How to Write a Fiction Synopsis

Writing a novel, novella or even a short story isn't for everyone. Writing takes talent, practice and the willingness to work hard at the craft. Very few people can put pen to paper, or should I say fingers to the keyboard, and turn out the perfect novel without months and months of feedback, editing and revisions, but anyone who is dedicated and passionate about their writing will gladly accept the time involved.

So, after you've spent countless hours getting to the point where you believe your story is ready to submit to agents, you need to prepare a synopsis. Before you work on your synopsis, however, you absolutely have to look at the agent's website, or on the rare occasion that they don't have one, read their guidelines for submissions in one of the agent guides, such as Jeff Herman's Guide to Publishers, Editors and Literary Agents. There are also a lot of websites offering advice and listing agents who are accepting submissions. Spend a bit of time doing some research to find a list of agents you want to submit to and who represent your particular genre.

Once you have located the agents, make sure you read their guidelines very carefully. Some agents want a query letter and a synopsis or even sample pages or chapters, but some may only want a query letter. Most of the time, once you have an agent interested enough in your story to request a partial or full submission, they will also request a synopsis. So, what exactly is a synopsis?

Basically, a synopsis is a summary of your story, whether it's a novel or a shorter story. But a synopsis is not the '˜hook' or tease. You already did that when you wrote your query letter and got the attention of the agent. The synopsis must contain certain things and learning to write one takes a lot of practice. It's not easy. Many writers think the synopsis is even harder than writing the story!

As a header, you have to include the title of the story, the word length, your name and the genre. That's the easy part, if you can say there is an easy part that is. There are several versions of a synopsis and the agent will tell you what they want. It can be a one-page synopsis, two-page or as long as a five-page synopsis. They will also tell you if they want a chapter by chapter synopsis. The reason these are so hard to write is because you have to condense your entire story down into a couple of pages, while hitting only the highlights and important plot points. And, you have to disclose all of the main characters, especially the protagonist and antagonist. You can generally leave out the ancillary characters, unless they play a very important role in the story, but walk-on characters or background characters are usually omitted.

The best way to start a synopsis is to go through your story, chapter by chapter, and pick out the important plot points for each chapter. Yes, this will be a long synopsis, but once you have everything in there, you can trim it down to a shorter one if you need it to be shorter. It might help to use index cards while you're on a final round of editing and write down each chapter on an index card. Then, when it comes to writing the synopsis, you already have the main points on the cards. In a synopsis, no matter what length, you must include the ending. If you don't, you'll more than likely get a rejection because you didn't adhere to the rule of the synopsis. The agent wants to see your writing style in the sample chapters, but they also want to skip ahead to the ending by reading the synopsis. So, do not under any circumstances leave out the ending! Now you're ready to plunge into the synopsis. When you have it done, go over it several times to see if you can trim anything out or add in any important points you might have left out. If you can, have a friend or colleague read it and see if they can understand what the story is about. This is especially helpful if they haven't read the story before. Good luck!