Our
topic at the SFF Seven this week is "Queries & Synopses: Bane,
Benefit, or Both?"
Besides
all of us immediately screeching BANE – because all sane human beings hate
writing synopses – I’m here to tell you to learn to, if not love, then at least
bear with them. Being able to write a decent synopsis is a critical skill for a
writer, even indies. Same with queries.
Also,
the need for them never goes away. If you want to be a career author, you’ll be
pitching/querying your books and writing synopses for the rest of your life.
Did
I scare you? It IS October, after all!
I
totally sympathize, by the way. When I was a newbie writer, I was fond of
saying that if I could synopsize my novel, either in an elevator pitch or a
couple of pages, then I wouldn’t have had to write the whole book. Which is
true in a way, but also precious.
People
rightfully rolled their eyes at me.
I
sucked it up and took a class on writing synopses.
The
main thing I learned from the class was not necessarily how to write a
synopsis, though I kind of did, but that condensing a story concept to 10
pages, 5 pages, 2 pages, 1 paragraph, 288 or 144 characters, or 1 line helped
crystallize the essentials of the tale. And I had to face the very
uncomfortable truth that, despite my newbie arrogance about having written this
entire novel to tell the story, the main reason I couldn’t write a synopsis or
come up with an effective short pitch was that I didn’t have a clear focus on
that story. I didn’t KNOW what the essentials were.
That’s
why I say that even indies – who may never need to write a synopsis, but will
certainly need to write a blurb – will benefit from developing this skill, too.
And
if you’re going for trad at all… Well, let’s just say that a synopsis is hovering
in my near future. I’m not looking forward to the painful process of writing
it, but I know that, in the end, I’ll understand much more about the
story.
Which
is always a positive.
