11 pages? my synopsis is only 2 paragraphs.
I'm a noob when it comes to submissions as this would be my first (having finished writing my first novel). Am I missing something? Do i include a breakdown of every chapter or something? confused!
A synopsis is a pig to write. You need to practice condensing down the story line as HereBrain said. I try and work up a 1000 word one (approx 2 pages) A 500 word one (one page). A 250 word one, and a one line pitch.
The thing is with a synopsis you have to tell the whole story, it is not a blurb, where you are tempting the reader to buy your book, you have to give away the ending
An example of my own poor effort of a one page one.
Synopsis: Hand of Glory.
1917- Passchendaele. Captain Giles Hardy is caught on the barbed wire strung across no-man’s land. Wounded and left for dead. While trapped Hardy witnesses the murder and mutilation of a fellow officer leading a night time patrol. The officer is killed by Hawkins, who blames him for the death of his brother.
Hardy is rescued the following morning by Corporal Adams, his friend. Both are sent back down the line for treatment to wounds received. Hawkins crosses their path at the aid station. Lightly wounded during his scuffle with the officer, the man is attempting to desert. The ambulance carrying all three is caught in a night-time bombardment. Hawkins sets about looting the wounded and dead in the ensuing chaos, but he also intends on killing Hardy, whom he suspects has recognised him. Adams stops him, but is killed in the scuffle
Hawkins flees and hides with a family of French thieves he knows. He makes a “Hand of Glory,” from the hand of the murdered officer. A Hand of Glory is a demonic tool of robbers which allows unseen and unheard access to any building, it also has a price for this help; souls. The daughter of the family, Marie, befriends him, and when her traitorous parents try to kill Hawkins she helps him murder them. The couple then come to England, intent on using the magical powers of the Hand of Glory to begin a spree of murder of robbery
1922- The small town of Stafford, England. Giles Hardy is haunted by the past and by the ghost of Adams, who informs him he has to free those trapped by the hand. Hardy believes he is going mad, still mentally trapped in the mud of Passchendaele.
Albert Hawkins arrives back in his old home town of Stafford, with Marie, and his gang of thieves. Using the Hand of Glory, Hawkins tears into the heart of the small rural town, leaving a trail of death and destruction in his wake, as he seeks revenge on the place he hated as a young man. He tries also to silence Hardy once again.
Aided by the ghost of Adams and Agnes Reed, a former army nurse and cousin to the murdered officer, Hardy, “goes over the top”, in a battle to bring Hawkins to justice, and break the demonic hold of the Hand of Glory. Events come to a head in a wild chase across Chartley Moss, a floating peat bog, where Hardy struggles to save Agnes from Hawkins and the power of the hand.
Hawkins drowns in the moss. The Hand of Glory’s hold on the victims entrapped in its demonic grip is destroyed. The dead can finally come home and rest.
