Last week, I posted about how to write a synopsis for your novel. This week we’ll focus on how to make your rough draft into something that beckons agents and editors to ask for more.
If the first draft of your synopsis is anything like mine, there are any number of problems. It wanders senselessly in places. An antagonist seems to arrive out of nowhere in the last quarter of the book. The romance subplot is never mentioned, nor are the red herrings so every clue that points to the villain looks like a flashing light.
The good news is, this is all completely fixable.
All you’re trying to accomplish in that first draft is getting most of the story summarized in, hopefully, 2-4 pages. Now we can start working out these other issues. Not everything on this list will apply to your story, and I might even miss some things, but hopefully this will tackle a lot of the big issues:
Setting: You have placed your characters in a unique world, and that needs to be conveyed. For me with The Lost Girl of Astor Street, I knew I needed to work in as soon as possible that this is 1924 in Chicago. Here’s how my synopsis starts:
As the summer of 1924 approaches, seventeen-year-old PIPER SAIL dreams of one last carefree season before the reality of adulthood sets in. She imagines lots of time on the shores of Lake Michigan—maybe even with the very cute JEREMIAH CRANE—and passing many hours with her best friend LYDIA LEVINE.
Remember, with a synopsis one of our rules is to tell, not show. So in the story itself, I’m going to do everything I can to show my reader that it’s 1924 in Chicago, but in the synopsis, I’m just going to blurt it out.
If you write something other-worldly, you have a bit more explaining to do. And yet, you also don’t want the agent or editor getting so lost in the details of your world that they can’t tell what’s happening there.
Something you might try is sharing storyworld details in the context of how they impact your character and their journey. As an example, you could start your synopsis with: “In a time when families have been abolished, and when affection for fellow human beings has been made obsolete by science, MY CHARACTER knows that there’s something broken about her when she mourns the loss of her best friend.” A sentence like this shows both details about your storyworld, and also how they impact the characters.
Emotions: One of my favorite things about writing novels (and reading them) is getting to immerse myself in a character. But how do we convey our characters motivations and emotional state in a synopsis?
Again, we just tell it. Which can be hard if you’ve been training yourself to show and not tell! I do this over and over again in the example I shared last Monday. “Piper has become concerned about her best friend.” “Piper wishes she could talk to her mother.” “Piper is relieved.”
Sometimes a synopsis can read like a list of events, and it’s difficult for others to understand why the character did something. You can show the agent or editor that you provide proper motivation in the novel by expressing it in the synopsis. It could look something like this, “Because Piper helplessly watched her mother die, she cannot simply sit back and relax while the police search for her best friend.” This one sentence communicates, I’ve done my job and made sure that my character’s actions make sense.
Twenty-seven-year old PAIGE ELLISON feels she’s on the cusp of personal success. Not only has she fallen in love with working for the meeting-planning company her father will someday pass on to her, but her boyfriend, SPENCER, has been hinting at a proposal. However, Paige is in for a shock one ordinary Thursday morning when Spencer—who has always had a flair for the dramatic—calls into a local radio show “Do Me a Favor” and breaks the news to Paige—on air—that he is technically still married. Paige is mortified that somehow, once again, she’s found herself on the surprise end of a far-too-public breakup with a man she thought she would marry. At least this time she’s not already wearing her wedding dress.
After listening to the produced radio segment in her car the next morning, Paige assumes the airing of her breakup will be the low point of her day, but another surprise awaits her when she walks into the office. Her father and his flaky business partner of ten years, DANNY, have had a falling out. When Danny tells Paige that her employment has been terminated, she initially laughs. Her dad and the office manager are the ones who keep Blackstone running. How’s it possible that a split in the partnership means Danny—who loves the perks of being a partner but barely shows up for work—gets Blackstone and she and her father get to carry out their personal belongings under the watchful eye of a rent-a-cop?
Twenty-nine year old GRAHAM HOLBROOK has always had a soft spot for his best friend’s younger sister, Paige. They’ve known each other since high school, but in the last year his feelings toward her have shifted from brotherly to…well, not-so-brotherly. But even with Spencer out of the way, pursuing Paige won’t be easy. Ever since Graham’s dreams of playing pro baseball crashed and burned in college, he’s fumbled to find a career path that holds his interest. If he wants to win a girl like Paige, he knows he needs to start earning more than ten dollars an hour.
When Paige learns about the nature of her father and Danny’s argument, she’s sure that once Danny has cooled off, the two men will sort things out and life will go back to normal…
See how we’re switching back to Paige at the end? Often it makes sense to focus on one character for a bit before switching back to the other, even if that’s not exactly how it plays chronologically.
I find myself using the word. “meanwhile” pretty often as a sentence starter in my synopses.
The Lost Girl of Astor Street is a mystery, so there are lots of questions being asked during the entire synopsis.The synopsis I used a moment ago as an example, however, is a light-hearted contemporary romance. The difference in tone can be noted in phrases like, “in the last year his feelings toward her have shifted from brotherly to…well, not-so-brotherly.” That’s not the way I would describe Graham’s feelings if he were a character in my darker YA mystery.
Chase is the real hero, Ellie realizes as he overcomes his anger with her and celebrates when she receives the call that her book is being published. He’s the only one at school who knows about her upcoming release. Ellie is determined to keep it a secret since she borrowed quite a few character traits from her former friends. Her plan is to brainstorm a pen name and avoid that group for the remainder of high school.
Though if she does find herself back on their radar, that might work out okay too. She has a sequel to write.
If I were to merely list out the events of how The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet ends, then all I would need is that Ellie plans to avoid her former friends for the rest of the year. That’s a pretty blah way to end a story description, though. (And a story too, as it turns out. That’s not really how the book ends!)
So instead I thought about Ellie and what her mindset would be after everything she had gone through, and that’s when I came up with: “Though if she does find herself back on their radar, that might work out okay too. She has a sequel to write.” This reflects the mood of the book at the end of thes tory.
It’s great if you can start in a compelling, hook-y kind of way too. The synopsis for The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet starts with, “High school junior Ellie Sweet feels like she’s living a double life.”
I have a question about using past tense and present tense. For writing the rule is write in one tense, either present or past. With the exception of thoughts being expressed in present tense when writing a story in past tense. In your first post ‘how to write a synopsis’ you mention that a synopsis is usually written in present tense. I wonder what the rules are when you write about a past experience of the main character in a synopsis. I wrote about my main character recalling her childhood and I wonder if that should also be written in present tense.
In that situation, Tamara, it would make sense to tell it in past tense. So I think it would look like:
When Jane came across the car accident, she couldn’t help but recall her own pain as a child. At ten years old, she had been in the car with her mom. They were driving the speed limit, chatting away, when another car came out of nowhere and struck their vehicle. Jane’s mother had died. Seeing another car accident triggers a spell of anxiety for Jane…
So not only do you want to switch to past, you mark it with “had” as you enter that section and then again as you’re exiting. She had been in the car/mother had died. That’s how I would write that part of the synopsis, anyway.