Writing A Synopsis

 

There comes a stage in your writing life when you start thinking about publishing the work that you have created. If you want to publish your novel through the traditional way, then you will need an agent. But how does one get an agent? With great difficulty, unless you are extremely lucky and achieve an agent from the first person you send your work to. 

When sending your work to an agent, there are a few documents that you must send to them. In most cases they ask for the first three chapters of your novel, a cover letter, and a synopsis. 

Today, I will give you tips on writing a synopsis. 

You might be wondering, why should I listen to a person who still does not have an agent? I’ll tell you why, not only have I learnt tips from University, but I am also at the stage of sending my work to agents, and therefore I am writing my synopsis. 

A synopsis is a summary of your novel, it’s a way for your agent to understand what else happens in your book after the first three chapters. Most synopsis are one page, but remember to read what the agency wants you to send. One of the agencies that I have seen has said the synopsis can be up to 3000 words. Whereas others will not want it any more than 500 words. 

The Tips:

• Title at the top, even if its a working title — Doing this helps the agent have a slight understanding of what type of genre your book is. A thriller’s title is completely different to a romance’s title. 

• Pitch line — Somewhere at the start of your synopsis, you need a gripping line that hooks the agent to read more. I finally have this line after writing my fourth draft. 

• Adding quotes — If you are finding it difficult to find your pitch line, using a quote from your novel is another way to show the agent a glimpse of what they should expect in your book. 

• Should cover your plot — Try your best to use the simplest terms when explaining what happens in your novel. When writing about your plot, don’t cram it all in, leave the subplot to the side and just focus on the main twists that affect your main plot. 

• Characters — Now, you want to introduce your protagonist(s) as soon as possible, for your agent to know who’s story they are mainly following. But also remember not to add too many characters in your synopsis. In my previous draft I had included nine different characters. I now only have four, two are the love interests and the other two are important characters that affect this relationship. 

• When and where — A default for us is when we automatically think about the ‘when’ we think it’s set in the present day. If your creative piece is a historical fiction, remember to mention what year/era we are in near the top. The ‘where’ is to know what city or country your novel is based in. I’ve included in my synopsis that my novel is based in Bournemouth. 

• Including the ending — At University, we were taught to spoil it all, or the agent to learn the twist and turns in your novel. However, this depends on the agent you are sending it to. If they mentioned not to spoil the ending, then leave it out. But if they don’t mention anything about the ending, then spoil it for them. 

• Planning your synopsis — When I wrote my first draft of my synopsis, I completely ignored the planning stage, and that made my synopsis too wordy. Therefore, I would advise you to jot down the important events of your novel, that you have to include in your synopsis. 

I know most writers hoped that after writing many drafts of our novel, that the synopsis will be easy and will be done after the first draft. I’m not going to lie to you, I find it hard to write a synopsis, no matter how many websites I’ve read saying it will be easy if you've written a whole novel, no need to stress. But what they seem to forget is that we have to put 75,000+ words in 500-800 words. 

We will just have to go through the same process as we’ve done with our novel. Write a draft for our synopsis, leave it for a week, read it through and edit it again and again. I believe in you. And together, we both can write a great synopsis for our novels, even if it will take some months.