Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014

Drafting a good synopsis
Finding agents and publishers
Getting published

Remember the synopsis from Chapter 20? You’ll need it here, too. In this case, the purpose of your synopsis is to inform a literary agent or publisher about your book in a concise, appealing fashion, conveying that you’re in command of your subject matter. If you want your manuscript to be given serious consideration, a good synopsis is a crucial part of your submission.

The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook can tell you that most publishing houses no longer accept direct submissions, but those that do (usually the smaller houses), usually ask for a cover letter, synopsis, and sample chapters rather than a whole manuscript in the first instance. The same applies to literary agents.

To put it simply, the sample chapters are to show how you write, and the synopsis is to explain what happens when they’ve finished reading them. This helps the publisher/agent whether decide if it’s worth their time to read more. If they do want to read more, they’ll ask you.

So if you want to have your manuscript read in its entirety, you must invest time in getting your query letter and book synopsis right.

Before You Start Your Synopsis

Many writers can get disconcerted and nervous by having to produce a synopsis, and there are usually two reasons why.

First, a writer might have an unwieldy story they themselves are not 100 percent convinced by, or a nonfiction project they don’t really know enough about. If this is so, summarizing can be difficult because the writer hasn’t put in the necessary level of thinking and planning for the project.

WATCH OUT!

If the summary process seems difficult for you, I urge you to ask yourself why. If it’s because the story is insufficiently clear, persuasive, or gripping, you need to put in more work to get your manuscript into the kind of shape that would persuade an agent or editor to consider it further.

Second, you genuinely might be able to write a good book but not be experienced in the art of summarizing a work in an effective manner. Maybe you even consider the act of doing so demeaning. If this is the case, I urge you to think not of yourself, but of your future reader, and treat the project as a literary exercise that you should try to enjoy. Make it a challenge and opportunity to show off your work in its essential form. It might help to refer to book blurbs, or plot summaries in reference books such as The Oxford Companion to Literature.

Do you know your market?

In addition to letting a publisher or agent know what happens in your manuscript, the synopsis also tells them at a glance if you’ve thought about how your work fits into the market. This is critical in nonfiction and less so with fiction, although with fiction, awareness of what genre your work fits in is vital.

Also, if what you’re writing coincides with any major anniversaries, for example, or if it might have a marketing hook of any other kind, this is important to mention, if not within the synopsis itself then within your query letter.

Do you know your genre?

There are fundamental differences between different kinds of synopses. A fiction synopsis, for example, should comprise a brief summary followed by a more detailed synopsis. But before writing either of these, you must clarify which genre your work fits into.

The most important thing to realize about fiction in respect to how you present it to publishers or agents is that it breaks down into different types. Broadly speaking, here are the most popular genres today:

·  Chic lit

·  Crime

·  Detective

·  Erotic

·  Fantasy

·  Graphic

·  Historical saga

·  Horror

·  Psychological thriller

·  Romantic

·  Sci-fi

·  Thriller

·  Young adult (YA)

Classifying your novel within a genre can be a challenge. This is largely because when most people start to write a novel, they do so without having really studied the genre they’re writing for. Although, when you start to write, you feel free to explore, practice, and experiment without thinking in terms of the defining limits of a genre. Then, when you begin submitting your work to publishers, it’s very important to know which genre your work fits into. In all art forms, there are rule breakers, but almost inevitably—as in the cases of, say, Picasso and Virginia Woolf—even the greatest artists have studied the traditional forms and genres before taking any risks.

Writing your synopsis

Having made it your top priority to identify what type of novel you’ve written, you can make a start on your all-important synopsis. All good synopses should begin with a brief summary of 30 to 75 words. Think of what appears on a book’s back cover.

Following the brief summary, write a more detailed synopsis of 350 to 450 words. Literary agents typically don’t want a detailed chapter-by-chapter breakdown (if they do, they’ll ask for one) because reading them can be tiresome and difficult to follow.

Your main goal in the longer synopsis is to give a detailed overview that clearly and concisely conveys how the story flows and unfolds and what’s interesting about it. It also should reconfirm when the story is set, establish the setting or background, introduce the central character, and give a brief reference to other characters who are directly pivotal to the plot. It also should highlight the dramatic turning points and tell the reader of any other salient information that will help convey what kind of work it is, how well imagined the characters are, and how well thought through and alluring the plot is.

As opposed to a fiction synopsis, one tailored for a work of nonfiction performs a different function. The consideration of whether a nonfiction book has a potential market is generally more straightforward than for new fiction. In the case of nonfiction, you certainly should have carefully researched your market before submission and ideally list the competitors in the field, outlining why your project is different and why you’re the writer best positioned to write the book you have.

IDEAS AND INSPIRATION

You should be able to list any marketing opportunities you believe your nonfiction book might have, such as identifiable, or even guaranteed, readers such as students if you teach a course, anniversary tie-ins, and so on.

Synopses, agents, editor, and publishers

A literary agent is often prepared to sell a nonfiction work on synopsis and chapters only—an extreme rarity in the case of fiction. This is because it’s easier for people to see if there’s a market gap that can be filled by the project before the work is finished.

You might not need an agent for more niche types of nonfiction books. In these cases, publishers may well be prepared to take direct submissions from you. Again, this is because in the area of self-help or business books, for example, a publisher will know clearly where the gaps in its list are. In addition, a publisher might have a standard format it publishes books (such as this Idiot’s Guides series). Research these formats and series, and contact editors’ and publishers’ specialized lists to find out if they have space for your idea. You also can request guidelines on how they like manuscripts to be presented.

In general, I think it’s best for the nonfiction writer to prepare two different types of synopses. The first forms an initial pitch, and the second serves as a follow up if the editor or literary agent asks to see more. Both documents need to be thoroughly persuasive because these might go directly toward securing a book deal.

The initial synopsis should be no more than one or two pages. Include a brief summary and a description of the contents of the book, with an argument for why it should be published now and why you are qualified to write it. Ideally, you should also include an overview of other work in the field and argue why yours fills an important gap. In addition, include a chapter breakdown, giving a provisional title for each chapter with a brief summary, of about 30 to 60 words, of the contents of each chapter to show how the book is structured.

Here also, spell out any ideas you have about how the book might be marketed. Nonfiction markets are more specific than fiction markets, so it’s beneficial for you to help the agent or editor know what hooks might help sell copies. As I’ve said, if you’re lucky enough to have any guaranteed markets, such as students in a course you teach, inform the industry of this.

If you can estimate a word count for the length of your manuscript, do so. For some preformatted nonfiction titles, you’ll be expected to hit a word length.

The more in-depth synopsis with sample chapter should include the initial pitch, but also include any additional material to defend your position as author or the book’s market chances. Most importantly, in the longer pitch, you need to show that you can write the book. Provide more in-depth chapter breakdowns (100 to 150 words each) and critically 5,000 to 10,000 words of polished, irresistibly clear, and well-written text to show that you’re capable of executing your intentions in a winning manner. I advise writing the introduction and the opening chapter if possible to really show you mean business. Those two together usually take you to between 5,000 and 10,000 words.

While it’s worth spending time ensuring you have a good, short, confident synopsis, there’s nothing as important to an editor as the quality of your writing and your ability to sustain the interest of a reader in the main body of the text. A synopsis isn’t a magic wand that will influence the real standard of a work. I’ve seen perfectly polished synopses followed by poor writing. With this combination, you get an editor excited, only to be let down.

If you have the skill to write a gripping synopsis, ensure that you’ve used your energies wisely in advance of submitting and be sure your manuscript is as good as it possibly can be.