Synopsis Resource List

Novelists write novels-- giant stories in pages and pages of text, that take months or years to complete. We're not scared of novels. We've done it before and we can do it again. What strikes fear into the heart of novelists is the dreaded synopsis. Boil our masterpiece down into two pages? Heck no! No way. Impossible. But it is possible, I have to say, and here are my favorite resources for synopsis writing. Hope they help you as much as they've helped me! Lisa Gardner's Tricks of the Trade series on The Dreaded Synopsis - I love this and it helped me write my first really decent synopsis, that I wasn't embarrassed to send out. She covers several lengths of synopsis, so this should pretty much cover what you need to write. Suzanne McMinn does a great workshop on blurbing, which is helpful not only for querying, but also for synop... sizing. It's particularly helpful in figuring out what the hooks of your story are, and making sure those hooks get into the blurb and synopsis. And, the thing that took me the longest to figure out: Hit the main points, but don't lose your voice! You have to show your voice in the synopsis, or it's going to be boring. It's not an outline, it's a summary written the same way you wrote the book. Condense, but don't kill. What are your favorite synopsis resources?

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