous Camp projects, if you want to see what I used.
 
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Anna Iguana

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For camp, I leave the synopsis/project description blank. It's very casual. One of my cabin mates literally titled her project, "Fantasy novel (but who knows, I'll probably decide to work on something else)." If/when you want to hone a synopsis, Query Letter Hell, in the Share Your Work forums (http://absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?26-Share-Your-Work), is a good place to ask for help.
 

SKStark

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Clearly I have overthought this . . .

Maggie, thanks for sharing your projects! Also, kudos to you for being involved in the event for so many years!

Anna, thanks for sharing the link. Even if I don't need the skill now, I know I'll need it down the line, so definitely going to investigate that.

Merri, thanks for the feedback. :)
 

Maggie Maxwell

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Clearly I have overthought this . . .

Maggie, thanks for sharing your projects! Also, kudos to you for being involved in the event for so many years!

I find NaNos are when I do my best work. I thrive under external deadlines. I've been doing proper NaNo since 2010, and I always love it. I really hope you enjoy your Camp run. There will probably be an AW cabin set up over this month so you can participate with more folks from here. We usually have one to two cabins you can join.

As for your synopsis, it looks fully sufficient for Camp. :) It can't hurt to start studying in QLH like Anna recommended, but right now, all you need to focus on is your story. No need to let anything else stress you. Good luck!
 

MaeZe

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Whether you need it for the camp or not, it's clean, straightforward and compelling!

I did NaNo with nothing but an idea. November's a long way off. You could just start writing.

I think your synopsis is good. As you write the story, you might want to consider your characters' inner motivations. You've got plot. You hint at story. It should come into focus as you write it.
 

MaeZe

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I don't know anything about Camp NaNoWriMo, but I've used this article to help me write a synopsis. Honestly, they're worse than queries. :)

http://www.publishingcrawl.com/2012/04/17/how-to-write-a-1-page-synopsis/
Speaking from pure ignorance, there are two kinds of synopses. One is like the OP has written and the other is a "full synopsis" that you sometimes need and sometimes don't, which is what your link looks to be.

Beyond that, I defer to people who actually know what they are talking about.
 

SKStark

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I did NaNo with nothing but an idea. November's a long way off. You could just start writing.

I think your synopsis is good. As you write the story, you might want to consider your characters' inner motivations. You've got plot. You hint at story. It should come into focus as you write it.

Actually, I'm doing the July one! I heard it's a little more casual and you don't have to stick to a strict 50K word goal, so I thought it'd be a good dip-in-the-kiddie-pool kind of intro for me.

Thanks for the feedback on what I wrote. I'll probably keep playing with it and use the resources provided. It's good practice, whether I need it immediately or not. :)
 

mrsmig

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Camp NaNo is a LOT more low-key, and the cabins can be a lot of fun.

I've done regular NaNoWriMo once, and "won" at it, but I found that it doesn't really suit the way I write (I tend to rewrite as I go, which makes the 50k/month goal difficult to reach). Camp, on the other hand, suits me very well.
 

SKStark

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Camp NaNo is a LOT more low-key, and the cabins can be a lot of fun.

I've done regular NaNoWriMo once, and "won" at it, but I found that it doesn't really suit the way I write (I tend to rewrite as I go, which makes the 50k/month goal difficult to reach). Camp, on the other hand, suits me very well.

I'm definitely glad it's just the Camp coming up, since I know there's no way I'd have time to write 50K next month. That's interesting that you rewrite as you go. And obviously have successfully completed books doing it that way! Up until now, I've always been one to rewrite as I go along, too. But for me, I'd inevitably end up digging myself into a pit I couldn't escape from. I haven't ever finished anything full-length, and only a handful of shorter stories, because I would just keep going back until I got fed up, decided it'd never be good enough, and then moved on to start the whole process over again with something new.

The Camp seems like a perfect exercise for me, since my whole goal right now is to just keep writing and actually finish the dang book.
 

mrsmig

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Different strokes, I guess. I tend to tweak and edit while I'm planning the next sequence - it's almost like a warm-up. I also can't stand misspellings, clumsy sentence structure, etc., so I try to get it right before moving on.

The nice thing about editing as I go is that by the end of the WIP, I've usually got what amounts to a second draft. Back in the day I used to write out of sequence and then go back and fill in the blanks, but these days I only do that once in a rare while.
 

samis

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Thanks for the link. Needed this for writing the synopsis for my novel. Thanks.
 
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