I’ve written a few novels (OK, four), had one published, but I’ve never written an actual synopsis of any of my novels. I’ve written dozens of query letters, sure. But I had a mental block against writing a 500-word condensation of my 80,000-word work product. That’s a problem because about half the hundreds of agents whose websites I’ve visited want a synopsis.
Finally last week, I went off on a three-day writing retreat with my wonderful writer-mentor/friend Liz Engstrom determined to write a synopsis for a book I’ve been messing with for a decade. I wrote a terrible first draft of a synopsis. Then a pretty crappy second draft. Last night, I tidied up the pretty crappy second draft and today I have something that I would not be embarrassed to show others. More tweaking of it today. Then I will give my novel, The Macklin Powers, (in the young adult suspense genre) a final read. I believe early next week the hard work — getting it out into the world — will begin.
I had help from various online how-to articles, and particularly liked the one in the link below. To be clear, I didn’t follow it exactly, but it got me over the mental noise that had held me back.
Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now 