How to Edit a Synopsis

First, a confession: I finished my book sometime this summer. As of Thursday, I had not finished a synopsis. I had a book I was excited about and a query I didn't hate, so I didn't want to tackle a synopsis because, let's face it, synopses are hard. Then, in a series of fortunate events, I needed one. Quickly.

I've read lots of posts on how to write a synopsis (I have this one bookmarked for its ease of use, and this one is good, too, especially for longer synopses), and my handwritten ideas notebook is full of the starts of synopses for this novel (five of them, if you wondered).

It took me a long time to get to a draft that I thought was complete. At about 800 words, I was satisfied that it was short enough to qualify as a "short synopsis," and happy enough about the plot points it covered. I read it over several times, patted myself on the back for finishing it, corrected some sentence flow stuff, and sent it off for critique.

My synopsis went to two different people. One has read the novel, the other hasn't. Here's my tip of the day: always have someone who hasn't read your book critique your synopsis.

The synopsis I was so pleased with a few hours before was completely ripped to shreds. It was fantastic (for the book; not for my ego). "Wait, how can this happen?" "I thought they were there?" "Is this even relevant?" There is a temptation to get defensive and say, "Well it makes sense in the book..." When that happens, it's important to remember the point of a synopsis: to tell the story to someone who hasn't read it. If the person critiquing your synopsis is confused, Amazing Agent X will be, too.

The goal for synopses isn't to write pretty sentences or make the reader infer anything. Its goal is to quickly tell someone (an agent or editor, probably) what happens in the book. Your job is to make it obvious what that is, so make sure that people who haven't read it are clear.

Rochelle Deans sometimes feels like the only writer on the planet who rushes through the writing so she can start editing. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and young daughter. Her bad habits include mispronouncing words, correcting grammar, and spending far too much time on the Internet.

Creating the Dreaded Synopsis

We have had a lot of requests for information on how to write a synopsis. A synopsis is that dreaded summary of your story that can be anywhere from one to five plus pages. They aren't just necessary for when you're querying agents and editors. They're essential for when your agent is subbing your novel or novel proposal to editors.

Instead of re-inventing the microwave oven, I'm going to post this brilliant article from former QT blogger H.L. Dyer. If you have any questions not covered in the post, ask them in the comments.

***

Okay, QT's... as promised I am back to discuss how to create a rockin' synopsis.Now-- just like with a novel-- there is no single way to write a synopsis. There are many folks on these internets and in Pitchcraft texts such as Katharine Sands' Making the Perfect Pitch or The Sell-Your-Novel Toolkit giving advice on how to write a compelling synopsis. I'll include links to several of the online references at the bottom of this post.

In general, the recommended processes fall into one of two categories: to start with your one-word logline  and build up. Or to start with your novel and condense down.

While either method may work well for you, the best synopses in my experience were created using the second method. I'm going to describe the system I use for synopses and why it works for me.

When I first began preparing my manuscript submission, I drafted a 2-page synopsis using the "just describe your novel as briefly as possible" method. To admit that my original synopsis failed to rock would be an understatement. In attempting to be as brief as possible while "revealing all", I had virtually eliminated the component that makes a project unique.

I had surgically extracted my voice from my work.

Luckily, before I began submissions, I found another way.

A contest I was considering entering required an 8-page synopsis. I had read that agents or editors may request a "Chapter Synopsis," which is a brief summary of each chapter of your novel. So, I decided to write my chapter synopsis first, and then see where I was lengthwise.

Now, chapter synopses are not often requested. In fact, despite many requested proposals for my manuscript, I have yet to send my chapter synopsis for The Edge of Memory to a single agent. But I still strongly recommend you write one. Here's why:

1. For me (and for most writers I know), it is much easier to edit down than up. The chapter synopsis will hit all your main conflicts and give you the length flexibility to preserve your voice. Then you can cherry-pick the best bits when you trim down to the length you need. BONUS: Agents will request synopses of varying lengths. My requested synopses have varied from 1 - 8 pages. You can create these various lengths along the way as your editing progresses.

2. It's a lot less daunting to summarize a chapter than it is to summarize a WHOLE manuscript. The Baby Steps approach is nothing new, but it is surprisingly effective.

3. The chapter synopsis will help you to edit your novel Big Picture style. Our writing, our characters are personal. In the creative whirlwind of drafting a novel, we sometimes create scenes that don't resonate with the rest of the story. Once they've been created, and edited to polish the writing to a blinding shine, it can be easy to miss the fact that the scene isn't actually necessary to the story we're telling. Or that the characters have changed since the scene was written.

Each chapter, like a novel, should have a beginning, middle, and an ending. And the chapter, overall, should work to improve our understanding of the characters and to advance the plot. You might well discover while composing your chapter synopsis that a chapter or two needs reorganizing, or your novel may be stronger without them altogether.

So, here's my recommended method for writing your synopsis:

Step One: For each of your chapters, write 2 - 3 sentences to summarize. Use strong verbs and language that captures your tone and voice as much as possible. Focus on the CONFLICTS. For mine, I wrote three sentences for each chapter. The set-up, the conflict, and the resolution.

For example, my first chapter summary reads:

When a young girl collapses in an unfamiliar house, no one knows where she came from or how she ended up on war widow Thea Greyson's front porch that stormy night. Thirty years later, Beatrice is devastated by the death of the woman that took her in. But her grief turns to a sense of betrayal when she discovers the letter from her birth mother that Thea claimed was lost.

Which may seem familiar to you if you follow the BookEnds blog (where Jessica Faust critiqued query pitches over the holidays). Because, with some minor revisions... Hello, first-half-of-query-pitch!

Step 2: If you're having trouble identifying the beginning, middle and ending of a chapter, there may be a problem with the chapter itself. Revise your manuscript as necessary.

Step 3: Once you've written a few sentences for each chapter, check your summaries for chapters which are not working because they are unnecessary, tangential, inconsistent, etc. Revise your manuscript as necessary.

Step 4: Group your chapters into acts. Most story arcs follow a three-act format. The first act generally establishes the protagonist's starting place (the first act is also usually the shortest) and continues to the point where your catalyst drives or forces the protagonist to make or endure a change. The second act is represented by the series of events that bring the protagonist to the climax. In the third and final act, the story rises to its climax and resolution.

For example, in The Wizard of Oz, the first act would end when Dorothy lands in Oz. The second act would comprise the journey to the Emerald City, and the third and final act would consist of the climactic showdown with the Wicked Witch of the West, and the resolution where each character realizes they already have the power within themselves to get what they want.

Step 5: Get out your editing scalpel. Depending on the length of your novel and chapters, your chapter synopsis will probably be longer than your desired length. So now, within your three-act collections of chapter summaries, you'll have to start trimming. Based on the requests I've received, I would recommend trimming to a 5-page length, and then trimming further to 1 - 2 pages. You can always edit to other lengths if necessary, but the vast majority of requests are satisfied with one of those two options.

Step 6: Read your synopsis aloud to yourself, looking for words or phrases that fall flat or pull the reader out of the narrative. The end result should resemble the sort of descriptions you see for movies in TV Guide and the like. Brief and punchy... don't let yourself get bogged down in things like setting or physical descriptions of the characters.

Step 7: Check to be sure you've accomplished your basic synopsis goals. Have you established the main characters and their motivations? Have you demonstrated the main conflict and the obstacles preventing the protagonist from achieving his or her goals? Do the events of your plot unfold naturally without resorting to cliches or plot devices? Do your plot twists culminate in a climax? Is the resolution of the story conflicts thorough and satisfying (Have you tied up any loose ends?) Does the language and tone of your synopsis reflect YOUR voice?

If your synopsis has done those things, Congratulations!

You now have a synopsis that rocks. Yay, you!

Don't forget the Novel Synopsis Basics we talked about last week, or course. ;)

For other folks' thoughts on writing a synopsis, check out these links:

Mastering the Dreaded Synopsis
Writing a Synopsis From the Ground Up
Writing the Synopsis: The Basics to Get Your Book Synopsis Written
How to Write a Synopsis
Workshop: Writing the Novel Synopsis

ETA (2/9/09): Jessica Faust posted a nice guideline of synopses on the BookEnds Blog this morning.

Putting The Cart Before The Horse

Never put the cart before the horse.

It’s an adage used to describe the logical order of things—anything other than the horse in front would be preposterous. It’s just how things are done.

Writers traditionally write the book and, upon preparing to begin its marketing, realize that they also need a synopsis to summarize their work. That’s a logical order. A novel and a synopsis are two separate things, so it makes sense to do them separately.

Doesn’t it?

Depends on the writer, I suppose. While some writers are meticulous about creating outlines for their novels, many others are simply content to allow their muses the freedom to wander at will. We call them plotters and pantsers (because they write by the seat of their pants. Probably another adage, but it's best saved for another time.)

I’ve long debated whether I was a plotter or a pantser and, to be truthful, I’ve never been able to decide—until now. That’s because I finished the first draft of my work-in-progress this week and today I thought I’d work on its synopsis.

Bringing Back the Pain

I wrote the synopsis several years ago and hadn’t really looked at it since then. I felt very much like I’d put the cart before the horse when I wrote it; I had a general idea of where the story was going and a bare skeleton of story, but that was it. Before I threw myself back into the project this summer, I had written perhaps 20k words into the book. I’d tripled it over the last two months, adding flesh and blood to the skeleton.

Writers know the will of a story often overwrites the will of the writer. In the case of this manuscript, I encountered a pile of technical details that had to be sorted. The story is about a social worker who becomes involved with a client and, as more story got written, I realized my therapist faced greater challenges than the ones I originally gave her. Chalk it all up to truth being stranger than fiction, and fiction needing to make sense. (Brings to mind this QT article.)

The story evolved. It had to, if I wanted it to be any good.

Today, I pulled out the existing synopsis and realized it wasn’t good enough anymore. That meant the synopsis had to evolve, too.

I remember the first time I wrote a synopsis. I thought it would be impossible to pare down my novel into a mere page or two, and I struggled with it. I agonized over it. I hated every minute of it.

So I did the professional thing and sucked it up. I did everything I could to get better at writing them because I knew if I wanted to sell my book, I’d need a synopsis to sell it for me.

Although I haven’t learned to like writing those tedious things, I have improved my synopsis-writing skills. Knowing how important they are to the success of my projects enables me to respect their place in my work. I think that’s why I wrote that original synopsis back when I had only a handful of scattered chapters. It was a part of the book that couldn’t be shoved aside until the end.

I also have come to believe that I wrote that synopsis 20k words too late.

Redemption for the Evil Synopsis

This is like having one of those grown-up moments. I get them every now and then and they absolutely rot because part of me thinks I can be a kid forever. Synopses are very grown-up things. They are important marketing tools that are no fun to write but are necessary to ensure the success of our work.

Yech. Just writing that makes me look over my shoulder, looking for a walker or denture cream or some other sign that I had officially become Old As Dirt. It kind of deflates the exuberance of youthful devil-may-care imagining and creating and writing.

So why did I think I wrote it too late? Because, if I’d written the synopsis first, I’d have realized where my plot was weak, where my character’s waffled on their convictions. Much of the last two months of writing was spent trying to reconcile old material with the new. Had I written the synopsis first, the book would have had better direction, better flow, and I wouldn’t have had to spend so much time going through the chapters, wondering why certain scenes just didn’t work.

The synopsis, I realized, isn’t just a marketing tool—it’s a crafting tool that gives a novel a reason to exist, even before it’s written. I have come to realize that synopsing is just as important as the noveling itself. (Yes, they are now verbs. Somebody call Webster.)

And the best part is that I still don’t have to define myself as a plotter or a pantser. A synopsis doesn’t keep the crazy ponies of my writer’s mind from stampeding across the page. A story doesn’t cease to evolve just because it’s been plotted. And I’m still free to pants my pants off, however awkward an image that phrase evokes.

Put the Cart Before the Horse

I still don’t think I can cold-start a novel by writing a synopsis before anything else. My stories generally emerge from random scenes and passages I write while exploring an inspiration. If I like an idea, I’ll keep with it. But now that I’ve explored its tremendous usefulness as a crafting tool, I’ll pen a synopsis a lot sooner.

Synopsing early can identify themes I may have subconsciously written into those first few chapters—identifying those themes means I can go back through a first draft, adding subtle nuance or clever coincidence or full-tilt emotional enhancement so visceral no reader could miss it. Synopsing early means I don’t lose track of secondary characters or the importance of their roles in the story. Synopsing early means less pain later, when all I had to do is tweak and polish the synopsis before submission. When I finally finish this current book, I don’t want to delay sending it off. I’m way too eager to get back in the game.

That's a win-win-win for me.

Most important, an early synopsis ensures that the novel is a story is worth writing, while preventing a lot of deleted scenes and abandoned subplots along the way. Maybe it is a bit like putting the cart before the horse, but the horses appreciate knowing they have a cart to pull once I give them free reign.

And, once they start off, they don’t need to slow down until they get to THE END.




Ash Krafton is a speculative fiction writer who, despite having a Time Turner under her couch and three different sonic screwdrivers in her purse, still encounters difficulty with time management. Visit Ash at www.ashkrafton.com for news on her urban fantasy series The Books of the Demimonde (Pink Narcissus Press) or stop by the Demimonde Blog at www.ash-krafton.blogspot.com .