I hate writing synopses.
As I understand it, most writers hate them. It’s difficult to pare down to a few pages the story that took you many hundred more to write in the way you think readers will best understand. It’s especially difficult for me while all the minute details and nuances are still very much alive in my mind. But agents want to see a synopsis first.
Some writers say a synopsis is easier to write before one writes the story, but I’ve always found that tricky, since my stories change as I write them. I outline the story that it turns out I didn’t want to write after all. The real story reveals itself as I go along.
But this synopsis may turn out to be a good thing, because it’s helped me see more that I want to cut. Maybe that’s what the agents really have up their sleeves, getting writers to analyze their stories from a different perspective. I’m heading back into editing mode. Good grief, this novel’s been through a lot of drafts. This will be the 9th, and it’s wearing me down. I’ll be glad to see the end of it.
I *hate* trying to write a synopsis. After finishing a book (well, my part of a book…) I feel like I’m done. The last thing I want to do is revisit it and essentially outline my own work. Heck, the whole point of the novel was building it into something from an outline. And, as you point out, the original outline changes too much to be useable. When Mary and I are working with Poisoned Pen Press we submit an outline/synopsis first, for our editor to check over, before we write. That works OK. Sketching out a story as we are trying to make it up and get it to hang together isn’t too onerous.
Unluckily, I’ve never had to write one but I do understand its difficulties. I would think that a plot-point to plot-point outline might be a good start, a list of sorts of the action and events, and then filling in and tying it together with voice and style might be one way to go.
I’ve never had to write a synopsis.
The above is a distillation of a long diatribe on the anguishes of technical choices to be made in reducing panoramic literary beauty into short plot points.
How you feel about a synopsis often depends on your perspective.
It can feel like a straight-jacket limiting where you can go, or it can feel liberating, serving as a source of ideas that you can use as a spring-board into your story.
If you wait until after finishing your draft to write a synopsis, it can serve as a way to discover what’s missing in your story… or where you’ve diverged from your story-line.
If you prepare a synopsis before beginning your draft, it can serve as more than a plot outline, I think, revealing character motivation, too, in a much more concise way than the story itself.
The reason why so many writers dislike writing a synopsis, I think, is because they see it as an imposition, an unnecessary exercise required by an editor or agent too lazy or too busy to read the work itself, rather than as a tool to help them craft better stories.
What if you think of a synopsis as a ladder, helping you climb a bit higher to get a different perspective on your world? Does that help?
What a tedium-filled task!
Bruce’s conclusion leads into this with his ladder metaphor. Perhaps one may consider that there are both vertical and horizontal plot-point elements to a story.
If one has a long point-to-point synopsis, say 20 pages or so, due to having a complicated plot and long story, what does one do if the requirement of the editor or agent is a few-page synopsis?
I suppose that one method would consider that not all plot points are equal. For instance, if one has a fiction book or story, it is essentially all the plot points laid out in a time-sequence or plot evolving timeline of scenes and characterizations & problems and solutions, or horizontally. However, all plot points are likely not equal in story or plot impact, which means that these points can also be ranked hierarchically or vertically. Once one considers the relative importance of the plot points, ranking them, for instance, in pyramidal (or ladder) fashion where the base represents the least important points, and the apex the most important, with levels in between, then one could simply draw a line through each successive base level and only include the plot points above it if shortening is needed or desired.
It may not be necessary to use a pyramid to practically use this, one could simply rank each plot-point of the full point-to-point synopsis with an arbitrary designation, say, 1-7. One could devise a short series of a few questions to be asked of each plot point as an aid to determine it’s plot-element ranking. Once the designation is assigned, it should be easy (but undoubtedly tedious) to shorten a detailed synopsis into a less detailed, but still relatively accurate, shorter summary synopsis.
I suppose that in this fashion one could theoretically reduce a plot-point to plot-point synopsis to one page, though it would lack significant detail and definitely would give a false impression as to the richness of the fuller story.
I suppose this ranked synopsis could also be used to shorten a long book into a shorter one that essentially tells the same story in a less complex manner.
I could never figure out how one did this…
I have more trouble with blurbs-taking an entire novel and condensing it into a synopsis, and then going one step further to condense that synopsis down to as little as 50 words for some requirements and up to maybe 260 for others.
I try to get the flavor of the book into the synopsis, which can make things even harder, but also leads to creating something that isn’t a dry representation of “Just the facts, Ma’am.”
Nine drafts? Oh, Barbara, you’re making me very dispirited. My latest incarnation of my current work-in-progress is version number 3, and I already threw out the second half of the book entirely. The rewrite went a lot faster, and I feel much more confident about it than the first half, which of course now requires significant revisions to match it up with the rewrites.
Will I ever be finished? I feel the need to lie down. I’m getting dizzy just thinking of multiple drafts more.
Arghhhh. Synopsis. Most of the submissions I’ve made have been queries with abbreviated synopsizes. I’ve had substantial bites but no takers. Writing is hard, ain’t it?
I know I’m preaching to the choir, but… You’re right, when I write a synopsis or query, I get a better focus of my novel. I have to admit that writing either a synopsis or query is not that difficult for me. I simply think “book jacket” and I’m told I’ve done well. Yet, I’m not published, nor do I have an agent. Writing is hard, ain’t it? Sigh.
The last comment was made by moi - forgot to enter the data. No wonder I’m not published. lol.