Synopsis How-To

It’s pretty strange to have an article on how to write a synopsis when I’ve got a hurricane bearing down on me, but I promised to post this last week, and, hey, the storm’s not supposed to arrive until tonight anyway. So here it is, my “How to write a synopsis article”. Enjoy!

A synopsis should be the easiest thing in the world to write, no? I mean, what is it? Just a summary of the book you’ve already written (or are about to write). You know what the book’s about. You know every little detail of every character and everything that they do. So what’s so hard about writing a summary of it?

Well, the problem is that you know too much. You know all of those nitty-gritty little detail and YOU CAN’T PUT THEM INTO YOUR SYNOPSIS! What? Well, no, otherwise, you’d be writing the book all over again. The trick in writing a synopsis is what to leave out, and, I’m sorry, it’s going to be most of it.

All of those fabulous scenes filled with passion or tension or humor – they’ve all got to be left right where they are, in your manuscript. The synopsis is not the place for them. The only part of them that you need to include in your synopsis is the FEELING of them. How they make the reader feel, that you’ve got to include. So, if your book is funny, your synopsis should be funny. If your book is romantic, your synopsis should be romantic. And so on.

So, if you don’t include those great scenes, what do you put in there? Well, here it is broken in a very simple form.

You absolutely, positively must start with a great hook that will draw in your reader (an editor or agent who has forty-nine more of these to read today). If you don’t grab them right off with a compelling hook, they’re not going to take the time to read the rest of it, so grab them by their eyeballs and don’t let go. This is your first paragraph.

If you have a character driven story, at this point you want to include a paragraph about each of your major characters. If you’re writing a romance, you would have one about each your hero and your heroine and possibly one about your villain if you have one who plays a major role in your story. For these paragraphs, we want to know what their internal and external goal, motivation and conflicts are (see Deb Dixon’s book Goal, Motivation and Conflict for more on this). Just include this and nothing else unless it is vital to understanding your story. Also, be sure to keep these paragraphs short and sweet – that’s the whole goal here.

Now from here you can go one of two ways:

You can write an inductive synopsis (like a newspaper article) where you start out with the big picture and then work your way to the details. If you have a plot driven novel, this may be a good way to go. First you want to determine what your story question is – what are your characters trying to do or figure out throughout your story: Will Dorothy ever get home from the magical land of Oz? (The Wizard of Oz) Will Robert Landon be able to decipher the riddle left by the dead Louvre curator and the clues in the works of Leonardo DaVinci? (The DaVinci Code).

Now, notice that these are pretty specific questions. They are not “Will Mary ever find true love?” or “Will the detective ever find the killer?” You’ve got to include more story detail in your question.

So, in an inductive synopsis, in the next paragraph if you haven’t already done this in your first paragraph,  you ask your story question introducing your main character(s) who are going to be the one(s) finding the answer. The rest of the synopsis is the major events through which your characters will find the answer to the question.

Your second option is a deductive synopsis, that would be writing top-down, from the beginning of your story right through to the end. But you have to be careful here. You don’t want a laundry list of this happened and then that. That’s boring. You need to infuse these events with emotion and excitement without being wordy (that’s the trick).

Finally, you conclude your synopsis with, yes, the conclusion of your book. You give it all away, even if it’s a murder mystery you have to tell who did it. Editors and agents want to know how it ends. Do not leave them hanging.

 

Now the hardest part of all this is deciding what to include and what to leave out. To help do that, I usea handy-dandy outline which is a combination of a three act structure, a four part structure and Michael Hauge’s story structure. Remember, only the big turning points that you write down here are what should go into your synopsis. I don’t really have space to put it in here, but it’s in my book, Chapter One (available at Amazon and many other e-retailers).

Last, but certainly not least, there are some basic rules which all synopsis must follow:

-          Don’t make your synopsis too long. Ideal is 2-3 pages, fine is 5 pages, pushing it, but still ok is 10 pages. Any longer than that and you’ll probably lose your reader before they get to the end – these are busy people who don’t have a lot of time to spend reading just one synopsis!

-          Write in the present tense, no matter how your book is written.

-          Write in the third person.

-          Try to get the voice and flavor of your novel into your synopsis. If your story is dark, make the synopsis dark; if it’s light and funny, so should your synopsis be light and funny.

-          Don’t include secondary plots or too many characters. We only want the basics.

-          Don’t put in empty rhetorical questions, they’re useless and try your reader’s patience.

-          Make your first three paragraphs fabulous and enticing. Many editors and agents won’t read past the first three paragraphs (or the bottom of the first page), make yours so compelling they’re forced to read on.

-          Remember that this is a marketing tool. You are selling a book here. Write this in such a way that your reader can’t wait to read the whole manuscript.