tense of non-fic synopsis

I've been told in writing courses and by my publisher to write my synopsis in the present tense. I too don't like it but I'm too much of a coward to take a stand against it.

pollykahl said:

Now I've just read on another thread that we send an outline for non-fic and a synopsis for fiction. This is so confusing. Nathan, are there hard and fast rules? And if I need to do an outline insteadof a synopsis for my memoir, must it also be in first person?

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Polly, I was at a writers' conference last weekend and they made it clear that memoirs are treated like fiction.

pollykahl said:

"memoirs are treated like fiction"

I've always heard they're treated like non-fic, since that's what they are, so this is totally news to me. I'm hoping Nathan can shine a little light on these questions.

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They're "treated like fiction" in that you finish them before you query--you almost never sell them from a proposal or outline. That's the way in which they're more similar to fiction than non-fiction.

But that doesn't mean that they're queried like fiction.

Polly, if you want Nathan Bransford to answer your question, you have to ask it in his thread (up top). I don't think he reads the whole forum.

And have you seen agent Kristin Nelson's series of posts on memoirs from an agent's point of view? If you start with the one I linked and move forward by clicking "Newer Post" you'll get five or six posts on the topic.