Showing posts with label synopsis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label synopsis. Show all posts

Friday, July 31, 2009

Query vs Synopsis

Which is worse? Trying to spit out a query and convey the excitement of your book in a couple of paragraphs or taking a 280 page book down to a couple of pages? I'm attempting both right now.
The query isn't yet perfected, but I'm not sure what more to do with it. I'm going to wait till tomorrow morning when the house is quiet (I'm always up first) and I have a hot cup of coffee by my side to open it up and look again. Sometimes I look at my query and think....did I get it all in? Would a fresh pair of eyes look at this and really get the gist of what my story is about? Or am I reading something into it that isn't there?
I'm also working on my synopsis. I work on it when I need a break from query letter hell. Erica Orloff gave me some great coaching on what makes a synopsis great and I'm happy to say they have gotten easier since then. But its one of those things where I know my story so well, lets face it I've read this thing cover to cover about ten times now, sometimes I think I can't see the forest for the trees. This weekend I'm going to take my last printed draft and set it next to my puter and write two or three lines on each chapter and then try to piece it together from there. At least then I'll make sure I don't forget anything important.
Does anyone out there have a system for doing queries or synopsis? Care to share?

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Send us a Synopsis...


Thats what agent's say. Send us a query, synopsis and a couple of chapters. I can find lots on writing queries (the best on that was over at Bookends ), and I have my chapters ready to send...now I have to write a synopsis...

Is there a good site on how to do this? I've written these before, but was never sure if I'm doing it right. Turn a three hundred and some odd page book into three pages? Oh yeah, easy.

Do I condense every chapter into two sentences? What do I leave out? Are they judging my writing on this chop job?


What I really want is to read the synopsis on Stephen King's The Stand or even Misery. Ok, I'll take Cujo--do you think he'd share that with me???


Is there a formula to this process? How do you approach your synopsis?

Help!

Last Day of NANOWRIMO --- Oh No!

 Where did the month go?  Certainly not on the page. I have an outline, some character sketches but mostly I have a lot of research notes.  ...