Write The Book: Conversations on Craft
Arts:Books
* A synopsis is not a chapter outline. It's not necessarily even a chronological retelling of the book. Rather, a synopsis presents the book's plot and introduces the main characters in an appealing way that will interest an agent in reading the whole novel. It's a chance to show off your creativity, as well as your ability to condense and organize material.
* You may find that the agents you are querying have their own guidelines for appropriate synopsis length. But if they don't specify otherwise, try to make your book synopsis two-to-three double-spaced pages.
* Use the jacket covers of books you're familiar with as guidelines for how to approach writing a good synopsis. Jacket copy is written to sell books, and that's what you're trying to do as well. Here's an example. This is the jacket copy of a paperback reprinting of George Orwell's 1984: "The world of 1984 is one in which eternal warfare is the price of bleak prosperity, in which the Party keeps itself in power by complete control over man's actions and his thoughts. As the lovers Winston Smith and Julia learn when they try to evade the Thought Police, and then join the underground opposition, the Party can smash the last impulse of love, the last flicker of individuality."
* UNLIKE book jackets, your synopsis should fully describe the plot of your novel, including what happens at the end. To skip over the ending in hopes that the agent will want the full experience of reading your masterpiece is to take yourself out of the running. This is a sales pitch, and the agent will want to know how your book ends if she requests a synopsis as part of the query process.
Stephen Elliott - Archive Interview (4/12/21)
Neil Shepard - Archive Interview (4/5/21)
Angela Patten - Archive Interview (3/29/21)
Blending the Tangible and the Ineffable in Fiction: Steven Wingate and Maxim Loskutoff (3/22/21)
Matthew Salesses (3/15/21)
Jakob Guanzon (3/8/21)
Andrea Williams - 3/1/21
From the Archives: Howard Norman (2/22/21)
On Writing for a YA Audience: Sharon G. Flake and Bill Konigsberg (2/15/21)
Claudio Lomnitz (2/8/21)
Setting: A Conversation with Susan Conley and Lauren Fox (2/1/21)
From the Archives: Kathryn Davis (1/25/21)
Ryan Scagnelli (1/18/21)
Plotting the Literary Novel: A Conversation with Margot Livesey and Jill McCorkle (1/11/21)
Ally Condie (1/4/21)
David Jauss - Archive Interview (12/28/20)
A Message from Shelagh: Happy Holidays!
Dawna Pederzani (12/14/20)
Martin Puchner (12/7/20)
Matt Fried - Archive Episode (11/30/20)
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