The most dreaded word in a writer’s vocabulary. Except maybe
for pitch. But it’s definitely above query.
The thing about a synopsis is, it can’t just be a
play-by-play of the book, because that would be boring. It has to be as interesting
as your writing so any potential readers will know why the book is slap-across-the-face
awesome. I’m…I’m not sure where I was going with that.
Type “writing a synopsis for a novel” in your search engine,
and you’ll get twenty five million results (give or take a million). Most of
the ones I’ve read give guidelines along the lines of “Who is the main character?”
or “Describe what forces your main character to change.” Yes, they expect us to
come up with something interesting with dull prompts like that. I wonder how
they’d react if I said “I force the main character to change by writing the
novel.”
 |
| Probably like this. |
And then we have the ones that advise going through the
novel, writing down everything important that happens, and turning that into a
synopsis. It sounds like good advice, but in practice, not so useful because
then you have a bunch of sentences and no idea how to connect them into a
coherent, engaging piece of writing.
Okay, so the guidelines are as useful as someone slamming
you upside the head with a wooden board. No fear. There actually are some good
ones out there. Susan Dennard did an amazing article on synopses at Publishing Crawl. First she gives some
basic info, then some reminders about what is especially needed for a synopsis
(only three named characters, tell the ending), then she gives an actual
example of how to write one. She uses Star Wars as her basis, making it easy to
follow since pretty much everyone has seen that movie. Instead of frustrating,
impossible to define questions, she asks for fill in the blanks for things like
“Protagonist Intro” and “Winning seems imminent, but…”. In short, it’s not what
people want. It’s how to do it.
Anyway, if you want to know how to do a synopsis, go here.
The other important piece of advice I remember (though I don’t remember where I
got it from): get beta readers for your synopsis, too. From people who haven’t read your book, so you know if
it’s enticing and informative.
That’s all the wisdom* I have. What are your thoughts on
synopses? Any advice?
*And by wisdom, I mean stuff I learned from other people’s
blogs.
