Bringing sanity to the dreaded synopsis

I post often about writing contests and conferences, sometimes mentioning, as if an afterthought, that these may require a synopsis of our work. But how long has it been since I actually posted about the writing of the synopsis itself? After attending this month’s synopsis critique session from the Dallas Mystery Writers group, I found that writers are struggling with the same problems that bedeviled me at the time of that last post – in 2013!

So, here’s an updated version of that post now, with interjections from the recent synopsis critiques.

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My personal experience was that, after attending at least numerous panels and any number of blogs in which agents all but swore on their grandmothers’ graves that synopses were a waste of time, I had never written a synopsis worthy of the name. I’d never been taught how to do it. And like writing essays or business letters or feature articles, it’s not a format newbies can expect to toss off instinctively.

Maybe you’re thinking, hey, how can anybody who’s written three or four hundred pages of a novel be baffled by how to write a one-page summary telling what the whole thing is about? Except anyone who thinks that is not a writer who’s ever tried to cram those hundreds of pages into one.

Author/editor Sandy Steen at Dallas Mystery Writers actually gave her students more leeway than that, allowing them extra pages for character lists and elevator pitches – which will be the focus of another post.

Image: wikimedia commons

Two to three pages at most, Steen repeated. More often one page. “If the agent or editor wants it fleshed out, they’ll ask for more….It’s the concept you’re selling.”

Fortunately, Facebook friend and fellow writer Kathleen M. Rodgers had previously posted a link to “How to Write A One-Page Synopsis,” from Susan Dennard’s blog Pub(lishing) Crawl. Following Dennard’s “three rules of thumb, eleven-point method” gave me a coherent one-page (single-spaced) summary within an hour or two. I can’t guarantee this will get you offers of representation. But it saved my sanity and it can save yours.

Here are Dennard’s three rules of thumb:

 -- Don’t name more than three characters in a synopsis as short as one page: the protagonist, antagonist, and relationship character. (Steen also added that characters’ motivations, especially that of the main character should be included and very clear!) In writing my initial synopsis, I broke the three-character rule for a couple of secondary characters. With words at a premium, it took less space on a page to use a one-word name than the two-word description, “protagonist’s mother.”

-- Tell the ending. Right, spoilers and all. (This is not the “jacket blurb,” written to tease the reader. The agent/editor must know how everything fits together and that the ending is worthy of the rest of the story.)

-- Do not include sub-plots unless you have enough space. In writing my own synopsis, I bent this one for an agent who said she wanted to know if there were subplots. I sacrificed a single sentence to convey the biggest one briefly.

The eleven steps will be familiar to anyone who’s read Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey (although the nomenclature differs slightly) or any works dealing with three-act structure. They are: (1) opening image; (2) introduction to the protagonist, including his/her desire; (3) inciting incident; (4) plot point one; (5) conflicts and character encounters; (6) midpoint; (7) winning seems imminent, but. . . ; (8) black moment; (9) climax; (10) resolution; and (11) final image.

Weirdly enough, I got stuck figuring out what the midpoint was. In desperation, I thumbed halfway through my printed manuscript. And found what I needed.

If you’ve written any story at all, something major has happened halfway through the pages. If nothing leaps out at you from the exact numerical center, flip back or forward a few pages. Picking random examples from what’s on my nightstand -- it’s the place in Wuthering Heights where Catherine dies; where Tita of Like Water for Chocolate refuses the summons of her abusive mother; where the narrator of The Island of Dr. Moreau learns the extent of what the mad scientist has done. You will know the midpoint of your novel when you see it.

Susan Dennard applies this with examples from the movie Star Wars, which will also give you a much-needed laugh in her complete explanation.

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After posting this originally in 2013, I also located a blog by fantasy writer C.J. Redwine with other tips that may not be obvious to a first-timer: Write in present tense, in third person, in the same font as your novel, and mimic the pacing of your novel.

In general, a one-page synopsis will be single-spaced and longer synopses double-spaced. However, be sure to read the agent’s or editor’s instructions. For instance, I recently was asked to submit a 300-word synopsis with double spacing.

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And, oh, yes, I’ve also posted cavalier mentions of query letters and pitches. Stay tuned for more on these topics as conference season gets into full swing!

Wordcraft – Self-publishing? It takes more than a click

The question left hanging at last Tuesday’s discussion of self-publishing, from a panel discussion by Sandy Steen, James Gaskin, LaReeBryant and Susan May at the recent Southwest Chapter of Mystery Writers ofAmerica, was: how does an author determine how much to charge for her (or his) book? And the still more urgent question of how to induce customers to buy those books, no matter what the price? Because writing a book and preparing it for publication is only part of the story.

The CreateSpace option at Amazon for paper copies of self-published books informs the author of the print cost (which will be primarily for paper). According to the panelists, all veterans of both traditional and self-publishing, this cost typically runs from $7-$8. Without taking into account the author’s time in writing the book and preparing it for publication, any price of more than $8 a copy should be gravy, right?

Except “you won’t sell many paperbacks,” May said, “because most people who read voraciously use e-readers.” (She prints a few paper copies of her books for signings, which she can buy at a, yes, discounted price from Amazon.)

Or say you’re publishing your work as an e-book on Amazon’s Kindle, with the 70 percent royalty option. Although Amazon’s maximum price for most e-books is $9.99, “Amazon can discount the price without asking you,” May said, with royalties based on the sales price, not your list price.

“The good news is, as a self-published author, you have total control,” May said. “The bad news is, you have total control.” And in most cases, that means total control of the marketing of books. (Relative newcomer to self-publishing, Booktrope, offers a team model of publishing, including a marketer as well as editor, cover designer and proofreader in addition to the author, with royalties being divided between all team members.)

How much time should a self-published author expect to spend on marketing, compared to writing?

“Probably 50-50,” Bryan said, “if you’re really doing it well. If you’re going to do it yourself, you need to be sure you’ve got the aptitude to do it.”

“You’ve got to brand yourself,” Steen said, remembering “to add blogging, tweeting, and all that in your time budget for marketing.” May, for instance, guest blogs regularly, multiple times per month, at three separate sites.

What other marketing venues are available to self-publishers beyond Internet sales and limited personal signings, an audience member asked. Although panel members warned that self-published books had no chance of gaining a foothold in most brick and mortar bookstores, is there a way, an audience member asked, to get self-published books into libraries?

Basically, Gaskin said, only by donating them, and even then libraries may refuse to accept them for shelving. Besides continuing prejudice about the writing quality of self-published books, “Many self-published books,” he said, “are not ‘libraryized’ – not tough enough to hold up to repeated lendings.”

What about crowd-funding, an audience member asked, both to raise money to pay the cost of editing, cover design, and publishing? Won’t such funding not only save the author out of pocket costs but also provide a guaranteed audience?

Gaskin’s opinion is that most such efforts actually are under-subscribed, but “I can give you some good news. There’s a formula, that if you have a thousand fanatic fans, you can make a living as a creative artist, because they will buy your book and proselytize for you.”

However, once the market for one book has become saturated, fans will require the author to keep writing more books. “The more books you have, the more presence you have,” Steen said. “The basic problem is, you have to write the book, and you have to write a good book.”

Wordcraft – Publishing: getting our books out there

It was the Fourth of July, early on a beautiful Saturday morning of a holiday weekend. So why was a room full of people taking a break from the holiday at the monthly meeting of Mystery Writers of America’s Southwest Chapter? We’d come to hear four longtime writers, veterans of the business, talk about the topic dear to all our hearts – getting published.

Fiction writers Sandy Steen, LaRee Bryant and Susan May, and computer how-to guy James Gaskin (who also dabbles in fiction) found most of their audience’s questions were about self-publishing, which was OK, because they’ve gone both ways, self-publishing as well as the traditional variety.

Although audience questions started with how to format books for self-publishing, panel members emphasized that the quality of the writing has to come first. “There’s one thing I see about self-published books,” Steen said, “it’s that there’s a lot of dreck out there. Anything you submit, from a query to a full manuscript, needs to be as clean as possible.”

Bryant, who is a professional editor as well as author, agreed. “If you’re going to do it yourself, you need to be sure you’ve got the aptitude to do it.”

So just hard is it to prepare a book for self-publishing, an audience member asked. Is it worth doing yourself, or is it better to hire someone?

Susan May: “I’m a firm believer from many years in business, that you do yourself what you do well. Otherwise, hire it out.”

That said, the multiple options available for self-publishing, such as CreateSpace, have made the formatting the questioner was concerned with one of the easier parts of publishing. (If in doubt while at the self-publishing site, ask for a guided tour, which will explain the concepts as the author goes along.) Pick a standard font (typeface) such as Times New Roman or Courier, in a 12-14 point size.

Steen prefers Garamond, a family of typefaces, which also have a familiar look for most readers. It, as well as Times New Roman and Courier, are all serif typefaces, meaning they have ornamental extender lines, typically at the bases of letters. An audience member asked about the use of the Arial typeface, a sans serif font. But although sans serifs have what some consider a more modern look, Bryant advised against them, finding that they don’t show up as well on e-readers.

However, panelists recommended checking any unusual typefaces to be sure they are no longer under copyright by their creators. Otherwise, authors may find themselves billed thousands of dollars for use of a copyrighted product. (And about copyrighting your own book? That’s the easy part, panelists agreed. The U.S. Copyright Office charges about $35 for the process.)

“What’s the most popular size for an e-book?” was another audience question.

Mass-market size books, the old ones small enough to fit into a pocket, are going out of style in paper because their pages are more difficult to cut. Again, to keep formatting the same for both paper books and e-books, panelists recommended what’s called “trade” paperback sizes, six inches by nine inches, or 5 ¼ by 8.

Bryant suggested that with the slightly larger 6 x 9 inch size sometimes decreases the number of pages, which in turn may decrease the publishing costs. In no case would any of the panelists recommend trying to scrimp on costs by using smaller typefaces. Bryant would never go smaller than 12 point; May typically uses 13 point.

With self-publishing also comes the need to make decisions about marketing, including how to price your own books. At this point, the discussion took a sharp turn into questions about book promotion, to be continued next Tuesday.