Hi, I'm Kat Clay. I'm a writer from Melbourne, Australia,
and today I want to talk to you about something that is really important
when you're pitching your novel to agents, publishers, and editors.
And that is how to write a novel synopsis.
Now summarising your entire novel of 100,000 words
with a cast of characters into one to two pages seems like quite a daunting task.
So today I'm going to take you through some tips and tricks that I use to write
my synopsis that help me get an agent and also offer you some advice on how to
edit that down and how to get to the core of your story.
So if you like writing advice, if you like
nerd stuff, please hit subscribe and let's get into how to write a synopsis.
Before we get into it it's really
important to note that a synopsis has a few kind of compulsory items because it is
a publishing tool, and there are publishing standards for a synopsis.
So the first thing is that it should be in third person present and active tense.
So you want to make sure that all the sentences are really active.
It should be only one to two pages.
It absolutely cannot have any cliffhangers of the sort.
It is what happens in the novel.
So you're not here to do lots of flower
language, but you do really want to show a character arc and character progression.
It's also helpful to think about the
purpose of writing a synopsis before sitting down to write one.
So it really is to show the professionals that you're sending it
to that you can actually handle writing a story over a long form,
so there's no wacky endings, there's no Deus ex Machina at the end,
that you actually can manage a story arc from start to finish, and that the action
escalates through the story, and the plot essentially makes sense.
If you're struggling to write a synopsis
and notice that these things aren't in there, or there isn't a really strong
character arc for your main protagonist in your novel, that it might actually be time
to go back and revisit the novel first before you send it out with that synopsis.
So the first thing to do in writing a synopsis is to plan it out.
It is a one to two page document.
So the thing that is going to help you most here is making a plan.
And for me, I'm a planner when I write.
So it was a lot easier to write this
synopsis because I had the plan already there.
So I broke it down into chapters,
and then I could basically write the synopsis of that chapter plan.
If you didn't plot your novel and your
pants, someone who likes to fly by the seat of their pants.
What I would advise you to do is actually break the novel down using index cards.
Write down each major scene that happens,
and the kind of character transformation on a piece of card.
It doesn't have to be a long essay, just a couple of sentences or dot points,
put them in order, and then write your synopsis from there.
That will help a lot in terms of breaking down the action and the main events.
The other thing that really helps here
when you're writing that synopsis is to use really strong verbs.
So I don't mean strong, foul language.
I mean strong verbs that do the heavy
lifting of your sentences, so they evoke a sense of emotion.
So a perfect example of this is something
like I asked versus I begged, begged, really just implies that I'm doing
something desperate, whereas ask is a kind of neutral verb.
So go through the verbs that are in
your synopsis, see where you can combine words, but also see where you can replace
kind of weaker verbs with stronger verbs to make it really hit hard.
And likewise, if you are out of creative
juice at that point in time, just use the thesaurus tool in word.
I use pro writing aid to find stronger
words in my language, so you don't have to do it alone.
Use the technology at your fingertips.
It goes against common writing advice, but
the next thing I will say to you is to use your adjectives and adverbs.
You only have a small space
to get across a sense of character, what they look like, what they're feeling.
And so this is where adjectives
and adverbs are your friends, so don't be afraid to use them.
Now how to edit this synopsis?
You've got everything written out as it happens.
But how do you get that down to the sweet spot of one to two pages?
Well, it pays to be brutal.
You do really have to be ruthless in this process.
Anything you can combine down into one
word rather than to do it as much as you possibly can.
Likewise, we don't need every single detail about the character.
The really important thing here is to identify who is your protagonist.
So you want the synopsis to focus on the story of your protagonist.
It's not every other character in the story.
It's the person who changes the most
and has the most to lose through the story as well.
An editor or an agent wants to see that
that character changes through the arc of the story
or in the case of a lot of horror, noir and crime stories, why they choose
not to change through the story, and they want to see that progression there.
The question is also, what do you do
if you have multiple point of view characters?
Now, I had a novel that I pitched
successfully and it had three point of view characters.
But the fact is, the story started
and finished with a character called Richard Garrett, who was a tabloid editor.
Now, for me that synopsis was about his story and his transformation.
And while I could have written it about the other characters.
The story really is his story.
Think of something like Lord of the Rings.
Okay, if you had to pick one character to tell the story of Lord of the Rings
from like in a synopsis, it would have to be Frodo.
He's there for most of it.
And even though he's absent in some of the
major battles, it's his journey that the entire story hangs off of.
So you've managed to cut it down as much
as you can, and you've worked on honing that story down.
The next thing to do if you're not down to
one to two pages is to cut out all nonessential events and characters.
Now you really have to be quite brutal here.
So if something doesn't serve the main narrative, it's got to go.
And so even in that example
of Lord of the Rings, those big epic battles, that Frodo is not
there for, I'd probably cut them down to one to two sentences.
If not at all.
I was really struggling to get down my synopsis to a one page synopsis.
Right. The way I did it was I actually cut out
one of the point of view characters from the entire synopsis.
I mean, the reader would find it when they got to the novel, but I could actually
tell a story without having her journey in there, even
though it added quite a bit of insight into the story itself.
The next thing to do after that, I mean,
once you cut it all right down and right back is to show it to somebody else who's
read your book because you really need a second set of eyes on it
to say, does this still make sense now that I've cut so much out of it?
So that will really help, especially
if you've done some brutal colon in your synopsis.
So writing a synopsis is gruelling, but it can be done.
You can do this and get it down to one to two pages.
It is very tough,
but the main thing to keep in mind is that it really is showing that character
progression over the story and that it escalates
and showing that you can really handle a story to agents and publishers, so do keep
that purpose in mind while you're writing it.
I'm Kat Clay, and if you have any questions
about writing a synopsis, please hit me up in the comments below.
I am more than happy to answer your questions.
And if you like writing
video games, cosplay, nerd stuff, please hit subscribe.
I would love it if you could support my little channel.
That would be amazing.
Thank you so much for watching and have an awesome day.