What Is A Synopsis For?

A synopsis is selling-tool, which shows editors and agents that you can write well and that you know how to structure a book.

A synopsis, therefore, has to entertain and inform. What it shouldn’t do is intrigue. If you don’t give away your book’s ending in your synopsis then how will anyone you have submitted to know if you can construct a water-tight plot?

How To Write A Synopsis

The job of the synopsis is to tell the story briefly and coherently; to outline the ups and downs of your story, and to introduce your characters and to demonstrate their appeal.

Your synopsis has to be good, because it has a lot of work to do: you’re going to use it to sell your book to an agent; your agent will then use it to sell your book to an editor; and your editor will then use it to sell the book to their publishers and sales people.

When I write fiction I don’t outline in advance, and instead use Word's endnote feature to attach a brief endnote to each and every scene as I write it. When I review my work, a quick read through those endnotes reveals most plot-holes and continuity problems which are then relatively easy to fix; and it provides me with a lump of text to base my synopsis on. But I still find synopses incredibly difficult to write, and struggle every time.

Thank goodness, then, for crime-writer Beth Anderson, who provides some very useful information about synopsis-writing on her website. Countless people have been saved from synopsis-writing hell by her great advice—including me.

Tess Gerritsen On Writing

New writers often wonder if they're doing things right. Should they write in longhand or type straight to screen? Should they revise as they go, or just get their first draft down? Should they make it up as they go along, or plan everything out before they write a single word?

Where writing is concerned, it seems that Tess Gerritsen agrees with me (not that she realises, but hey...). She wrote,

Experienced writers will find my advice a no-brainer because they’ve already figured out what works best for them, and they’ve learned to accept what may seem to others to be a uniquely quirky process. But for beginning writers, the writing itself may fill them with anxiety because they’ve heard there’s a “right” way to do it, and they think that success is all about the process. It isn’t. Success is all about creating a great story with unforgettable characters, and whatever way you do it is the right way.

You can read the rest of her post here. Now go and write something, and try not to worry too much about the rules.