Let’s be honest, writers avoid writing a synopsis as much as a nutritionist avoids cake.
You’ve just spent a year of your life perfectly placing letters, sentences, and paragraphs to dictate the precise syntax that will engage a reader and, fingers crossed, make a million dollars. But there’s one hitch to get into the desired limelight…the ugly synopsis.
Many agents require submitting a synopsis, a query, and approximately the first ten pages of your manuscript—give or take. And while that’s a lot of work to put into a submission, it’s essential to create a pitch package that catches the agent’s eye, especially when they are receiving sometimes hundreds of unsolicited queries a week. Crazy, right? That’s why it’s important to put time and effort into your synopsis.
Let’s start with a few basic fundamental aspects you’ll need to include.
First and foremost, your synopsis should NOT simply focus on a chapter-by-chapter plot point analysis. This was fine in the past, but science has determined that our brains are wired for story. (Don’t take my word for it. Check out Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story, in which she dives into the neuroscience of the concept). Here’s the quickest overview in the whole-wide world—our brains crave to understand the why of a story and how the character will jump through obstacles. Think of it this way, when the news reports, for example, a mass shooting, the first thing we ask the news lady who can’t hear us is, “Why did he do that?”
With that in mind, let’s focus on what you should include in your no-more-than 500 word synopsis.
Start with the context of your story:
And by this, I mean, answer questions such as: What are the circumstances of the protagonist just before the story starts. Where are they in time and space. What is this world and how does the protagonist fit into it, or not into it. Basically, you want to engage the agent immediately with why she should pay attention to the story right now. There are a few ways to accomplish this task, and is the next portion of the synopsis.
Explain the protagonist’s world view:
Story is about change; change of perception, change of circumstance, and the change of how the protagonist views her values. Drive home to the agent what exactly the protagonist wants and believes and why she desires it so badly.
The force of opposition:
After you’ve determined the protagonist’s deepest desire, make clear what will stand in the way of the protagonist from getting those desired results. Consider both internal and external forces at work. Answer tough questions such as, Who (external force) is holding the protagonist back? Or How does the emotional backstory (internal force) of the protagonist effect the desired results?
Explain what happens in the story:
Take some time on this one because this is going to drive home the concept of your story for the agent. Consider cause-and-effect trajectory. Above, you’ve determined what your protagonist desires more than anything else in the world. Thereafter, every scene is a direct effect of the cause, or what happens (opposing force) that makes the protagonist make a decision. Those decisions, whether internally or externally driven, propel the story forward, which in turn, keeps the reader reading because the protagonist is learning and changing.
Let’s be honest, you don’t want to elaborate on every scene from every chapter.
Talk about a kill-joy. Honestly, how are you going to give such detailed notes in only two pages? Your goal is to pick the major game-changing events, the ones that made a serious impact on the protagonist. Explain what happened and how it changed the protagonist’s views (just in that scene), which then leads to another game-changing event (another scene). That’s cause-and-effect trajectory, and that’s the most fun, I think, in writing; the concept of what event happened that is changing your protagonist’s actions that move toward the ending.
Give away the ending:
Gasp!!! Give away the ending? Yes. Put it on an agent billboard in bold letters. Heck, even add a picture just to drive the point home. Okay, that might be a bit of an extreme, but agent’s need to know this important information. They need to understand where the story starts and where it ends. They yearn to see the change of the protagonist, just as a reader needs to understand the evolution of the character. Ultimately, you need to tell the agent whether the protagonist gets what she wanted in the first place, and how the constellation prize worked either in her favor or against it.
This is a lot of information to absorb, yes, but think about all the hours, months, and years you’ve put into your book. These two pages are the link to that soul-written manuscript and changing it into a major publication.
Remember, writing is hard. So, keep pushing. Keep writing. You got this!
-RADolence
