Synopsis: implement of torture or sales tool?

Miss Snark is clearly in the Christmas spirit, as she has offered to read and critique 106 synopses with her “crapometer.” I’ve been reading — okay, no, not reading, I don’t have the fortitude for that, but skimming pargraphs here and there — the posted works and am once again struck by how very difficult it must be for an agent or editor or acquisitions department to evaluate a story based on the crapola people turn in and call synopses.

Over the years, I have heard an enormous amount of whingeing over the harmless synopsis; I have heard it called the “sucknopsis”; I have heard the annoying refrain, “If I could tell it in five pages, I would”; and I’ve read dozens upon dozens of really, really terrible ones. I’ve read them every year in the Golden Heart; I read dozens in the process of coordinating the Stiletto Contest in 2004. I don’t think there’s necessarily any correlation between the quality of the writing and the quality of the synopsis. Some of the best writers I know can’t craft a decent synopsis to save their lives.

Personally, I love synopses. I love being forced to boil the essence of my story down to a few pages. It helps me concentrate on what I’m really trying to say, and also helps me see which scenes do not serve the story. Usually, I find that if they don’t even rate a mention in the synopsis (even in the “she realizes BLANK” manner, and that’s the scene where she realizes it), they are probbaly pointless to the story as a whole, and should be cut. I write my synopsis before I write the book, and it is probably the single most effective tool for crystallizing my thoughts about the story before diving in.

A few years ago, I attended a workshop on writing synopses given by Kathy Carmichael, and it revolutionized my writing. It began with a simple statement by Jeanie London: A synopsis is a sales tool. Yes, you should be telling the story and making sure, as agent Lucienne Diver says, to let the reader know if aliens land in chapter 14, but, more importantly, you should be doing it in a way that has the same wit and verve as the actual book does. You should avoid the details that are on the fence as far as marketability goes and hit hard the ones that scream bestseller. You should cut out anything that sounds remotely boring. You should focus on the plot arc, the overview, mentioning incidents only as they directly effect the main result of your story and your characters’ growth patterns. You hsould really read Kathy Carmichael’s articles on the subject.

In many synopses and query letters and even pitches that i’ve heard in group setting, critiqued, or otherwise come into contact with in my four years of writing books, the absolute number one problem I’ve seen is writers who are not aware of what their story is about. I’ve been at group pitching sessions where the agent virtually begs the author to get to the point as the author laboriously details every facet of minor characters’ backstories and hair color and favorite flavor of ice cream. Look, no one cares what your heroine’s hair color is unless she’s a red head and the serial killer is stalking red heads like that guy in that episode of The X-Files did. Otherwise, we don’t care. Really, we don’t. And don’t spend half of your synopsis detailing what happens BEFORE the story starts. Just as you don’t want to bog us down in backstory in the opening chapters of the book, you don’t want to bog us down in your synopsis either. It’s enough to say, “after a failed childhood romance, hero and heroine meet up again under such-and-such circumstances” or “because her father beat her mother, the heroine has never been able to trust a man” or whatever. A phrase or two that gets the point across. No details, and only as much backstory as is absolutely essential to understanding whatevre issue the character has.

Which leads me to my next point. The second most common problem I see in synopses is a predilection for telling us exactly what happens in every scene of the book. He goes here, she takes a drink, he cooks some eggs, she braids her hair. OMG! Stop it! We don’t care, we don’t care we DON’T CARE! If you are having problems getting your synopsis down to the requisite number of pages, if you are one of the writers mentioned above who believe that your story wasn’t “meant” to be told in 5 pages, then this is probably what you are doing. Rather than focusing on the “tent pole” plot points, the “turning points” or whatever else you call them, you are meandering. Pu the keyboard down; step away from the story.

Step WAY away. Far enough so that if your story is one of those posters that are made up of a billion little snapshots, you’re far enough away to see the overall pattern (Yoda’s face or whatever). Your synopsis is the big picture. That’s all it is. Sometimes I advocate letting your critique partner start eht synopsis for you. Seriously. Have a reader tell you what your book is about. Chances are, he or she will hit on the high points that you are too close to see. Have her sit down and tell you about the book as if she’s trying to get you to read it yourself. You will see it through totally new eyes, I promise. Once you’ve got that list, you can see how easy it is to leave out bits of details that you think are so very, very important and concentrate on the high bits. (You might have to add some stuff they left out, but you will be amazed to see how much they left out that you don’t really need in the synopsis.)

Don’t cry if minor characters never get mentioned. Don’t cry if they don’t get named, either. Names should only be used if the character is mentioned enough that it gets tiresome to say “Sarah’s friend’s instructor’s dog-walker” eight times. Which leads me to my next point:

When you introduce a character, give them a tag. Sarah is not just Sarah. She’s Sarah, the plucky hypnotherapist, or the heroine’s twice-divorced sister, or the busy body secretary, or SOMETHING. When you read, what your brain does is place each character in a category: important, mildly interesting, red shirt; then if the character is named, assign the sign of that name to the signifier of the character category. You will notice that this is done on book flap copy everywhere. In my synopsis for Secret Society Girl, I call my heroine “college junior Amy Haskel” and the writer of my book flap copy clarified it further and called her “elite Eli University junior Amy Haskel.” We like knowing who we are dealing with upfront. Other character tags I used included “polished rich bitch Clarissa” and “Afrocentric lesbian activist Demetria.” The flap copy writer funnelled many of these descriptions straight into the blurb on the cover of my book. We need to know a little about who these characters are if we expect the reader to care at all.

Events in the synopsis must be connected. It’s not enough to say, “And then so-and-so went into batttle, and then she was killed. And then they all had tea.” We need to see how so-and-so’s death effects the other characters. Otherwise, it’s not really important that he dies, is it? (Cough, cough, Peter Jackson). Don’t let the things that happen read like a laundry list. They must all be funneling towards the main point, the character growth, the plot arc, SOMETHING. If not, then they don’t belong in the synopsis.

The other complaint people make about synopses is that you’re supposed to showcase your voice in them, but how can you tell the whole story in five pages AND put your voice into it? I don’t think you can, completely, but you can give the reader a good taste. Go read a bunch of cover blurbs. Notice how the serious, emotional books have blurbs to match, while the funny books make jokes in their blurbs? That’s just an example. For a great example, read Miss Snark’s comments on Crapometer entry #23. The chick lit author describes a minor character as a “bunny-boiling ex-girlfriend.” She could have said “crazed stalker” or “obsessive ex with a borderline personality disorder” but she went for the funny and got her point — and her voice — across with one pair of hyphenates. Since my character tends to use a lot of “lists” to describe her options or her reasoning, I used a few “lists” in my synopsis.

I highly recommend reading the crapometer posts. Just reading the mistakes and successes other people made will help you see how you can improve your own work. Number 23 is an example of an excellent synopsis, #22 is an example of why the characters need to be connected to both tags and to the events of the story, #15 is fine (though I know for a fact that this author is insisting up, down, and backwards that her story is not a paranormal, despite the inclusion of leprechauns and wish-fulfillment — note to writers, agent Lucienne Diver ALSO recommends not pretending you are writing in a genre you’re not; as she says, if there are space ships and ray guns, don’t tell me it’s not SF”), #14 (and others) explains why you should do a little research into the industry before saying shit like “fictional novel”, #11 is an excellent example of the sort of play-by-play details to leave OUT of the synopsis, and #1 shows someone who doesn’t know what her story is really about OR what details can be left out. I will be following the other 80 or so posts with much interest.

And please don’t hate the synopsis. It loves you.