Hello future writers. Hope you guys are doing swell. Let’s talk a bit about the book synopsis. A quick thing. Synopsis, pitch, summary are all different but mostly do the same thing.
When you do a pitch you try to tell the whole story in one sentence, two tops. The synopsis is when you put from one to maybe up to three paragraphs your story, and the summary is a few pages of the most important details in your book. Why all this? Well, you want to sell your book, don’t you?
You want to capture audiences, you want to be discovered by agents or a publisher. In the end, this will translate into sales and probably money. But for now, the synopsis will be targeted to people in the book industry, publishing, or the writing community.
A synopsis is a comprehensive view of what your novel is about. In it, you can see if the character’s actions and motivations are realistic and make sense. It summarizes what happens and who changes from beginning to end. It includes a brief summary of your story’s main plot, subplots, and the ending, a few character descriptions, and an overview of your major themes.
Depending on where you are going to submit the summary could be a one-pager with 500 to 1000 words. Be careful of your synopsis if it runs longer because it could be rejected thinking it was a summary.
The synopsis is sometimes necessary because an agent or publisher wants to see, from beginning to end, what happens in your story. Don’t confuse the synopsis with sales copy, or a book blurb. Remember that agents and publishing houses receive from hundreds to thousands of submissions and it is hard to keep up with everyone. Taking note of that, they won’t read your book. If the synopsis is good, you could end up being asked for a summary before getting a deal for your book.
Remember the synopsis is a very short read. Don’t try to convey your symbolism, details that are not important. Get to the point in the less amount of words possible. Think that you are talking to a friend, so don’t make it awkward or that it sounds mechanical. Explain your story using what drives each character to the next part of the plot until you have described it through the end.
If you can practice how to tell your story in different ways, you’ll be able to explain it to the person in front of you depending on the situation. Take the elevator pitch. A 30 to 60-second pitch. It is something very short to catch attention. Does that person want more information, talk about that synopsis? If that worked, then you could either sit down with the person or write an email with the summary. To make it to the summary means you could be close to signing a deal. So work on all three parts of telling your story to get picked on. Make it interesting. It would show to the agents and others more about your writing.