Synopsis or what?

[Cobolt]

I am having problems with understanding how to set out a synopsis, I have searched on various internet sites but unable to find what I am looking for.

Any ideas on where I can get a sample of a synopsis or a breakdown of how its put together.

I am an unpublished author wondering if its my synopsis that is letting me down.

Help!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The synopsis could very well be the problem, or part of the problem, since this is where a lot of writers take themselves out of consideration before an editor or an agent even looks at their manuscript.

Your question -- where online you might find advice on writing a synopsis -- comes up pretty often around here, and I don't think that anyone has been able to supply any useful links. You may have to look for what you need in some of the available books on writing.

Here are some titles from a recommended reading list put together by the agents Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada, which I picked up at a large writers' conference they helped to organize. I don't know which of these have good sections on writing a synopsis, but if you run across any of these books you might want to check them out:


The Complete Guide to Writing Fiction , Barnaby Conrad, Writer's Digest Books

How to Get Happily Published: A Complete and Candid Guide, Judith Applebaum, HarperCollins

How to Write a Book Proposal, Michael Larsen, Writer's Digest Books

Literary Agents: What They Do, How They Do It, and How to Find and Work with the Right One for You, , revised and expanded, Michael Larsen, John Wiley & Sons

 

[Lissa]

Try the snowflake method at rsingermanson.com
you can look it up by the "snowflake method" as well. It is a good way to analyse a novel as well as writing one. To me it seemed like a really good breakdown.

 

[Cobolt]

Thanks for the info. I will check on the boks and the website.

 

[Dead Riverdragon]

I've got a quick synopsis question that's just occured to me the day before I'm intending to send mine out. It's probably incredibly trite but I hear so much emphasis placed on proper formatting that I thought I'd run it past the people who'd know- basically is it necessary/preferable to use the same non-proportional font in a synopsis that is used in the manuscript? I ask because I've managed after much bitter cutting to pare mine down to the required one page using times new roman, and just realised that in courier it's about a page and a half long. So do I need to cut *even more* or am I ok?

A tad anal, I know, but I don't want to trip myself up on such a minor issue.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

You know, that's a good question, because no one is going to have to copy-edit the synopsis or figure out the word count for production purposes, so in that way the format certainly doesn't matter.

The problem, as I see it, is that to someone who has been looking at manuscripts in non-proportional fonts all day Times New Roman is going to stick out like a sore thumb. And an agent or an editor is going to be smart enough to figure out that you've done it to squeeze in a bunch of words over the one page limit, so you'll just look sneaky.


If we were talking about only a sentence or two, I'd say see what you could do by shaving a little off of the margins, which would be less obvious. But as it stands, I'd say either get it down to one page in Courier (which would be the best thing to do) or else send it in as an honest page-and-a-half. At least that way you don't insult their intelligence.

(I am assuming here that you know for sure that the person or publishing house you are sending this to wants a one page synopsis. My agent asks for two.)