Wednesday, September 12, 2012

The Dreaded (Dreadful) Synopsis

With revisions completed, I'm planning to start querying Novel #4 again soon. But before that can happen, I need to create "the package" - which includes a synopsis.

I HATE writing the synopsis. For me, it's worse than writing the query letter.

I never know how much to include, so I usually end up with all kinds of stuff that isn't needed. To me, everything seems important to the story. Otherwise, I wouldn't have put it in my book. But I found this:

How To Write A 1-Page Synopsis by Susan Dennard, over at Pub(Lishing) Crawl.

Wow! Although I wouldn't go so far as to say it made writing the synopsis fun, by following the template, I managed to come up with a 1-page bare bones summary in only one morning! (Okay, it's one page plus 2 lines, since I forgot to include room for the title. But I'm still amazed!)

From there, it wasn't so hard to flesh it out with more details to create a longer 2-page synopsis that captures most of the main story events (okay, mine is 2 1/4 pages, but compared to the 5 or 6 pages I usually start with, it's impressive.)

Which do you find harder: writing the query or writing the synopsis? Any good resources to share?





13 comments:

  1. Love writing a query, hate doing a synopsis! There are just too many details I want to sneak in. I'll have to check out that link you shared. Thanks for passing it along.

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    1. Exactly! When I'm writing the synopsis, suddenly every detail seems critical.

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  2. Writing the query, writing the synopsis... Both equally difficult and slightly ebil. By hey, at least no one's asking for an outline. I think a couple of agents were still doing that when I started this writing thing. :shudder:

    Interesting that you wrote the one page first and then added. I write the long synopsis first then pare down. Today I have to pare down my 2-pg into a 1-pg.

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    1. I think the 1-page is harder so I started there.

      I actually had a pretty good longer synopsis from before the revision that I stole snippets from (thanks Car!).

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  3. Synopsis are definitely harder to write, because you have to cover more material. With a query, you just have to hook them, and that's often challenging enough.

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    1. I think I try to pack too much into each book. And then it makes it doubly hard to write the synopsis.

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  4. Both are hard but for me it's the query. For my first story, I've spent at least 40 hours on it, no lie. Maybe I should get Stina to write it.

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    1. Ha! Some people do seem better at queries than others. I wonder if it's genetic?

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  5. I struggle with writing both, but I'd say I've had more trouble with synopses. Thanks for that link, Andrea!

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  6. Thanks for the link. It will be very helpful, I'm not very good at writing a synopsis.

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  7. I used to find the synopsis the hardest, but with my recent novel, I find it easier to put into 3 paragraphs than one.

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  8. Oh, you're writing a synopsis? I will pray for you sister...

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