Escape from Synopsis Hell

Zestful Blog Post #265

Recently an aspiring novelist asked me for help in writing her synopsis. Then another one did, and I figure it’s time to say a few more things about doing synopses, beyond last year's Zestful Blog Post #206, "Magic Cure for Synopsis Paralysis." The Web abounds with good advice on how to write a synopsis for your book project, and you can google around. Here is my minimum advice for maximum success.

A synopsis is a short document that tells what happens in your book. Agents and editors want them so they have to do less work, like reading your manuscript. The format they expect is third person, present tense, so do that, no matter what you’ve used in your story. They also expect that when they see a character’s name for the first time, it will be in all caps and/or bold. That’s it. Don’t add pictures or curlicues.

Relax and decide you’re gonna have fun doing this, goddammit. Even though writing a synopsis feels like a matter of life and death, getting tense just becomes its own problem.

Forge your material with an iron will and a light heart. Photo by ES

 Here we go.

• Accept the fact that there’s no such thing as a perfect synopsis. Just as you need to dump perfectionism while writing, you need to dump it here too. You might need to write a long synopsis (thousands of words) and a short one (hundreds), because agents and editors ask for different things. Start with the long one. Then just cut it down to make the short one. We’ll talk about back-cover blurbs some other time.
• In your rough-out session, flip through the manuscript and write down the heart-clutching moments. You’ve just created your synopsis framework. In "Magic Cure," I advise talking it into a recording device instead of writing it. This works for some writers but not others, so you can do it whatever way suits you.
• Flesh things out by writing how each heart-clutching moment is connected to the next. If you get stuck, just tell what happens next as simply as you can.
• Prompt yourself with these two questions: What does your main character lose (or expend) during the story? What does he win (or gain) at the end? Because that’s basically your plot. Keep that character’s wins and losses in front of your reader.
• Give yourself a short amount of time to do this. You can and will dick around with this forever, unless you decide something like, “I’ll get it roughed out between 2 and 3 this afternoon, and come what may, I’ll get it finished before meeting Joe and Rose Ellen for cocktails on Saturday.”
• Break up your time on it. This might sound counter to what I just said, because won’t more work sessions add up to more time? Not necessarily. If you try to get the thing done in one long session, you’ll glaze over and stop being able to tell what sounds/reads good. But if you let it sit overnight and come back to it, maybe even three or four times, you’ll keep bringing a fresh perspective to it, and you’ll save time in the end. Spend no more than an hour at a stretch on it.
• Cut anything that doesn’t sound peppy.
• Declare victory and move on.

Before asking for comments, I want to congratulate my friend Alison Solomon on her new book:

Now, what do you think? Do you have any tips/tricks for writing synopses? To post, click below where it says, 'No Comments,' or '2 Comments,' or whatever.

If you'd like to receive this blog automatically as an email, look to the right, above my bio, and subscribe there. Thanks for looking in.

Magic Cure for Synopsis Paralysis

Zestful Blog Post #206

Everybody hates to write synopses. Your novel is finished, and now you want to shop it around, and you need a synopsis. Or you’ve written your seventh, but your editor requires a detailed synopsis every time, before they sign the contract. Or they require a synopsis before you even write the thing! You need a synopsis.

And synopses suck to write, they just do. I’ve critiqued synopses for clients, I’ve written my own, and the whole business of distilling your story to something that sounds fabulous is onerous and upsetting. You have to leave out so much, and whatever you put in is incomplete, so how do you decide, rrrrgh, rrrrgh, sucking, sucking. I’m not talking about a paragraph-long piece of cover copy, though those suck to write as well; I’m talking about the extended, multi-page synopsis you need to satisfy agents and especially editors. Gosh—this just occurred to me: A fabulous side benefit of self-publishing is that you don’t have to write synopses. But if you’re after a trad-pub deal, you gotta do ’em.

OK, I promised a magic cure, and here it is.

Don’t write your synopsis. Talk it.

That’s it, basically. Walk away from pen and paper, walk away from the keyboard. Get cozy with a voice recorder and start telling your story to it. Ideally, use a voice-to-text application and be in a private setting where you can’t feel inhibited about being overheard. Speak as if you’re telling a friend the story from the start. Don’t worry if you feel awkward/stupid, and have to start and stop. Keep at it, and things will go smoother. If you were talking to a (patient, interested) friend, you’d tell what happens, and you’d also talk about the story’s themes— “OK, and there’s this rebirth imagery that keeps cropping up, like when…” You might talk a little about the germ of the story, the seed that made you think, hey, I could write a novel about this! And you’d talk about the characters, both generally and specifically. You’d talk a bit about the settings, perhaps. You might repeat yourself, you might think of something out of order— “Oh! And yeah, the guy’s brother used to be on the bomb squad, so he’s got like this inside dope on how those robots work…” Natter on. If you do this, and do it naturally and in a relaxed way, you will not be gripping your head in frustration.

Then when you feel like you’ve pretty much got it covered, stop and transcribe it or print it out. NOW you’ve got something to work with! Let it sit for a day or two, then get it out and start editing. You’ll immediately see what sounds good and what doesn’t, which parts are more important, which ones less. You’ll cut redundancies, you’ll cut extraneous words, you’ll tighten things up with conjunctions that flow instead of stumble. Your text will already be in an informal, vocal cadence, and that’s good for a synopsis, which ought to sound fun, chatty, and quick. You’ll notice good turns of phrase, and poor ones. You’ll tighten things up more. You’ll have a synopsis.

This technique isn’t really magic (I confess), but it can help magic happen! I’ve tested it on my own material. If you try it, let me know how it goes.

[photo and photo manipulation by ES]

What do you think? To post, click below where it says, 'No Comments,' or '2 Comments,' or whatever.

If you'd like to receive this blog automatically as an email, look to the right, above my bio, and subscribe there. Thanks for looking in.