How to write a one-page synopsis

A synopsis is the document agents and editors ask for and writers dread. It is not jacket copy and it is not a sales pitch; it is a plain account of what happens in the book, start to finish, in about a page. Its job is to show that the story holds together, that the stakes rise, and that the ending pays off what the beginning promised. Here is how to write one that does that job without taking a week.

What a synopsis is for

An agent reads a synopsis for three things: does the plot work, does the main character change, and does the ending land. They are not looking for your prose style (the sample chapters show that) or for suspense (they want the suspense removed). A synopsis that withholds, teases or asks rhetorical questions fails the one test it exists to pass.

It is also a tool for you. A writer who cannot summarise the book in a page usually has a book with a structural gap, and the synopsis finds it faster than a reread. Many writers draft one before revising for exactly that reason.

Present tense, third person, plain

Write in the present tense and in the third person, whatever tense and person the novel uses: Mara refuses the offer, not Mara refused or I refuse. Use plain, direct sentences. Cover the main character’s feelings as well as their actions, in a few words each time (furious, she sells the boat), because the emotional arc is as much the story as the events are.

Name only the characters who drive the plot, usually three to five. Everyone else is her brother or the buyer. Some agents ask for each named character to appear in capitals at first mention; do that if the submission guidelines say so, and not otherwise. No dialogue, or at most one short line that turns the story.

A shape that fits on one page

Five hundred to eight hundred words, single spaced, is one page or a little over. Four paragraphs cover most novels:

1. Set-up. Who the protagonist is, what they want, the world they live in, and the event that upends it. Two or three sentences each.
2. Rising action. The choices they make, the complications those choices create, and the point near the middle where the story changes shape: a reversal, a revelation, a point of no return.
3. Crisis. The worst moment, when the goal looks lost and the character has to decide who they are.
4. Climax and resolution. What they do, what it costs, how it ends, and what is different now.

Each paragraph should make the next one necessary. If the second could be lifted out without changing the third, the synopsis (and perhaps the book) has a middle that is not pulling its weight.

Tell the ending

Give the ending away. Say who lives, who marries, who the murderer is, and what the last scene does. A synopsis that ends will she choose love or the yard? tells the reader that you do not trust your own ending, or do not have one yet. The agent is deciding whether to spend a weekend on your manuscript; the ending is the main thing they need to know is there.

What to leave out

• Subplots that do not change the ending. If the sister’s divorce never touches the main story, it does not belong on the page.
• Backstory, except the one fact the ending depends on.
• Theme stated outright. Let the events show it.
• Chapter-by-chapter structure. A synopsis follows the story, not the table of contents.
• Praise for your own book (in this gripping tale), questions to the reader, and jacket-copy phrasing.

A checklist before you send it

• Present tense, third person, all the way through.
• The protagonist’s want is on the page in the first paragraph, and the ending answers it.
• Every named character does something that changes the plot.
• The main character is different at the end, and the synopsis says how.
• One page, or the length the guidelines ask for. If they say two pages, write two; if they say one, do not send two.
• Someone who has not read the book can tell you the story back after one reading.

Next: Revising a first draft in three passes