Yeah I tell people all the time I'm happy with just getting the damn thing, the voices of characters, scenes out of my head. But in my secret little spot where I hide dreams and desires I would loveeeeeeeeeeeee to be paid to write all day about them.
So today I researched agents and found three and all required a synopsis of 1-2 pages. Well, what in the sam hill is that? Now a query letter is not enough? So I got on that lovely thing called the internet and found some fabulous advice and outlines and started in on it. I'm pretty damn positive that all of life's answers and solutions can be found on the web with a big of digging.
I was sidetracked by Miss Snarky's blog (now defunct). Years ago she offered to let aspiring authors send her their synopsis and then she critiqued them, she was a successful literary agent at one point and new her stuff. They were hysterical and out of the 100 I read, only two I found intriguing and well written enough to understand what in the hell was going on for their book idea. Even funnier were her comments in red. (WTF? Alien Alert! were some of my favorites.)
Anyway... I learned quite a bit and a bunch of acronyms as well and got started on my own MS-JOT for Curador. By far the best I found was for my official chosen genre contemporary fiction. I have posted some of it below. (This is very condensed and hacked for my own use.)
Publishers and agents require a synopsis of your novel before you submit the MS (that’s 'manuscript' – might as well learn the jargon now). The synopsis is your most powerful, in fact your only, selling tool. Your cover letter is less important, and I'll cover it in a future article, but what you are selling is your novel, and your novel's representative is your synopsis.Before I get started, I want to quote a wise editor I know, who said that, to the author, writing the synposis was writing the story's obituary. The story is done, the characters are gone from you. It is over, and now you are summarising them in what you hope is an honest and compelling way.
Stage one: go through your MS and jot down what happens in each scene. A usual novel has between 60 and 80 scenes, grouped into chapters. Ignore the chapters.
Stage two is the condensation of your jottings into a summary.
Stage Three is the paring down.
Stage Four: the enrichment. This is where you very gently add a touch of flavour, a touch of story-telling, into that pared-down skeleton. Not too much: you don’t want to inflate the word-count, but just enough to give the agent or publisher a sense that you can write. Not a sense of how the story is written, its tone of voice, but a sense of your own skills
The synopsis should mirror the genre of the story. If it is a limpid romance, it should flow like a romance, delivering its unfolding love story in a charming, beguiling way. For a mystery mystery, it must become more tense and even thrilling as it goes. While still summarising and giving the action with a few tiny 'colour' touches, you can make it exciting. Yes, you give away the ending, because you must tell all the action, but you can do so in a way that the agent or publisher finishes it saying, 'Wow!'
Stage Five. Yes, you have a bit more work to do. This is your sense-check, your last read-through of the synopsis. You must judge whether you think it is an accurate and honest representation of your novel’s action, whether it delivers an emotional impact as well, and whether it is, in and of itself, a good read. As this is the only reading experience the agent or publisher will have of you, it has to be a good one. If your synopsis tells a good story, if it IS a good story, then they will trust that the novel itself will be a good story, too.
Afternote: don't forget to put your name, contact details, and word-count in the top right-hand corner of your synopsis. This makes it safe to detach and hand around, and you want that to happen in a literary agency or publishing house.
Copyright Caro Clarke
