Writing a Superb Synopsis--The Long Synopsis

Note: In the next few months, I will be running articles from a book I wrote a while back on how to get an agent. That book is no longer available, so I am going to share the information free of charge. I hope someone gets something out of it.

A synopsis is an incredibly important part of your book. Think of it as the skeleton of your novel. Without the skeleton to support the vulnerable insides, the entire thing will not survive. The skeleton must be extremely strong.

Much like the query letter, there are only five important parts of a synopsis. I’m going to teach you to take those five elements and apply them to your own synopsis. I like to say this is easy, but in reality it is not. It can be rather grueling. The time to write a synopsis is before you write your book. However, here I am working on the assumption that you have already written your book, and are just now writing the synopsis. This format will still work for your synopsis before your book is written, too.

Often, when I say the word “synopsis” I hear screams. Yes, they are coming out of my own mouth. When faced with writing one of these nasty little papers, I never fail to freeze up. It has only been in the last three months that I actually wrote a synopsis that a person I consider a tough critic (the only kind to have, in my opinion), called “riveting.” It was high praise. The hardest job facing a writer today, it seems, is writing the synopsis. Prolific authors who have no trouble writing 100,000 words freeze up when faced with summing up their work in just a few short pages. I count myself among those writers who have struggled with a synopsis.

But as I learned to write a good query letter, one that started receiving positive responses from agents and publishers, I discovered something that helped me tremendously. The key is to keep it simple.

Whether writing a query, a synopsis, or a cover letter, don’t try to overwrite it.

As with a query, covered in the preceding chapters, there are only a few basic ingredients to the synopsis. By following these simple rules, you will be able to hone a good, tight synopsis that will make an agent or publisher sit up and take notice.

Part of the problem with writing a synopsis is that many writers don’t understand its purpose. A synopsis is used to sell your plot, not your writing. If you fill a synopsis with flowery, beautiful prose, it might read well, but will it tell the agent or publisher what they need to know: Can you write a plausible plot?

So, what goes into a synopsis?

1. A great hook.
2. Your book’s beginning
3. The conflicts your lead characters are facing.
4. How they resolve and survive those conflicts.
5. How your book ends.

That’s it. No flowery prose. No long descriptions. No secondary characters. No character studies. The synopsis is used to sell your plot.

We are going to make this process slightly less painful by writing two synopses. The first one will be three- to five-pages long, and the second, short synopsis will be only one page long. This simplifies the process as it allows you to cull out unnecessary pieces of your plot and storyline that you might feel compelled to throw into your synopses.

You should know that we are all starting off here on the wrong foot, according to Beth Anderson, a long time author, however, because the time to write a synopsis is before you write the book. (This does not apply to those of you who are working on nonfiction proposal, and have not written the book.)

“I know that’s a pretty sweeping statement, and I realize there are authors who don’t plot their books, but it’s the rare author that doesn’t, because there are too many pitfalls associated with starting out blind,” Anderson said.

However, assuming your book is already written (I know most authors do not write the synopsis until they are absolutely forced to), it is now necessary to go back and sum up your novel. The long synopsis allows us a little more latitude than the short one, so we will start with it.

To begin, you need a pad of paper and a pen, or a blank document on your word processing program. At the top of your paper or document, write the steps one through five, and sum up your storyline in these five steps.

1. A great hook.
2. Your book’s beginning
3. The conflicts your lead characters are facing.
4. How they resolve and survive those conflicts.
5. How your book ends.

Each of these steps should be one to three sentences only. You can do this. We will get even tougher on the short synopsis, so appreciate the latitude I am giving you here. Cut out all the fluff and tell me exactly what happens.

Example:
1. Allison Marie Jensen is a young Mormon girl whose world changes drastically the day she falls victim to a ruthless predator.
2. A bearded man holds her and a friend at gunpoint, threatening to kill them if they don’t remove their clothes. Her friend disappears and is never found, and Alli is haunted by nightmares as she grows up.
3. Realizing that despite her father’s teachings it takes more than prayer, a faithful tithe, and baptism to protect her, she no longer accepts the Mormon doctrine as truth. She rebels and leaves home, and when she is raped, she is forced to go back and reevaluate her life.
4. She uncovers a conspiracy by the leaders of the Church to cover up the crimes of a pedophile, one that carries through two generations and countless victims, including her own rapist. Despite pleas, pressure, and threats to stay quiet, she is determined to expose all those who allowed a sexual predator to destroy young lives.
5. Allison faces her rapist, determined to be a victim no more, and finds he was molested by a man years before, the man who murdered her friend. He admits he saw the murder but can’t remember where the body is, and before she can convince him to turn himself in, he puts a gun to his head and shoots. Allison writes the story for her newspaper.

If you think this was easy for me, you are very wrong. I am now legally insane. The plot to this book is incredibly complicated, with lots of players and crises. It took hours to get these five steps down to a few sentences. It took even longer to do it with the short synopses, but it is possible.

Now, pull out your manuscript. Go through each chapter, and summarize it in one paragraph. What happens in this chapter? Who is present in this chapter? And most importantly, does this chapter move your story forward? There is a good chance when you do this you will discover you have some unnecessary chapters in your manuscript. This is a good thing. It will allow you to fine tune your work for the agent, so if it does happen, don’t panic. When we address your total package, you will see why this works to your benefit.

When you have completed steps one through five, and summarized each chapter, it is now time to put this together in a workable synopsis.

Start with your hook, and your beginning: Steps one and two. Putting them together, you will find that you are on your way. Now, take your chapter summaries and add them, in order. Last of all, use step five, how does your book end?

Now take your five steps, and examine them. Make sure you have covered everything you have listed in those steps in your synopsis. Read through and edit your work for transition or continuity problems, and readability. Even though this is a synopsis, you still need to write smoothly and transition each paragraph into the next one. It may not be the time for flowery prose, but your writing still has to flow.

Ask yourself, does this make sense? If I didn’t know these characters better than my own family, would I understand their motivations? Unless you have a 400-chapter book, your synopsis should now be three to five pages long, single spaced.
I suggest here that in the future, all synopses should be written before the book. Perhaps some of you have already done that, and are happy with them, or perhaps unhappy, but I learned the hard way how important a synopsis is. I would have saved myself a lot of grief and countless rewrites if I had used a synopsis for SisterWife, because this tool allows you to see pitfalls and problems with a plot that you can miss if you don’t write it.

Bestselling author Katherine Sutcliffe also writes her synopses before starting a book. “A synopsis lays the foundation on which I construct the plot, sub plots, characterization and motivations in a way that keeps me focused and on track.”
Take each one of these steps and apply it to your own manuscript. Analyzing each chapter may seem time-consuming, but you will be grateful you did it.