Synopsis Blues

01 May Synopsis Blues

It always happens.  You polish your manuscript to a spit polish. Replace your computer do to water damage, and then the publishers say. “We would like a 1-3 page synopsis.  Ack, your hair stands on end, you grow wild-eyed. How do I compress at 100k novel into three pages, or better yet one page. You feel that tightening in your chest and pain shooting down your right arm as you contemplate the enormity of the task.

Lucky there are a couple of things you can do. If you are like me, and you use index cards during the revision process. (More on that later.) and you use the PACTS statement and create your sentence for revision. Each scene has its own notecard with that sentence on it, you have well over a hundred sentences that sum up your book in four to five pages. Whew. Well now we need to compress your book down farther. Look over each sentence. Is it necessary for the synopsis.  Does it tell, yes you heard me tell, the editor what is going on. Does it dance off with a cool sub-plot but not the meaty plot.  If it does propel the main feature of your book forward, cut cut cut. Ok Miss Birdy head back to your house. Once you are done pruning you should have a workable synopsis.

Now look at what you have left, you want to cut off at least one more page.  Which one sentence is weakest. That is what you will cut. By now, hopefully, you have a synopsis that should work.  You want a clear fast synopsis for when you trap that agent in the elevator as he or she struggles with the buttons wanting to flee your pitch at the latest writing conference.

Go over the synopsis, polish it, make your bulky SFR’s shine with eloquence. The editors and agents will not only be judging your ms, but also your cover letter, your synopsis, and what kind of toilet paper you use. Give them no reason to doubt you are anything but the next bestselling fiction writer, or non-fiction writer, of your genre. The synopsis is nothing but a tool.  If you are a pantser,  it is so much harder to create your synopsis. Me, give me a detailed outline any day of the week and I will make the characters sing, life, and die horrible bloody deaths.