The Book Description and Ad Copy are Your Friends

A while ago, I wrote a blog post about why I had (reluctantly) embraced the synopsis. You can read the whole thing here, but the basic idea is this: by writing the synopsis before I started to write the book, I could make sure I had a story that was properly structured, with turning points in all the right places, so that it built to a satisfying climax.

Now that I’m self-publishing, I don’t write synopses anymore, but I do still outline my key turning-point scenes before I start writing. Tha...