Posted on - No Comments on How to write a really good synopsis, part III: keeping some of those plot cats in the bag

How to write a really good synopsis, part III: keeping some of those plot cats in the bag

concealed cat

Last time, I let the cat out of the bag, all right: I divulged the secret that just because many different people — agents, editors, contest rule-writers, fellowship committees, etc. — use the term synopsis, it does not mean that they are necessarily all talking about an identical document. Different individuals, agencies, and institutions want different lengths, so it always behooves an aspiring writer to double-check the requirements.

Being an intrepid soul, I jumped right in and tackled the most feared of such requests, the single-page synopsis. Unlike a longer synopsis, where the writer actually is expected to provide an overview of the book in question’s plot or argument, a 1-page synopsis is essentially a teaser for the book, intended only to perform a limited number of functions.

What functions, you ask? Glad you asked:

(1) introduce the major characters and premise,

(2) demonstrate the primary conflict(s),

(3) show what’s at stake for the protagonist, and

(4) ideally, give some indication of the tone and voice of the book.

This goal should sound very, very familiar to those of you who made the hard trek through my recent Pitching 101 series. In both verbal pitching and 1-page synopsizing, the goal is NOT to tell everything there is to tell about the book — these formats are simply too short to permit it — but to give the reader/hearer enough of a taste to whet his or her appetite.

In order to provoke what kind of response, campers? Everybody open your hymnals and sing along with me now: to get the agent reading it to ask to see the manuscript, not provide so much information that reading it would be redundant.

Actually, this isn’t a bad list of goals for any length synopsis. Certainly, it’s quite a bit more than most that cross our pal Millicent the agency screener’s desk actually achieve. However, for a longer synopsis — say, the 5-page version most frequently requested by agents of their already-signed clients, or a slightly shorter one intended for contest submission — I would add to the list:

(5) for a novel or memoir, show the primary story arc through BRIEF descriptions of the most important scenes.

For nonfiction that isn’t story-based, present the planks of the overarching argument in logical order, along with some indication of how you intend to prove each point.

(6) show how the plot’s primary conflict is resolved or what the result of adopting the book’s argument would be.

Does that sound like an overwhelming set of tasks to pull off in a few short pages? I can see how it might feel that way, but believe it or not, the vast majority of synopsis-writers attempt to do far, far more.

How so? Well, the first time you tried to write a synopsis, didn’t you try to tell the entire story of the book?

I shall take that giant-sized sigh of disgusted recognition as a yes — and if I had to guess (do I? Do I? Apparently, I do), I would wager that those of you who DIDN’T answer that question in the affirmative have not yet tried to write a synopsis.

At least, not since you learned what they were for; I’m not talking about those oh-so-common soi-disant synopses that don’t summarize the book so much as promote it. (This is the best novel since MIDDLEMARCH, only less depressing!) But of that pitfall, more follows anon.

If you find the necessity for brevity intimidating, you are hardly alone; I am perpetually meeting aspiring writers agonizing over it. Some years ago, I met a marvelous writer at a conference; naturally, as conference etiquette demands, I asked her over crawfish etouffée what her first novel was about.

Forty-three minutes, two excellently-becreamed courses, and a dessert that the waiter took great delight in lighting on fire later, she came to the last scene.

“That sounds like a great novel,” I said, waving away a waiter bent upon stuffing me until I burst. “And I really like that it’s an easy one to pitch: two women, misfits by personality and disability within their own families and communities, use their unlikely friendship to forge new bonds of identity in a lonely world.”

The author stared at me, as round-eyed as if I had just sprouted a second head. “How did you do that? I’ve been trying to come up with a one-sentence summary for two years!”

Of course, it was easier for me than for her: I have years of experience crafting synopses and pitches; it’s a learned skill.

I also hadn’t lived through any of the real-life events that I had every reason to expect formed major incidents in the book. (What tipped me off? What tips off so many pitch-hearers and query-readers: the fact that the author not only prefaced her summary with that statement so beloved of first-time novelists, “Well, it’s sort of based on something that really happened to me…” but she also very kindly told me after her descriptions of the fact-based incidents how the actual events had been different, as an interesting compare-and-contrast exercise. Quick hint to those of you writing autobiographical fiction: to a professional reader like an agent, editor, or contest judge, such statements almost never render a writer more credible as a narrator; if people in the publishing industry want real stories, they turn to memoirs and other nonfiction. Save the accounts of how closely your novel mirrors your life for interviews after your book is published; trust me, your biographers will be agog to hear it.)

Still more importantly, because I had not yet read the book, I did not know the subtle character nuances that filled her pages. I could have no knowledge of how she had woven perspective with perspective in order to tease the reader into coming to know the situation fully. I was not yet aware of the complex ways in which she made language dance. All I knew was the premise and the plot – which put me in an ideal position to come up with a pithy, ready-for-the-conference-floor pitch.

Or — and I can feel that some of you have already jumped ahead to the next logical step here — a synopsis.

This is why, I explained to her, I always write the pitch before I write the piece. Less distracting that way. You can always tweak it down the road, but why not get the basic constituent parts on paper first, while the plot elements are still painted in broad strokes in your head?

Ditto for synopses, as I suggested in passing yesterday. Naturally, they will evolve as the book develops and the plot thickens in writing, but I’ve never known a writer who could not easily give a one-page synopsis of her book when she was two weeks into writing it — and have seldom known the same author to be able to do so without agony a year later.

Those of you locked in mid-novel know what I’m about to advise, don’t you?

That lump in the pit of your stomach is not lying to you: I am seriously suggesting that you sit down and write at least a concise summary of the major themes of the book — if not actually a provisional 1-page synopsis (and, to be on the safe side, a 5-page one as well) — BEFORE you finish writing it.

At least a rough draft: you’ll have more time to tweak later on, and in the long run, if you multi-task throughout the creation process, your work will hit the agent market faster. How so? Well, think how much happier you will be on the blessed day that an agent asks you for one. Wouldn’t you rather be able to say, “Sure; I’ll get that out to you right away,” instead of piping through mounting terror, “Wow, um, I guess I could pull one together and send it with the chapter you requested…”

Synopses, like pitches, are often easier to write for a book that has not yet come to life. At the beginning of the writing process, it is easy to be succinct: there are not yet myriad plot details and marvelous twists to get in the way of talking about the premise.

Everyone who has ever sighed in response to the ubiquitous question, “Gee, what is your book about?” knows this to be true, right?

As I mentioned earlier in this series, too many aspiring writers seem to forget that the synopsis is a writing sample, too — and will be judged accordingly. A panicked state is not, I have noticed, the most conducive to smooth summarization.

But just what does summarization mean in this context? Is it, as my dinner companion assumed, simply a shortened version of a long tale, including all of the twists, turns, subplots, and descriptions of what perspective and voice each of the mentioned scenes is in? Of course not. In a synopsis, a writer is supposed to tell a compelling story: basically the plot of the book, minus the subplots.

Which is why, in case you’d been wondering, it’s a mistake to overload the synopsis with detail, instead of sticking to the major plot points:

Contrast that, if you please, with the solid 1-page synopsis for the same book we discussed yesterday:

The difference is pretty stark, isn’t it? At the rate that the first example is crawling, it would almost be quicker to read the manuscript itself.

I heard you think that, synopsis-writers who already have requests to send pages: sorry to be the one to break it to you, but in a submission that includes a synopsis, Millicent will NOT immediately turn to the manuscript if she finds the synopsis unsatisfying. In the rather unlikely circumstance that she reads the synopsis first (submission screeners tend to pounce upon the first page of the manuscript right away, to see if they like the writing, then move on to a requested synopsis later), all a poorly-constructed synopsis is likely to impel her to do is reach for her already-prepared stack of form-letter rejections.

Hey, I don’t make the rules; I merely tell you about them.

The other common panicked response to the demand for brevity, particularly in a 1-page synopsis, is to turn it into a projected back jacket blurb for the book. Contest judges see this all the time: the requested synopsis is, after all, not all that much longer than a standard back jacket blurb, many contest entrants apparently think, so why not use it as an opportunity for promotional copy?

The result, alas, tends to be a series of vague generalities and unsupported boasts, looking a little something like this:

Yes, I know that there’s a typo in the last paragraph, smarty pants — and I sincerely hope that you caught some of the many standard format violations as well. (If you didn’t spot any, or if this is the first you’ve ever heard that there is an expected format for book submissions, please dash as swiftly as your little legs will carry you to the archive list at right, click on the HOW TO FORMAT A MANUSCRIPT or STANDARD FORMAT ILLUSTRATED heading, and absorb, absorb, absorb.)

If you can bring yourself to ignore the many cosmetic excesses of that last example, take a close gander at the content. Setting aside the most important writing distinction between these three examples — the third TELLS that the book is good, whereas the second and third SHOW that why it might be appealing through specifics — let me ask you: how well does each fulfill the criteria for 1-page synopsis success that we established above? To recap:

(1) introduce the major characters and premise,

(2) demonstrate the primary conflict(s),

(3) show what’s at stake for the protagonist, and

(4) ideally, give some indication of the tone and voice of the book.

Obviously, the last example fails in almost every respect. It does (1) introduce a few of the main characters and part of the premise, but dumbs it down: Lizzy seems to be the passive pawn of Mr. Wickham, and not too bright to boot. It mentions (2) one of the conflicts, but neither the most important nor the first of the book, but it entirely misses the book’s assessment of (3) what’s at stake for Lizzy (other than the implied possibility of falling in love with the wrong man).

Most seriously, (4) this blurb pretty actively misrepresents the tone and voice of the book, presenting it as a torrid romance rather than a comedy of manners. Why is this a mistake? Well, think about it: would an agent who represents steamy romances be a good fit for PRIDE AND PREJUDICE? Would s/he be likely to have the editorial connections to place it under the right eyes quickly?

And when you come right down to it, isn’t an agent who gets excited about the book described in this third example likely to be hugely disappointed by the opening pages of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE?

Example #1 — what I like to call the run-on synopsis — performs better on a lot of levels, doesn’t it? It presents both (1) the characters and premise fairly well, but in getting sidetracked by a minor conflict, its writer rapidly runs out of room to present the (2) primary conflict of the book. By focusing so exclusively on what happens, rather than upon establishing, say, the protagonist’s motivations and desires, it underplays (3) what’s at stake for her.

Isn’t it interesting, though, how little actual quotation from the book (as I’ve done several times throughout) helps demonstrate the tone and voice of the book? PRIDE AND PREJUDICE is one of the great comedies of the English language — so shouldn’t this synopsis be FUNNY?

The middle example — the one that, if you will recall, is little more than a reformatted and slightly expanded version of the summary portion of a 2-minute pitch — succeeds in fulfilling each of our goals.

Or does it? Can you think of ways to improve upon it without extending the length beyond a single page?

Quick, now: Aunt Jane needs to know immediately, because the agent of her dreams asked her today to send the first 50 pages and a synopsis, and she’s just about to finish printing up the former. Can you pick up the pace of revision, please?

See how much harder it is when you’re trying to do it in a hurry? Wouldn’t have been nice if Aunt Jane already had a synopsis on hand to send when the request came in?

I know, I know: it’s exceedingly tempting to procrastinate for as long as you possibly can about embarking upon a task as difficult and as potentially annoying as this, but working on the synopsis well before anyone in the industry might reasonably ask to see it guarantees that yours will have a significant advantage over the vast majority that cross Millicent’s desk: it won’t have been tossed together at the last possible nanosecond before sealing the submission packet.

The results, as Millie herself would be the first to tell you, are not always pretty. Your manuscript deserves better treatment than that, doesn’t it?

I’ll leave you chewing on all of these big issues for the nonce. Next time, we’re going to be returning to these same examples with a more technical eye, to see how the smaller structural and presentation issues play into a synopsis’ success.

Keep up the good work!

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How to write a really good synopsis, part II: getting the facts straight from the get-go

Athene's birth from the head of Zeus

Last time, I launched into a discussion one of the more frustration-generating tasks a writer faces on a routine basis: compressing a deliciously complex, breathtakingly nuanced 400-book into a 5-page summary in standard format. Or whatever length the agent of your dreams or contest of your desires has seen fit to request.

As I pointed out yesterday, it’s well worth double-checking who is requesting what these days, especially if you’re planning on including a synopsis with your query letters. This information that’s usually easily available in the agency’s listing in one of the standard agency guides, on its website (if it has one; a surprisingly hefty percentage still don’t), or even, in the case of a REQUESTED synopsis to be included with a submission, in the communication containing the request for materials.

Yes, I AM saying what you think I’m saying: you wouldn’t believe how often queriers seem to forget to consult either of the former (or both, since sometimes they contain different information) or, in the heat of post-request excitement, simply disregard the instructions about what they’re supposed to send. A good trick to help avoid the first mistake: do your homework.

Seriously, Millicent the agency screener is not going to consider ignorance a legitimate defense. If the agency has made the information publicly available, she will expect any querier or submitter to be familiar with it. As will her boss.

Why might a demonstrated lack of familiarity with an agency’s querying or submission guidelines (which are, lest we forget, likely to differ from other agencies’) raise red flags for Millicent? Readers who made it through my recent Pitching 101 and How to Write a Really Good Query Letter series, feel free to shout out the answer: because a writer who isn’t very good at following directions is inherently more likely to be a time-consuming client than one who shines at producing what s/he is asked to produce.

I hear some annoyed huffing out there, don’t I? “Aren’t you borrowing trouble here, Anne?” some of you ask, arms akimbo. “The first mistake you mentioned could simply be a matter of having found out about an agent from writers’ forum or one of the listing websites, rather than having plunked down the cash for a Herman Guide or tracked down the agency’s website. If agents were REALLY serious about wanting everyone who approaches them to adhere to the guidelines on their sites, wouldn’t they make sure that the same information appears in every conceivable listing, anywhere?”

Well, that might be the case, if agents had infinite time on their hands (they don’t) or if most of the information on fora and secondary sites you mentioned were first-hand (it seldom is). The advantage of relying upon one of the more credible information sources — Jeff Herman’s guide, Guide to Literary Agents, the Publishers’ Marketplace member listings, individual agencies’ websites — is that the information there comes directly from the agencies themselves. Notwithstanding the fact that these sources may occasionally provide mutually contradictory guidelines, you can at least be certain that someone at the agency you are planning to approach has heard of them.

Not so with a writers’ forum or an agency listing site. While writers can glean useful information this way, it’s almost invariably second- or third-hand: it may be accurate, but it’s not necessarily what the agent or agency you’re planning to approach would like potential clients to know about them.

So while searching fora and generalist sites can be a good way to come up with ideas of whom to query, that shouldn’t be a savvy writer’s only stop. Check out what the agency has to say for itself — because I can tell you now, their Millicent will assume that you are intimately familiar with its stated guidelines, and judge your queries and submissions accordingly.

Besides — and I’m kind of surprised that this little tidbit isn’t more widely known — it tends to drive people who have devoted their lives to the production of books NUTS to encounter the increasingly common attitude that to conduct a 20-second web search IS to have done research. Until fairly recently, conducting research meant actually going to a library and looking into a book, a practice that people who sold them for a living really, really condoned. They miss the days when that was common. They pine for those days.

Trust me on this one: aspiring writers who whine, “But how I was I supposed to know that you wanted a 1-page synopsis rather than a 5-page one?” when that information is clearly included in a well-respected guide that anyone in North America could have walked into a bookstore and bought do not win friends easily at the average agency.

Unfortunately, from Millicent’s side of the desk, the second problem I mentioned, when queriers get so caught up in the excitement of querying or submission that they just forget to do every step recommended in the guidelines, looks virtually identical to poor research. The over-excited are often penalized as a result.

So how might one avoid that dreadful fate? Here are a few helpful hints:

For a query packet:
1. Track down the agency’s SPECIFIC guidelines.
You saw that one coming, didn’t you? Never, ever assume that any given agency will want to see exactly what all the others do.

Yes, even if you heard an agent at a writers’ conference swear up and down that everyone currently practicing her profession does. It’s just not true — unless she was talking about professionalism, attention to detail, courtesy, and submissions in standard manuscript format. (And if you don’t know what that is, please see the HOW TO FORMAT A MANUSCRIPT category on the archive list at right before you even consider approaching an agent.)

2. Take out a sheet of paper and make a checklist of EVERYTHING those guidelines request.
Don’t trust your memory, especially if you are querying several agents at once: details can blur under stress.

3. Follow that checklist whilst constructing your query packet.
Again, you probably saw that one coming.

4. Before you seal the query packet (or hit the SEND button), go over your checklist again to make absolutely certain you’ve done everything on it.
Double-checking is the key. If you’re too nervous to feel confident doing this — and many aspiring writers are total nervous wrecks on the eve of querying — as your significant other, close friend, obsessive-compulsive sister, or some other detail-oriented person who cares about you to run the final check for you.

Sounds like overkill, but believe me, every agented and published writer in the world can tell you either a first- or second-hand horror story about the time s/he realized after s/he sealed the envelope/popped it in the mailbox/it was halfway to Manhattan that s/he had omitted some necessary part of the packet. Extra care will both help you sleep better at night and increase your chances of charming Millicent.

For a submission packet (and I warn you, some of these are going to sound awfully familiar:
1. Read over the request for materials (if any) and make a checklist of what you’re being asked to send.
If the request came after a successful pitch, you may have to rely upon your recollections of what’s said, but if the agent asked you in writing for pages, don’t make the EXTREMELY COMMON mistake of just assuming that your first excited reading caught all of the facts. Go over it several times and make a list of what to do.

Don’t tell me that you’re in too much of a hurry to do this before you get your manuscript out the door. Must I tell you horror stories about writers who didn’t?

2. Track down the agency’s SPECIFIC guidelines.
Yes, you should do this even if the requesting agent was very detailed about what s/he wanted. Chances are, the agent of your dreams shares a Millicent with other member agents; if the agency expects submissions to look a certain way, so will the communal Millicent.

3. Have a non-writer go over the request for materials, the agency in question’s guidelines, AND its website, making a separate list of all the agency’s requirements and requests.
No, it’s not sufficient to have someone else double-check your list — this is too important. Have a buddy generate a separate list, to maximize the probability that nothing will be left off.

Why a non-writer, you ask? S/he’s less likely to get swept up in the excitement of the moment.

4. Compare and consolidate the two lists.
If there are discrepancies, go back and find our which is correct.

5. Make absolutely certain that your submission is in standard manuscript format.
I couldn’t resist throwing this in, because so many submissions fall victim to unprofessional formatting. If you have never seen a professional manuscript in person (and no, it does not resemble a published book in several significant ways), please go through the checklist under the HOW TO FORMAT A MANUSCRIPT category on the list at right.

I usually add a bunch of disclaimers about how there are many such lists floating around the web, all claiming to be definitive, but it’s tiring to pretend that there isn’t a lot of misinformation out there. I’ve won a major literary contest and sold two books using the guidelines I show on this site; my clients have sold many books and win literary awards relying upon these guidelines. I know agents who refer new clients to my website for these guidelines.

So as far as I know, there is literally no debate amongst professional book writers about what is required. (Fair warning: the standards for short stories and articles are different.) For any readers who still throw up their hands and complain that there isn’t a comprehensive set of guidelines out there, all I can suggest is maybe you’re spending a bit too much time surfing and not enough time talking to the pros.

That wasn’t as peevish as it sounded: seriously, if you’re tied up in knots because there isn’t any army out there forcing every single advice-giver to conform to a single set of suggestions, sign up for a writers’ conference or go to a book signing. Pretty much anyone in the industry will be perfectly happy to refer you to a credible source.

But fair warning: almost without exception, they will be miffed at an aspiring writer who complains that an Internet search did not turn up definitive information. As I mention above, to book people, that’s simply not doing research.

6. Before you seal the submission packet, dig out the final version of that to-do list and triple-check that you did everything on it.

Again, if you’re not a very detail-oriented person, at least not when you’re extremely nervous, have someone else do the final flight-check. Often, significant others are THRILLED to be helping.

Whenever you are scanning guidelines, be it for a query packet, submission, or contest entry, pay extra-close attention to length restrictions for synopses. Millicents are known for rejecting a too-long or too-short synopsis on sight. Why? Well, one that is much shorter will make you look as if your story is unable to sustain a longer exposition; if it is much longer, you will look as though you aren’t aware of the standard.

Either way, the results can be fatal to your submission.

If, as is the case with many agency guidelines, a particular agency does not set a length limit, be grateful: they’re leaving it up to you, not expecting you to read their minds and guess what they consider the industry standard. Use the length that you feel best represents your book, but never go over 5 pages, double-spaced.

So what DOES work in a synopsis? It’s not going to sound sexy, I’m afraid, but come closer, and I’ll let you in on the secret:

For fiction, stick to the plot of the novel, including enough vivid detail to make the synopsis interesting to read. Oh, and make sure the writing is impeccable — and, ideally, reflective of the voice of the book.

For nonfiction, begin with a single paragraph about (a) why there is a solid market already available for this book and (b) why your background/research/approach renders you the perfect person to fill that market niche. Then present the book’s argument in a straightforward manner, showing how each chapter will build upon the one before to prove your case as a whole. Give some indication of what evidence you will use to back up your points.

For either, make sure to allot sufficient time to craft a competent, professional synopsis — as well as sufficient buffing time to render it gorgeous. Let’s face it, unlike some of the more — let’s see, how shall I describe them? — fulfilling parts of writing and promoting a book, a synopsis is unlikely to spring into your head fully-formed, like Athene; most writers have to flog the muses quite a bit to produce a synopsis they like.

Too few aspiring writers do, apparently preferring instead to toss together something at the last minute before sending out a submission or contest entry. (Especially a contest entry. I’ve been a judge many times; I know.)

I have my own theories about why otherwise sane and reasonable people might tumble into this particular strategic error. Not being aware that a synopsis would be required seems to be a common reason, as does resentment at having to produce it at all. Or just not being familiar with the rigors of writing one. Regardless, it’s just basic common sense to recognize that synopses are marketing materials, and should be taken as seriously as anything else you write.

Yes, no matter how good your book may happen to be. Miss America may be beautiful au naturale, for all any of us know, but you can bet your last pair of socks that at even the earliest stage of going for the title, she takes the time to put on her makeup with care.

On the bright side, since almost everyone just throws a synopsis together, impressing an agent with one actually isn’t as hard as it seems at first blush. Being able to include a couple of stunning visceral details, for instance, is going to make you look like a better writer — almost everyone just summarizes vaguely.

My readers, of course, are far, far too savvy to make that mistake, right?

Even if you are not planning to send out queries or submissions anytime soon (much to those sore-backed muses’ relief), I STRONGLY recommend investing the time in generating and polishing a synopsis BEFORE you are at all likely to need to use it. That way, you will never you find yourself in a position of saying in a pitch meeting, “A 5-page synopsis? Tomorrow? Um, absolutely.”

Yes, it happens. It’s actually not all that uncommon for agented and published writers to be asked to provide synopses for books they have not yet written. In some ways, this is easier: when all a writer has in mind is the general outlines of the plot, the details are less distracting.

Actually, if you can bear it — you might want to make sure your heart medication is handy before you finish this sentence –it’s a great idea to pull together a couple of different lengths of synopsis to have on hand, so you are prepared when you reach the querying and submission stages to provide whatever the agent in question likes to see.

What lengths might you want to have in stock? Well, a 5-page, certainly, as that is the most common request, and perhaps a 3 as well, if you are planning on entering any literary contests anytime soon. As I mentioned yesterday, it’s getting more common for agents to request a 1-page synopsis, so you might want to hammer out one of those as well.

I can tell from here that you’ve just tensed up. Take a deep breath. No, I mean a really deep one. This is not as overwhelming a set of tasks as it sounds.

In fact, if you have been reading this blog all summer or have worked through some of the exercised in the archives, you probably already have a 1-page synopsis floating around in your mind.

You may know it by its other name: the 2-minute pitch. (For tips on how to construct one of these babies, please see the aptly-named 2-MINUTE PITCH category at right.)

Don’t believe me, oh ye of little faith? Okay, here’s a pitch I used as an example just a couple of months back:

Nineteenth-century 19-year-old Elizabeth Bennet has a whole host of problems: a socially inattentive father, an endlessly chattering mother, a sister who spouts aphorisms as she pounds deafeningly on the piano, two other sisters who swoon whenever an Army officer walks into the room, and her own quick tongue, any one of which might deprive Elizabeth or her lovely older sister Jane of the rich husband necessary to save them from being thrown out of their house when their father dies. When wealthy humanity-lover Mr. Bingley and disdainful Mr. Darcy rent a nearby manor house, Elizabeth’s mother goes crazy with matchmaking fever, jeopardizing Jane’s romance with Bingley and insisting that Elizabeth marry the first man who proposes to her, her unctuous cousin Mr. Collins, a clergyman who has known her for less than a week. After the family’s reputation is ruined by her youngest sister’s seduction by a dashing army officer, can Elizabeth make her way in the adult world, holding true to her principles and marrying the man she passionately loves, or will her family’s prejudices doom her and Jane to an impecunious and regretful spinsterhood? 

 

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, right? As I vaguely recall having mentioned at the time, this would be a trifle long as an elevator speech — which, by definition, needs to be coughed out in a hurry — but it would work fine in, say, a ten-minute meeting with an agent or editor.

It also, when formatted correctly, works beautifully as a one-page synopsis with only a few minor additions. Lookee:

Okay, so if I were Jane (Austen, that is, not Bennet), I MIGHT want to break up some of the sentences a little, particularly that last one that’s a paragraph long, but see how simple that was? The trick to the 1-page synopsis lies in realizing that it’s not intended to summarize the entire plot, merely to introduce the characters and the premise.

Yes, seriously. Like the descriptive paragraph in a query letter or the summary in a verbal pitch, no sane person seriously expects to see the entire plot of a book summarized in a single page. It’s a teaser, and should be treated as such.

Doesn’t that make more sense than driving yourself insane, trying to cram your entire storyline or argument into 22 lines? Or trying to shrink that 5-page synopsis you have already written down to 1? Bears pondering, doesn’t it?

Yes, yes, I know: even with reduced expectations, composing a synopsis is still a tall order. That’s why you’re going to want to set aside some serious time to write it — and don’t forget that the synopsis is every bit as much an indication of your writing skill as the actual chapters that you are submitting. (Where have I heard that before?) Because, really, don’t you want YOURS to be the one that justified Millicent’s heavily-tried faith that SOMEBODY out there can tell a good story in 3 — 5 pages?

Or — gulp! — 1?

Don’t worry; you can do this. There are more rabbits in that hat, and the muses are used to working overtime on good writers’ behalves.

Just don’t expect Athene to come leaping out of your head on your first try: learning how to do this takes time. Keep up the good work!

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Synopsis-writing 101, part VII: the nonfiction synopsis revisited, or, tell me again who needs to read this book and why?

For the benefit of those of you who are joining us in mid-series, I’ve been spending the last week or so going over (and over, and over) the ins and outs of that most dreaded of submission-packet candy, the humble synopsis. No one can say that I haven’t been thorough about it this time around, I suspect: we’ve covered what a synopsis is and isn’t (9/22) and how it should be formatted (9/23-29), as well as how to make it as brief as a single page (9/23-27) or as long as 5 (9/29-10/2).

(For those of you brand-new to this blog, welcome and fair warning: I’m given to exhaustive multi-part examinations of, well, everything. Blame my years in graduate school — and if you’re looking for a how-to for something specific, I would highly encourage you to peruse the rather extensive category list located on the lower right-hand side of this very page.)

Although many of the principles covered earlier in this series will apply to either a fiction or nonfiction synopsis — or to a memoir synopsis, which is stylistically sort of a combination of both — last time, I began talking about the specialized problems facing nonfiction synopsizers. (Hey, if it isn’t a word, it should be.)

Last time, if you will recall, we established that a nonfiction synopsis has four goals — and that those aims are different from the primary goals of a novel synopsis. To recap, a NF synopsis should:

(1) give the argument of the book in some detail;

(2) give some indication of how you intend to prove your case;

(3) demonstrate why the book will appeal to a large enough market niche to make publishing it economically worthwhile, and

(4) show beyond any reasonable question that you are the best-qualified person in the universe to write the book.

I ended yesterday’s post with a cliffhanger: no matter how large the prospective market for your book, I told my wide-eyed readers gathered around the campfire, is you can’t legitimately assume that an agent or editor will be aware of just how many potential readers inhabit it.

Thus, when you are crafting a synopsis — or query letter, or book proposal — it’s prudent to assume that they will underestimate it…and thus the market appeal of your book.

Do I already hear some impatient huffing out there? “Aren’t you a little confused, Anne?” I hear a few NF writers protest. “While the book proposal, the query letter, and the pitch may descend to the sordid mention of market conditions and readership, the synopsis is supposed to be a summary of what the book is about. Therefore, it must be entirely about content. Kindly mend your ways accordingly, miss.”

You’re partially right, impatient huffers: a fiction synopsis should indeed concern itself entirely with its book’s subject matter and voice, rather than marketing concerns. A professional nonfiction synopsis, on the other hand, is mostly about content, but often contains the elements of a micro-proposal as well.

Why? Well, perhaps not all currently working nonfiction authors would agree with me, but marketability typically plays a far, far more important role in whether an agent, editor, or even contest judge will be interested in a NF project than in novel; NF, after all, is usually sold on a book proposal, not the entire manuscript, and proposals, for the benefit of those of you who have not yet written one, are made up almost exclusively of marketing material.

Why? Well, most of the time, NF sells better.

Don’t believe me, fiction-readers? Walk into the nearest large chain bookstore and take a good, long look around. Are most of the books fiction or nonfiction? Assuming it is the latter (as is the case in most non-specialist bookstores), how are the bookstore’s NF sections arranged?

99.99% of the time, it will be by subject matter — unlike the fiction, which is usually arranged by author’s last name, with perhaps separate sections for the larger genres.

Which means, at the querying and submission stages, that a NF synopsis that acts like a fiction synopsis — sticking to the story and nothing but the story — is typically a less effective marketing tool than one that gives some indication of what kinds of readers are in desperate need of this particular book and why.

Hey, I didn’t make the rules; I just attempt to clarify them a trifle.

Yes, the quality of the writing does make a difference in any submission, but the fact is, while novels can — and do — sell on the writing alone, even the best-written nonfiction is seldom marketed primarily upon the quality of the writing. In fact, that i’s not at all unusual for an author to be able to sell a NF book, even if it’s a memoir, on only a single chapter and a book proposal.

Given this prevailing expectation, trust me: you’ll be better off if you make it pellucidly clear in the synopsis who your target market is, why your book will appeal to them, how and why your subject matter is interesting — and, if you’ll pardon my committing the sacrilege, why a non-expert in the field might find it fascinating.

And as much as I hate to be the one to break it to everyone, “Because I spent two years writing it!” is not a sufficient answer to any or all of the last four questions on that list. In the throes of writing, revising, and querying a book, it can be hard to remember that.

Remember, too, that for the synopsis to whet an agent, editor, or contest judge’s appetite for reading the proposal — the essential task of a synopsis tucked into a query packet, right? — the book’s content needs to come across as not merely intriguing to its target readership, but to industry types as well. So if you ever find yourself saying, “Well, that’s a little unclear, but my end readers will get it,” take that as a sign from the heavens that you should be rushing to revise that particular piece.

As with a fiction synopsis, you’re going to want to show why the book is appealing, rather than merely saying so — and the trick to that, often, lies in eschewing generalities in favor of juicy, intriguing specifics.

In this spirit, I reiterate: when writing a synopsis, it’s merely prudent to assume that professional readers will underestimate the size of your target audience…and thus the market appeal of your book.

This is particularly true if you are pushing a book about anything that ever occurred west of, say, Albany to a NYC-based agent or editor, or any story set north of Santa Barbara or east of Los Vegas to an LA-based one.

Why? Well, let’s just say that the news media are not the only folks who think that little that happens to anyone outside of their own city limits is worth reporting, alas. If those of us who lived outside of the major urban centers thought this way about, say, New York City or London, we would be called provincial.

I’m quite serious about this. It seems silly in the age of lightning-fast electronic communication and swift travel across time zones, but regional prejudices still run strong enough that you might actually find yourself explaining to a charming, urbane agent with an MA in American Literature from Columbia or a law degree from Yale that yes, the inhabitants of Boise CAN support a symphony, and indeed have for many years.

And schools. And indoor plumbing.

I know: depressing. But being aware that agents may not be hip to your market means that you, savvy marketer that you are, can compensate for it by coming right out and saying in your synopsis — and perhaps in your cover letter as well — just how big and eager your target market actually is.

What can happen if you don’t, you ask? One of the most common rejection reasons for NF: it’s very, very easy for a book to be labeled as appealing to a niche market.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, niche market is industry-speak for “Well, no one I know would buy this book…”

Okay, so I’m exaggerating a trifle: it technically means that the pros think that a book would only be marketable to what they assume to be a tiny demographic. Trout fisherfolk, for instance, or people with cerebral palsy.

Yes, yes, I know: in actuality, both of these groups are rather large, but someone unfamiliar with those demographics might not be aware of that. To be blunt about it, I’ve never seen a guesstimate that wasn’t low, sometimes by a factor of millions.

Please, I implore you, don’t assume that an agent, editor, or contest judge will necessarily be charmed enough by the writing in your synopsis (or book proposal — or book, for that matter) to conduct a little independent research. Screeners in agencies and publishing houses simply don’t have the time, and often, contest organizers specifically tell their judges that they may rate ONLY what’s on the page.

Which means, in practice, that Millicent is extremely unlikely to dismiss that book aimed at anglers without bothering to find out just how many people there actually ARE who habitually fish for trout.

Such as, for instance, our pal Ernest Hemingway, above. He had — and has — a whole lot of company. But I suspect that you’d have to run into a trout fisherperson or two before you’d see a book on trout and spontaneously cry, “By gum, there’s an immense market for this!”

The same often holds true for regional interest, alas. Due to the perversity of where books get published in the United States, a story set in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or San Francisco will often be deemed of national interest, meaning that book buyers in other parts of the country (and world) might reasonably be expected to flock to the bookstores for it.

Because, obviously, readers the world over are sitting on the edges of their seats, wondering what’s going on in Brooklyn these days. Or so I surmise, from the immense number of books set there.

But let that SAME story be set in Minneapolis, Shreveport, Olympia, or Halifax, and NYC, LA, Chicago, and San Francisco-based agents and editors tend to dismiss it as appealing only to audiences in the region where it was set. Think about it: if THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA hadn’t been set in Manhattan, do you honestly think that any major publishing house would have given it a second glance?

Over the years, I’ve heard many agents and editors tell writers of so-called regional works that they’d be better off submitting their NF and even novels to regional publishers, but in recent years, I’ve begun to wonder to whom they are referring. The publishing industry is not, after all, like theatre — not every major city will spontaneously see a publishing house spring up out of the ground, started by spunky youngsters in their dorm basements, if necessary.

Can’t you just picture it? “I’ve got a barn,” a would-be publisher pants breathlessly, “and you have a mimeograph machine. Let’s publish some books!”

Doesn’t happen very often, alas. It’s a lovely fantasy, though, isn’t it?

Even for nonfiction, it is definitely trickier to interest agents at the big agencies in subject matter unfamiliar to denizens of the Eastern seaboard. So it’s a stellar idea to use your marketing materials to make the case that your subject matter IS of national interest.

Here, as in the pitch, statistics can be your friend — and they needn’t be statistics about just how many people have already bought books on your subject matter, either. If you’re writing a blistering exposé of bear abuse in Montana, for instance, it would a VERY good idea to mention in your synopsis just how many visitors Yellowstone sees in a year, because chances are, Manhattanites will have no idea. (For more hints on how to find statistics to back up your book, please see the YOUR BOOK’S SELLING POINTS category at right.)

In a NF book synopsis, you not only need to establish the importance of the subject matter — you need to demonstrate that you are an expert in it. If “Why are you the best person to write this book?” seems secondary to the subject matter, I’m guessing that you probably haven’t pitched a NF book lately.

Seriously, it’s the first question almost anyone in the industry will ask after you mention casually that you are writing a NF book. “So,” they’ll say, reserving comment about the marketability of your topic until after they hear the answer to this particular question, “what’s your platform?”

Platform is industry-speak for the background that qualifies you to write the book — the array of credentials, expertise, and life experience that qualifies you as an expert on the topic.

Put another way, platform is the industry term for why anyone should trust a NF author enough to want to read her book, as opposed to any of the other similar books on the market. The platform need not consist of educational credentials or work experience — in fact unless you write in a technical, scientific, or medical field, it generally has less to do with your educational credentials than your life experience.

But by all means, if you happen to be a former Secretary of State or NBA superstar, do mention it. Don’t be downhearted if you haven’t yet held a cabinet post in your field of expertise, however. The platform is ANY reason, or collection of reasons, that you are the single best person currently residing in the universe to write this particular book.

Give some serious thought to your platform before you begin to market your book — and yes, that means before you sit down to write the synopsis, too. All of you NF writers out there should not only be prepared to answer questions about your platform BEFORE you have ANY contact with an agent or editors — your synopsis should contain at least passing mention of your expertise.

This is true, incidentally, even if your book happens to be a memoir.

“Wait just a memory-picking minute!” I hear the memoirists out there cry. “Isn’t it pretty darned obvious that I would be the single best living authority upon my own life?”

Not necessarily, from the industry’s point of view.

Yes, I know: it seems self-evident that a memoirist would be an expert on the story he tells, because it’s his own life. But a memoir is always about something in addition to the life story of its author, and your platform should include some reference to why you are qualified to write about that other subject matter as well.

If your memoir is about spending your teenage years in a foreign country, for instance, take a sentence or two of your synopsis to talk about how being an outsider gave you a unique perspective on it. If your memoir rips the lid off the steamy secrets of a cereal factory, you’ll be better off if you use your decade’s worth of experience filling those boxes as evidence that you are a credible expert on flakes. And if your childhood memoir deals with your love affair with trains, make sure you include the fact that you spent 17 years of your life flat on your stomach, going “woo, woo” at a dizzying array of model trains.

You get the picture. It’s not enough to make your subject matter sound fascinating: in your synopsis, your account needs to come across as both fascinating and credible.

For what it’s worth, novels are generally about something other than the beauty of their writing, too. They have settings; characters have professions. For instance, the novel I am writing now is set at Harvard, where I got my undergraduate degree: think that is going to make my novel more credible in the eyes of the industry? You bet.

I could feel fiction writers’ blood pressure rising throughout the last few paragraphs, but don’t panic: technically, a novelist doesn’t NEED a platform. Go back and reread that comforting earlier bit about fiction often selling on the quality of the writing alone; repeat as often as necessary until your head no longer feels as though it’s going to explode.

It’s always a nice touch, though, if a fiction writer can mention a platform plank or two in her query letter. But for fiction, keep your platform out of your synopsis; in the eyes of the industry, self-promotion in a novel synopsis tends to be regarded as compensation for some heretofore-unsuspected weakness in the plot or the writing.

Before anyone points out to me that other sources give different advice about crafting synopses, I’m going to be brutally honest with you here: very few writing teachers will advise you to include your platform in your synopsis, even for a NF book. That’s material for the author bio, they will tell you.

Many writers include a background paragraph in their query letters — a great place to present your platform, eh? — but personally, I think it makes a whole lot of sense to give a quick nod to the platform in the NF synopsis as well, if it makes your work sound more credible.

As I mentioned earlier in this series, it’s not uncommon for a synopsis to end up in different hands than the query letter, after all. They’re not going to know if you don’t tell them, I always say. Go ahead and state your qualifications, but keep it brief, and make it clear how those qualifications, well, qualify you to write this book.

More wit and wisdom on the synopsis follows in the days to come. Keep up the good work!

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Synopsis-writing 101, part VI: the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the…oh, you only want a couple of pages?

oz-the-great-and-terrible.tiff

Okay, so I did end up taking a day off for my birthday — but, perversely, it was the day after. Suffice it to say that there’s been quite a bit going on in my part of the world.

Back to the topic at hand, my ongoing series on how to craft an attention-grabbing synopsis BEFORE you need it, so you will not be thrown into forty-seven kinds of panic the instant an agent or editor asks you to send one. As those of you who write nonfiction may have noticed, I’ve been concentrating for the last few posts upon the specialized problems of novel synopses.

Specifically, if you will recall, I went on (and on and on) about the importance of a novel synopsis’ demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that its writer is a gifted storyteller. For nonfiction, the task is a trifle more complicated.

Don’t worry — I have a LOT of experience writing both types, as it happens: I’ve sold two memoirs to publishers, and my second novel is just starting to make the rounds. Not to mention all of the synopses I see as a frequent contest judge and even more frequent freelance editor. So yours truly has spent quite a bit of time in the last few years hunkered over the odd synopsis, let me tell you. I know whereat I speak.

In fact, just go ahead and imagine the following words of wisdom booming from the mouth of Oz, the Great and Terrible. It will save time and energy in the long run.

In a NF synopsis of any length, your goal is fourfold:

(1) to give the argument of the book in some detail;

(2) to give some indication of how you intend to prove your case;

(3) to demonstrate why the book will appeal to a large enough market niche to make publishing it worthwhile, and

(4) to show beyond any reasonable question that you are the best-qualified person in the universe to write the book.

In anywhere from 1-5 pages, depending upon what the agent, publishing house, or contest rules request. I’m not entirely sure that I proved half that much in my master’s thesis.

And let me tell you, it was a pretty good master’s thesis.

The argument is the most important element here — it’s imperative that the synopsis-reader be able to follow it. Show it in logical order.

Why is this so important? Well, in the synopsis, you should not only show the content of the argument, but also that you can argue coherently.

I’m already sensing some disgruntlement out there, amn’t I? “But Anne,” I hear some NF writers grumble, “this seems counterintuitive. Wouldn’t the best way for an agent or editor to check out my argumentative style be to, you know, read my book?”

I could shoot that one down right away, but first, let’s all take a mental holiday and picture how much easier all of our lives would be people in the publishing industry actually thought that way.

Ah, that’s nice: a world where writers’ talent was judged solely by thoughtful, well-paid, prose-loving agents and editors, lounging on comfy sofas in sun-drenched lofts, languidly turning over page after page of entire manuscripts sent to them by aspiring authors.

And look, outside that massive loft window — do I see a pig flying by, with Jean Harlow on his back, waving sparklers and smooching Clark Gable?

Okay, back to the real world: realistically, a nonfiction synopsis does indeed need to encapsulate the argument that it takes an entire book to make in just a couple of pages — or at least to establish the central question and indicate how you’re going to go about answering it.

Think of it as a tap-dancing audition, your two-minute chance to show your fancy footwork: if you argue well enough here, the agent will ask to see the argument in the book.

Did I just hear some gasps out there? “Two minutes?” a few of you squeak. “How closely can they possibly read my synopsis in that short amount of time?”

I didn’t mean to startle you — but yes, that’s roughly how long your synopsis will have under an agent’s (or, more likely, an agency screener’s) bloodshot, overworked eyes. These days, contrary to popular opinion, NF queries and submissions tend not to be treated to much closer or more respectful readings than novels. Popular opinion may have a point here, at least at the agency level, because nonfiction has historically been quite a bit easier to sell to the major publishing houses than fiction.

Go figure.

At this point in publishing history, though, the market is so tight that it just doesn’t make strategic sense for NF writers to assume that they — or, more accurately, we — don’t need to present book projects as professionally and eye-catchingly as novelists do.

So: two minutes, maximum, possibly less. Let’s face it, this isn’t a lot of time to establish an argument much more complicated than the recipe for your sainted mother’s cream of tomato soup.

Even if your mother’s methodology consisted primarily of opening a can of Campbell’s.

It is more than enough page space, though, to demonstrate that you have the writing skills to make an argument where each sentence leads logically to the next. It’s also enough time to show that you have a coherent plan for proving your propositions, and for indicating what evidence you intend to use.

If I seem to be harping on the necessity of making a COMPLETE, if skeletal, argument here, it is because the single most common mistake NF synopsizers make is to give only PART of the argument, or still worse, only the premise, with no indication of how they intend to make their case. Instead, they use the space to go on a rant about how necessary the book is, essentially squandering precious argumentative space with marketing jargon and premise.

But a solid underlying argument is the sine qua non of the NF synopsis. Period.

To make it appear as solid in the synopsis as I’m sure it is in the manuscript, don’t forget to mention what kind of evidence you will be using to support your claims. Have you done extensive research? Exhaustive interviews? Hung out with the right people?

If you have a professional background in the subject matter of your book that unquestionably renders you an expert, or personal experience that gives you a unique insight into the subject, try to mention that in your opening paragraph, or at least in the second. Otherwise, stick to the subject matter, and explain what the book is going to teach people about it.

I use the term teach advisedly, because it is often quite helpful for synopsis writers to think of the task as producing a course overview for the lesson that is the book’s content: how will this book help readers, and what kind of readers will it help?

And once you have made that clear, how about demonstrating precisely what about your approach will captivate those readers as no other book will?

Of course — I’m not talking about TELLING a potential agent or editor how terrific the book is — that’s the book proposal’s job, right? — but SHOWING that you can write the heck out of this topic. Your first task, then, is to make your subject matter sound absolutely fascinating.

To achieve this successfully, you will need to show how your take on it is original. To do that, you are going to have to spell out your argument. Not merely in generalities, but in sufficient detail that — everyone chant it with me now — an agent, editor, or contest judge could understand it sufficiently to describe it to someone else without having read the book. Because, let’s face it, that’s precisely what Millicent the agency screener is going to have to do in order to get her boss to ask to see your book proposal or manuscript — and what her cousin Maury the editorial assistant will have to do to get his boss even to consider publishing it.

Have I convinced you yet that you really do need to present a cohesive theory here? And did I happen to mention the importance of its being cohesive?

Easier said than done, of course. In the author’s mind, the argument often lies the details, not in the larger, more theoretical points. How can you narrow it down? It’s helpful to have an outline of your proposed chapters in front of you, so you can use the synopsis to demonstrate how each chapter will build upon the next to make your overall case.

Oh, don’t groan. If you’re writing a NF book, you are going to need to pull together a chapter-by-chapter overview anyway, of course, to include in your book proposal: it’s called the annotated table of contents. This moniker is a tad misleading, because it brings to mind the simple chapter title + page number tables of contents we’ve all seen in published books. An annotated table of contents consists of the titles in order, yes, but it also contains a paragraph or two about the argument or material to be presented in that chapter.

For tips on how to pull this off successfully, please see the BOOK PROPOSALS category on the list at right. I’ll still be here when you get back. The rest of you may feel free to move on.

Don’t get so caught up in reproducing the argument in the synopsis, though, that you do not include a BRIEF explanation of why the world needs your book, and why you are the best person imaginable to write it. This is typically the greatest difference between a fiction and a nonfiction synopsis.

If you are writing on a subject that has already been well-trodden by past authors, it’s even more important to make these points clear. The synopsis needs to render it apparent to Millicent and Maury at a glance why your book is different and better than what’s already on the market.

In answer to the small, instinctive moans of protest that just escaped from some of your gullets, yes, this is repetitive with material you will cover in your book proposal. In most of the contexts in which your synopsis will travel, however — tucked into an envelope with a query letter; accompanying a sample chapter or contest entry; floating around a publishing house after an editor has already fallen in love with your proposal — the reader will not also be clutching your proposal.

In other words, your goal here is to produce a synopsis that shows off your writing skills, the strength of your argument, and the inherent marketability of your book in a fraction of the space allotted to a proposal.

Piece o’ cake, right?

There is no need to be heavy-handed in your own praise to achieve this, either. To prove it to you, I’m going to give you a sample opening, modest enough that it would strike no one as overbearing. Read carefully, as there will be a pop quiz afterward to see if you can spot the ways that this brief paragraph achieves Goals #3 and #4:

Have you ever wondered what goes on underneath the snow while you are skiing on top of it? Although there are many books currently on the market for the US’s 1.3 million snowboarding enthusiasts, MOUNTAINS MY WAY is the first to be written by a geologist. Seen through the eyes of a professional rock hound with thirty years of experience in the field, the reader is introduced to mountains as more than an array of cold, hard rocks: mountains emerge as a historical document, teeming with life and redolent of all of the stages of human history.

How did you do?

Give yourself points if you noticed that the opening question grabbed the reader, showing immediately how this book might relate to the reader’s practical life; a rhetorical question for which the book itself provides an answer is a great way to establish a book’s appeal at the very beginning of the synopsis.

Also, pat yourself on the back fifty times if you zeroed in on the subtle way in which this paragraph dissed the competition — the implication here is that the authors all previous books on the subject were such boneheads that THEY thought mountains were just collections of rocks. No one is naming names here, but those authors know who they are.

Still more points if you noted the clever (if I do say so myself) use of demographic information. (Which I made up wholesale for example’s sake, so please don’t quote them elsewhere.) If you have statistics on your prospective market, this is the place to mention them — here, and in your query letter, and in your pitch. As in:

There are currently two million Americans diagnosed with agoraphobia, yet there are few self-help books out there for them — and only one that is actually written by an agoraphobic, someone who truly understands what it feels like to be shut in by fear.

Why is it so important to hammer home the statistics in every conceivable forum, you ask? Well, no matter how large the prospective market for your book is (unless it is an already such a well-covered market that anyone in the industry could reasonably be expected know about it, such as golf fans), you can’t ever, ever assume that an agent or editor will be aware of its size.

ALWAYS assume that they will underestimate it — and thus the market appeal of your book.

On that stirring statement, I think I shall end for the day. More on NF synopses follows tomorrow. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

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Synopsis-writing 101, part VI: la la la la TO ME

All right, I’ll admit it: this isn’t actually a picture of me at a former birthday. Unlike so many dark-eyed adult brunettes, I never was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed mite with pigtails. Also, like other children with autumn birthdays growing up in wine country, my family was usually harvesting a few tons of something on or about my birthday, so my cake tended to be consumed at school, as cupcakes. Oh, and I have always looked terrible in pastels; even as a very small child, I wouldn’t be caught dead in ‘em.

Otherwise, I assure you, this picture is an uncannily accurate reproduction of an annual event in my past.

Yesterday (known to literature-lovers everywhere as Pre-Anne Eve, natch), I gave a few genteel indications of how a 5-page synopsis — still, whatever some writing-advice websites claim, the most common requested length for a novel synopsis — might conceivably differ from a 1-page synopsis.

To be specific, I alleged that the extended synopsis should give a solid feel of the mood of the book and a basic plot summary. Rather than attempting to cram an in-depth summary of every twist and turn of the book into just a few pages, I suggested that a savvy writer might content herself with showing who the major characters are, what the major conflicts between them are, and illustrating how they played out by describing a few scenes with a wealth of sensual detail.

Or, to cast it in step-by-step terms:

(1) introduce the major characters and premise,

(2) demonstrate the primary conflict(s),

(3) show what’s at stake for the protagonist, and

(4) ideally, give some indication of the tone and voice of the book.

(5) show the primary story arc through BRIEF descriptions of the most important scenes. (For NF that isn’t story-based, present the planks of the overarching argument in logical order, along with some indication of how you intend to prove each point), and

(6) show how the plot’s primary conflict is resolved or what the result of adopting the book’s argument would be.

Let’s talk for a moment about #4, writing the synopsis in roughly the same voice and in the same tone as the novel it summarizes. As I’ve mentioned, a comic novel’s synopsis should contain a few chuckles; an ultra-serious one shouldn’t. A steamy romance’s synopsis should be at least a little bit sexy, a thriller’s a trifle scary, and so forth.

No need to get obsessed with making sure the tone is identical, of course — in the same ballpark will do. You just want to show that you are familiar with the type of writing expected in the type of novel you’ve written and can produce it consistently, even in a relatively dry document.

Why might an agent or editor want you to demonstrate the latter skill? Well, increasingly, authors are expected to promote their own books; it’s not at all uncommon these days for a publishing house to ask the author of a soon-to-be-released book to write a magazine or online article in the book’s voice, for promotional purposes, for instance.

Yes, I know; you want to concentrate on your writing, not its promotion. The muses love you for that impulse. But would you rather that I lied to you about the realities of being a working author?

I thought not.

What you should also not do — but, alas, all too many aspiring writers do — is attempt to replicate the voice of the book by lifting actual sentences from the novel itself. I know that you want to show off your best writing, but trust me, you’re going to want to make up some new verbiage here.

Why, you ask? Hint: people who go into the manuscript-reading business tend to have pretty good memories.

They recall what they’ve read.

See the problem, especially if — as not infrequently happens, especially with contest entries — the chapters containing the lifted verbiage and the synopsis are read back-to-back? A good 30% of contest synopses make this mistake, reproducing entire sentences or even entire paragraphs from the chapters included in the entry, invariably costing the entry originality points.

Do I see some raised hands from those of you who habitually recall what you’ve read? “But Anne,” I hear some of you pointing out, and who could blame you? “Didn’t you tell us just a couple of days ago that it was a grave error to assume that Millicent (the agency screener), Maury (her cousin who works as an editorial assistant), and/or Mehitabel (their aunt, the contest judge) will necessarily read both our synopses and the rest of our submissions?”

Excellent point, sharp-eyed readers. While it’s never safe to assume that EVERYONE who reads your synopsis will also read your opening chapter, it’s also not a very good idea to assume that NO ONE will. Shooting for a happy medium — including enough overlap that someone who read only one of them could follow the plot without indulging in phrase redundancy — tends to work best here.

Should you be tempted to repeat yourself, I implore you to ask this question with all possible speed: “Is there a vibrantly interesting detail that I could insert here instead?”

To over-writers (like, I must admit, myself), it may seem a trifle odd to suggest adding detail to a piece of writing as short as 5 pages, but actually, most synopses suffer from overgrowths of generalization and an insufficiency of specifics.

So once you have a solid draft, read it over and ask yourself: is what I have here honestly a reader-friendly telling of my story or a convincing presentation of my argument (don’t worry, NF writers: I’ll deal with your concerns at length next time), or is it merely a presentation of the premise of the book and a cursory overview of its major themes?

For most synopses, it is the latter.

Do I hear some questions over and above the wailing and gnashing of teeth out there? “But Anne,” a couple of voices crying from the wilderness, “How can I tell the difference between a necessary summary statement and a generalization?”

Again, excellent question. The short answer: it’s hard.

Here’s a useful trick: print up a hard copy of the synopsis, find yourself a highlighting pen, and mark every summary statement about character, every time you have wrapped up a scene or plot twist description with a sentence along the lines of and in the process, Sheila learns an important lesson about herself.

Go back through and take a careful look at these highlighted lines. Then ask yourself for each: would a briefly-described scene SHOW the conclusion stated there better than just TELLING the reader about it? Is there a telling character detail or an interesting plot nuance that might supplement these general statements, making them more interesting to read?

I heard that gasp of recognition out there — yes, campers, the all-pervasive directive to SHOW, DON’T TELL should be applied to synopses as well. Generally speaking, the fewer generalities you can use in a fiction synopsis, the better.

I’ll let those of you into brevity for brevity’s sake in on a little secret: given a choice, specifics are almost always more interesting to a reader than vague generalities. Think about it from an agency screener’s POV, someone who reads 800 synopses per week: wouldn’t general statements about lessons learned and hearts broken start to sound rather similar after awhile?

But a genuinely quirky detail in a particular synopsis — wouldn’t that stand out in your mind? And if that unique grabber appeared on page 1 of the synopsis, or even in the first couple of paragraphs, wouldn’t you pay more attention to the rest of the summary?

Uh-huh.

It’s very easy to forget in the heat of pulling together a synopsis that agency screeners are readers, too, not just decision-makers. They like to be entertained, so the more entertaining you can make your synopsis, the more likely Millicent is to be wowed by it. So are Maury and Mehitabel.

Isn’t it fortunate that you’re a writer with the skills to pull that off?

If your synopsis has the opposite problem and runs long, you should also sit down and read it over with a highlighter gripped tightly in your warm little hand. On your first pass through, mark any sentence that does not deal with the primary plot or argument of the book.

Then go back through and read the UNMARKED sentences in sequence, ignoring the highlighted ones. Ask yourself honestly: does the shorter version give an accurate impression of the book?

If so — take a deep breath here, please; some writers will find the rest of this paragraph upsetting — do the marked sentences really need to be there at all?

If your synopsis still runs too long, try this trick of the pros: minimize the amount of space you devote to the book’s premise and the actions that occur in Chapter 1; the vast majority of synopses spend to long on it. Here’s a startling statistic: in the average novel synopsis, over a quarter of the text deals with premise and character introduction.

Try trimming this down to just a few sentences and moving on to the rest of the plot.

If this seems to you like a dangerous strategy to embrace in what is, after all, a marketing document, think about it: if the agent or editor asked to see Chapter 1 or the first 50 pages, and if you place the chapter BEFORE the synopsis in your submission packet, the reader will already be familiar with both the initial premise AND the basic characters AND what occurs at the beginning in the book.

So why be repetitious?

Let me show you how this might play out in practice. Let’s continue this series’ tradition of pretending that you are Jane Austen, pitching SENSE AND SENSIBILITY to an agent at a conference. (Which I suspect would be a pretty tough sell in the current market, actually.)

Let’s further assume that you gave a solid, professional pitch, and the agent is charmed by the story. (Because, no doubt, you were very clever indeed, and did enough solid research before you signed up for your agent appointment to have a pretty fair certainty that this particular agent is habitually charmed by this sort of story.) The agent asks to see a synopsis and the first 50 pages.

See? Advance research really does pay off.

Naturally, you dance home in a terrible rush to get those pages in the mail. As luck would have it, you already have a partially-written synopsis on your computer. In it, the first 50 pages’ worth of action look something like this:

Now, all of this does in fact occur in the first 50 pages of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, at least in my well-worn little paperback addition. However, all of the plot shown above would be in the materials the agent requested, right? Do you really need to spend 2 of your allotted 5 pages on this small a section of the plot, even if it is the set-up for what happens later on?

Of course not. Being a wise Aunt Jane, you would streamline this portion of your submission synopsis so it looked a bit more like this:

And then go on with the rest of the story, of course.

See what space-saving wonders may be wrought by cutting down on the premise-establishing facts? The second synopsis is less than half the length of the first, yet still shows enough detail to show the agent how the submitted 50 pp. feeds into the rest of the book. Well done, Jane!

While all of you novelists are hard at work, trying to perform a similar miracle upon your synopses, next time, I shall be tackling the specialized problems of the nonfiction synopsis. Yes, that’s right: we’re going to have our cake and eat it, too.

Oh, you didn’t honestly believe you’d make it through my birthday without being subjected to another bad cake pun, did you? Keep up the good work!

Posted on - 3 Comments on Synopsis-writing 101, part IV: the technicalities, or, what, you think I’m MADE of mushrooms?

Synopsis-writing 101, part IV: the technicalities, or, what, you think I’m MADE of mushrooms?

Okay, so the joke in the title would have been funnier if I had in fact been posting on consecutive days, as I had originally planned. But as the illustrious comic Stephen Wright is fond of pointing out — you can’t have everything; where would you put it?

For the last couple of posts, I’ve been showing you examples of good and not-so-good 1-page synopses, so we could talk about (read: so I could conduct a monologue about) the overarching strategies that rendered them more or less effective. Since I haven’t exactly been overwhelmed with howls of protest on the subject — really? The prospect of constructing a 1-page synopsis for a 400-page novel of a complexity that would make Tolstoy weep annoys nobody? — I’m going to assume that we’re all pretty comfortable with the strategic part.

Before I move on to the ins and outs of writing the longer synopsis, I feel I should respond to some of the whimpers of confusion from the more structurally-minded of my readers. “But Anne,” I have heard some of you pointing out, “you’ve shown us a couple of visual examples of properly-formatted synopses — a sort of SYNOPSES ILLUSTRATED, if you will. Any chance that you might go over the various rather odd-looking formatting choices you’ve used in them before, say, we need to send out our own?”

Oh, certainly. Let’s take another example at the good 1-page synopsis for PRIDE AND PREJUDICE:

For veterans of any of my extended forays into the joys and terrors of standard format for manuscripts, nothing here should be too surprising. By and large, standard format for a synopsis is the same as for a page of manuscript: double-spaced, 1-inch margins all around, indented paragraphs, Times, Times New Roman, or Courier, the works. (If you’re unfamiliar with the rules of standard format, you will find them conveniently summarized in the HOW TO FORMAT A MANUSCRIPT and STANDARD FORMAT ILLUSTRATED categories on the list at right.

Please notice that, as with the first page of a manuscript, the author’s contact information does not appear on the first page of the synopsis. Unlike the first page of a manuscript, however, the title of the book should appear on the first page of a synopsis, along with the information that it IS a synopsis.

Why the latter? Because the synopsis and the manuscript it accompanies — to say nothing of the synopsis and query that often arrive in the same envelope — often become separated during the reading and evaluation process. It never pays to assume, then, that the reader of one will automatically know things about the other.

The title, for instance.

A second (or third, or fifth; extrapolate) page should also look very similar to any other page of standard-formatted manuscript, with one vital exception: the slug line for a synopsis should, as I mentioned in the previous sentence, SAY that the page it decorates is from a synopsis, not a manuscript, in addition to displaying the author’s last name, the title of the book, and the page number. (If you don’t know what a slug line is, why anyone would use it, or, indeed, why anyone would name something on a pretty page of text after a slimy creature, please see the SLUG LINE category on the list at right.)

Why include a slug line here? Because pages do occasionally go astray, and because synopses, like manuscripts, should never be bound in any way — unless a contest’s rules specifically state otherwise, of course.

Do I hear some nervous shifting in chairs out there? “But Anne,” I hear some of you cry out, “aren’t you ignoring the elephant in the room — or, in this case, on the page? You seem to have given some of the character names in all capital letters. Why?”

I’m glad you asked. It’s not absolutely necessary, technically speaking, but most professional fiction synopses CAPITALIZE THE ENTIRE NAME of each major character the first time it appears. Not every time, mind you; just the first.

Why only the first? To alert a skimming agent or editor to the fact that — wait for it — a new character has just walked into the story.

Because Millicent might, you know, miss ’em otherwise.

It is also considered pretty darned nifty (and word-count thrifty) to include the character’s age in parentheses immediately after the first time the name appears, resulting in synopses that look something like this:

ST. THERESA OF AVILA (26) has a problem. Ever since she started dating multi-millionaire GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER (82), all of her friends have unaccountably decided that she is mercenary and hates Native Americans. Apart from JEANNE D’ARC (30), her wacky landlady-cum-bowling-partner, who uses every opportunity to pump Theresa for man-landing tips, none of the residents of Theresa’s swanky Upper East Side co-op are even speaking to her — at least until they start desperately vying for invitations to her exclusive wedding extravaganza, a lavish event to be held onstage at the Oscars, with THE REVEREND DOCTOR OWEN WILSON (44 if he’s a day, I would guess; Author! Author! hopes he feels better soon) officiating. How will Theresa find a maid of honor — and if she does, what will her jealous old boyfriend GOD (∞) do?

Should any of you out there think you’re up to rounding out the plot above into some measure of coherence and submitting it, please, be my guest. Really. I’d love to read it.

For the rest of you, please note what I have done here: in preparing a synopsis for a comedy, I have produced a — wait for it! — humorous treatment of the material.

And if I were creating a synopsis for a steamy romance novel with the same premise (although I tremble to think what a sex romp with that particular cast of characters would entail), you can bet your last wooden nickel [that] I would take some writerly steps to make my reader’s mouth go dry and his breath become short while perusing it.

Would I do this because I’m wacky? No, because — those of you who have been following this series, chant it with me now — the synopsis, like the first 50 pages, is a writing sample.

Oh, had I mentioned that before? Well, it cannot be said too often, in my opinion. The sensible writer’s primary goal in producing it is to demonstrate not only that it is a good (or at least marketable) story, an attention-grabbing yarn peopled with fascinating characters, but that the writer is a terrific storyteller.

Don’t worry — in the days to come, I shall be talking about ways in which you can tweak your synopsis in order to convey that lovely impression.

For the nonce, let’s take a quick field trip back to yesterday’s examples of a not-so-hot 1-page synopsis. Do you notice any formatting problems here?

If you immediately leapt to your feet, screaming, “It doesn’t have a slug line! It doesn’t have a slug line!” give yourself a gold star for the day. Further points if you bellowed that it doesn’t say anywhere on the page that it is a synopsis.

Extra credit if you noticed that the pages are not numbered — a major no-no in any submission, ever, yet one of the more common ones. And yes, you should number it, even for a one-page synopsis — and no, you should not number it consecutively with the manuscript, unless a contest rule’s SPECIFICALLY tell you to do so. The first page of a synopsis is always page 1.

Top yourself with a halo if you also discovered that Aunt Jane made the rookie mistake of adding her name to the synopsis anywhere but in the slug line. For book-length works, the first page of text — regardless of whether it is in the manuscript, the synopsis, or any other requested materials — is not a title page.

Don’t treat it as if it were one; it looks unprofessional to the pros.

Everyone happy with his or her score on that quiz? Let’s take on the other negative example:

Where do we even begin? Millicent the screener would almost certainly not even read this one — in fact, she might burst into laughter from several paces away.

Let’s go over why. It stars too far down on the page, for one thing, falling into the same title-page error as the previous example. It’s the over-the-top typeface, though, and the fact that the page uses more than one of them, that would set Millicent giggling and showing it to her coworkers.

Oh, and it doesn’t contain a slug line or numbering. But I doubt Millicent would even notice that over her guffaws.

It makes one other error for a fiction synopsis, a subtler one — any guesses what?

This one may surprise some of you: it mentions the title of the book IN the text of the synopsis. Why is this a problem? Well, it’s considered stylistically weak, a sign that the synopsis is talking ABOUT the book instead of getting the reader involved in the story. Or, to put it another way, and a bit more bluntly: a fiction synopsis is supposed to tell the story of the book; one that pulls the reader out of the story by talking about it at a distance tends not to do that well.

And anyway, the title is already both at the top of the page (and SHOULD be in the slug line): why, Millicent wonders impatiently, cradling her too-hot latte until it cools — she’s learning, she’s learning — would the writer WANT to waste the space and her time by repeating the information?

“Wait just a minute, Anne,” I hear some of my former questioners call from the rear of the auditorium. “You’re talking about the cosmetic aspects of the synopsis as though it were going to be judged as pitilessly as the manuscript I submit. Surely, that’s not the case? The synopsis is just a technical requirement, right?”

Um, no — as I said, it’s considered a WRITING SAMPLE. So yes, it does tend to be judged — and dismissed — just as readily as problematic text anywhere else in the submission packet.

Sorry to be the one to break that to you. But isn’t it better that you hear it from me than surmise it from a form-letter rejection? Or, as is more often the case, NOT surmise if from a form-letter rejection and keep submitting problematic synopses?

Something worth mulling over, I think.

Next time, we’ll leave technicalities behind and delve into the wonderful world of storytelling on the fly. Keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on Tying up the loose ends of a contest entry: one last foray into the practical, the sublime, and the frivolous

Tying up the loose ends of a contest entry: one last foray into the practical, the sublime, and the frivolous

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For those of you tuning into this series late, for the last — oh, how long has it been, a few weeks? A few months? A decade or two? — I’ve been going over the ins and outs of literary contest entries. This is, thank goodness, the last post in this series for a good long time, although naturally, I welcome your questions on the subject whenever they should happen to occur to you.

The important thing for our purposes today, however, is that this is the last PLANNED post on entries aimed at this year’s contest season. I’ve been promising a nice, long series on manuscript megaproblems for quite some time now, and I’m eager to leap right into it.

Or, rather, to collapse into a quivering little heap of advice-giving exhaustion for a few days, THEN leap right into it.

To our muttons, then. I have one more question for the pre-entry manuscript scan (and since a couple of people have complained that the darling tiger animation was distracting, I’ll omit it this time):

(17) Reading this over again, is this a book to which I would award a prize? Does it read like finished work, or like a book that might be great with further polishing?

It’s a very, very common writer’s prejudice that everything that springs from a truly talented writer’s keyboard should be pure poetry. Even first drafts. However, there are in fact quantities of practical storytelling skills that most of us poor mortals learn by trial and error.

Although contests tend to concentrate on as-yet unrecognized writing talent, they are simply not set up, in most cases, to reward the writer who is clearly gifted, but has not yet mastered the rudiments of professional presentation.

And this is very sad, I think, because one of the things that becomes most apparent about writing after a judge has read a couple of hundred entries is that the difference between the entries submitted by writers with innate talent and writers without is vast. An experienced eye — of the kind belonging to a veteran contest judge, agent, or editor — can rather easily discern the work of what used to be called “a writer of promise.”

In the past, writers of promise were treated quite a bit more gently than they are today. They were taken under editorial wings and cherished through their early efforts. Even when they were rejected, they were often sent notes encouraging them to submit future works. (Occasionally, a promising writer will still get this type of response to a query, but the sheer volume of mail at agencies has rendered it rare.)

Now, unfortunately, writers of promise, like everybody else, tend to have their work rejected without explanation, so it’s extremely difficult to tell — even after months or years of patient querying — where one’s own work falls on the talent spectrum.

To put it as kindly as possible, until you have weeded out all of the non-stylistic red lights from your contest entries, you truly cannot gain a realistic feel for whether you need to work more on your writing or not.

If you are indeed a writer of promise — and I sincerely hope you are — the best thing you can possibly do for your career is to learn to conform your work to professional standards of presentation. This is one of the best reasons to enter contests that give entrants feedback, just as is one of the best reasons to take writing classes and join a writing group: it gives you outside perspective on whether you are hitting the professional bar or not.

Oh, and it helps to be lucky, too.

Okay, let’s assume for the sake of rounding out this darned series that your answer to Question #17 was a resounding, “By all I hold holy, YES!” Let’s further assume, for my peace of mind, that you have made all of the changes that Questions 1-16 suggested to you and run it past a trusted first reader or two.

If you haven’t yet done all three, please don’t tell me: I’ll never get to sleep tonight otherwise. Help me preserve my illusions.

So what else should you do BEFORE you seal all of that greatness into an envelope and mail it off in the hopes of future glory? Well, first, you should read the ENTIRETY of your entry IN HARD COPY, ALOUD, before you send it anywhere at all.

Oh, come on: you didn’t see that one coming?

Yes, you should proof it again, especially if you made even the most minor textual alteration in your last read-through. As virtually anyone in the industry can tell you, even very, very experienced authors often inadvertently miss manuscript gaffes — and, as regular readers of this blog are already aware, my professional editor’s hat (oh, it’s fetching, I assure you) gets all in a twist at the notion of any writer’s proofreading solely on a computer screen.

Since I love you people, I shall spare you a repetition of all the excellent reasons you should NOT do this. Just humor me, okay?

If you decide to break my heart and perform the final read-through on your computer — as long experience tells me that some of you will — at least avoiding using your word processor’s spell- and grammar-checker when you are exhausted. As you might be, to pick a random example, in the dead of night or a few hours before that contest entry needs to be postmarked.

Why, you ask? It’s just too easy to hit the CHANGE button when your eyes get blurry — a faulty spell- and grammar-checker choice can obviate hours and hours of your earlier hard work.

Don’t even get me started again on the chronic inadequacies of most word processing programs’ grammar checkers! Mine disapproves of gerunds, apparently on general principle, strips accent marks off French words, and regularly advises me to use the wrong form of THERE. (If anybody working at Microsoft does not know the ABSOLUTELY IMMUTABLE rules governing when to use THERE, THEIR, AND THEY’RE, I beg of you: drop me a comment, send me a letter, or just start shouting loudly in my general direction, and I shall make everything clear.)

Like a bad therapist, a poor grammar checker cannot be sufficiently disregarded, but even in the unlikely event that your grammar checker was put together by someone remotely familiar with the English language as she is spoke, you should NEVER rely solely upon what it tells you to do.

If you’re in doubt, look it up.

There is an especially good reason to read the synopsis out loud: to make sure it stands alone as a story. Since part of the point of the synopsis is to demonstrate what a good storyteller you are, flow is obviously important.

If you have even the tiniest reservations about whether you have achieved this goal, read your synopsis out loud to someone unfamiliar with your project — and then ask your listener to tell the basis story back to you. If there are holes in your account, this method will make them leap out at you.

Insofar as a hole can leap.

Once you have perfected your entry, print it on nice paper. This may seem silly, but it sometimes does make a difference, believe it or not.

By nice paper, I’m not talking about hot pink sheets or pages that you have hand-calligraphed with gold leaf and Celtic designs. Either of those would get your entry disqualified on sight in most contests.

No, I mean high-quality white paper, the kind of stuff you might print your resume on if you REALLY wanted the job. Back in my contest-winning days, I favored bright white 24-lb. cotton. Yes, it’s a little more expensive than ordinary printer paper; live a little. If this seems extravagant to you, ask yourself: have I ever walked into an interview wanting the job as much as I want to have my book published?

If your finances genuinely prohibit that small splurge, at least make sure that you don’t use less than 20-lb — and would this be a good time to point out that virtually every photocopier on the planet is stocked at this very moment with paper that’s quite a bit flimsier than this?

It tears easily. It wrinkles as it travels through the mail. It’s dingy-looking.

Nice paper is a pleasure to hold, but frankly, there’s more to this strategy than giving your judges visceral pleasure. The vast majority of contest entries are printed on very low-quality paper — and with printer cartridges that had apparently seen better days around the end of the Clinton administration. When multiple copies are required for submission, they generally show up on the flimsy paper so often found in copy shop photocopiers.

Spring for something nicer, and your entry will automatically come across as more professional to the judges.

It may not be fair, but it’s true, so it’s very worth your while to invest a few extra bucks in a decent ream. 20-pound paper or heavier will not wrinkle in transit unless the envelope is actually folded, and bright white paper gives the impression of being crisper.

Avoid anything in the cream range — this is the time for brilliant white.

For what it’s worth, I have observed over time that agents and editors, too, seem to treat manuscripts printed in Times New Roman on bright, heavy white paper with more respect than other manuscripts. The only drawback — and it was a significant one, I don’t deny it — was that when I printed up a draft of my memoir for my editor on lovely cotton 24-pound paper, it came back to me smelling like an ashtray. Turns out cotton paper soaks up ambient smoke like a sponge. My cats shied away from my desk for weeks afterward.

I’ve told this story a couple of time before, so for the sake of those of you who have, ahem, already had the opportunity to laugh at the joke, I went back and sniffed the manuscript box again. (Ah, the things that I do to amuse my readers!) And you know what? More than 2 1/2 years later, the darned thing STILL smells like a smokers’ lounge.

Now THAT’s good paper.

One last thing: before you seal the envelope, GO BACK AND REREAD THE CONTEST RULES. Have you met each and every requirement? Have you included every needed element? Are your margins precisely what the contest specified?

It may seem a bit obsessive to re-check this often, but as I have been telling you all throughout this series, judges are looking for reasons to knock entries out of finalist consideration. It is absolutely imperative, then, that you follow every rule to the letter.

And if that isn’t enough to convince you to check again, perhaps this little statistic will: in the average contest, a good 5% of entries show up with something really basic missing, like the check or a second title page.

Best of luck with your entries, this contest season and forevermore. As always, keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on The contest entry checklist concludes: ready, steady, GO!

The contest entry checklist concludes: ready, steady, GO!

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Happy International Women’s Day, everybody! As Marianne (a.k.a. Liberty) shows us above, what’s a little wardrobe malfunction when there are goals to be achieved?

Speaking of malfunctions, for the past few days, I have talking about a series subtle (and not-so-subtle) contest entry snafus that a savvy entrant might want to avoid. To this end, I have asked the entry-happy among you to print out a hard copy of that soon-to-be-sent-out work, give it a thorough read — and subject it to a fairly thorough cross-examination.

Actually, those of you who are not planning to enter a contest anytime soon might want to subject the first chapters of your submissions to this friendly little grilling as well. As I have been mentioning throughout this series, judges often share reading preferences and pet peeves with agents, editors, and their screeners.

In other words, subjecting your opening pages to this set of questions might make Millicent like them more.

Everybody comfy? Okay, let’s resume.

coolclips_wb024789.gif(10) In the chapter itself, is it apparent where this story is going? Is it apparent that it IS going somewhere?

Were the groans I just heard echoing through the ether from those of you who have chosen the contest route over the submission route because agents are so darned well, market-oriented? If so, I sympathize: an aspiring writer does not have to attend many literary conferences to become well and truly sick of hearing that an entry should begin the action from the first line of page one.

Contest judges tend to be a bit more tolerant than the average agency screener, but then, they are substantially more likely to read pages and pages, rather than paragraphs and — well, no, Millicent often doesn’t make it all the way through even the first paragraph of a submission — before making up her mind about the quality of the writing.

However, even in literary fiction competitions, it’s rare to see a fiction entry that doesn’t establish an interesting character in an interesting situation on page one win or place, any more than a nonfiction entry that doesn’t start its argument until page four tends to walk off with top honors.

coolclips_wb024789.gif(11) Is the best opening line (or paragraph) for my work actually opening the text of my entry — or is it buried around page 4?

This question almost always surprises aspiring writers, but in many fiction and nonfiction contest entries (and submissions, if I’m going to tell the truth here), there is a perfectly wonderful opening line or image hidden somewhere in the middle of the first chapter. One way to catch it is by reading the text aloud.

If you find that this is the case with your entry, you might want to take a critical look at the paragraphs/pages/prologue/chapters that currently come before that stellar opening line, image, or scene. Does the early part absolutely need to be there?

That last question made half of you clutch your chests, anticipating an imminent heart attack didn’t it? In most cases, it’s not as radical a surgery as it sounds.

Often, the earlier bits are not strictly necessary to the narrative except as explanatory prologue. Very, very, VERY frequently, opening exposition can go. Particularly when it takes the form of backstory or characters telling one another what they already know in order to bring the reader up to speed — many, if not most, fiction entries overload the first few pages, rather than simply opening the story at an exciting point and filling in background later.

Gradually.

Also, as I mentioned yesterday, there is absolutely no good reason that the version of your chapter that you enter in a contest has to be identical to what you would submit to an agent or editor. Hey, here’s an interesting notion: why not enter a truncated version that begins at that great opening line in a contest and send a non-truncated version to an agent who has requested it, to see which flies better?

coolclips_wb024789.gif(12) Does my synopsis present actual scenes from the book in glowing detail, or does it merely summarize the plot?

Okay, out comes the broken record again: the synopsis, like everything else in your contest entry, is a writing sample, every bit as much. Make sure it demonstrates to the judges that you can WRITE — and that you are professional enough to approach the synopsis as a professional necessity, not a tiresome whim instituted by the contest organizers to satisfy some sick, sadistic whim of their own.

Yes, Virginia, even in those instances where length restrictions make it quite apparent that there is serious behind-the-scenes sadism at work.

Don’t worry about depicting every twist and turn of the plot — just strive to give a solid feel of the mood of the book and a basic plot summary. Show where the major conflicts lie, introduce the main characters, interspersed with a few scenes described with a wealth of sensual detail, to make it more readable.

Oh, and try not to replicate entire phrases, sentences, or — sacre bleu! — entire paragraphs from the entered chapter in the synopsis or vice versa. Entries exhibit this annoying trait all the time, and believe me, judges both notice it and find it kind of insulting that an entrant would think that they WOULDN’T notice it. (Millicent usually shares this response, incidentally.)

Listen: the average contest entry, even in a book-length category, is under 30 pages. You’re a talented enough writer not to repeat yourself in that short an excerpt, aren’t you?

coolclips_wb024789.gif(13) Does the chapter I’m submitting in the packet fulfill the promise of the synopsis? Does the synopsis seem to promise as interesting and well-written a book as the chapter implies?

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times throughout this series, it’s not at all uncommon for the synopsis and chapter tucked into an entry packet to read as though they were written by different people. Ideally, the voice should be similar in both — and not, as is so often the case, a genre-appropriate chapter nestling next to a peevish, why-on-earth-do-I-have-to-write-this-at-all summary.

It’s also not unusual for a synopsis not to make it clear where the submitted chapter(s) will fit into the finished book, especially an entry where the excerpt is not derived from the opening. It’s never, ever a good idea to confuse your reader, especially if that reader happens to have the ability to award your manuscript a prize.

Remember, it’s not the reader’s responsibility to figure out what’s going on in a manuscript, beyond following the plot and appreciating the twists and turns: it’s the writer’s responsibility to make things clear.

coolclips_wb024789.gif(14) Does this entry read like an excerpt from a great example of its book category?

Okay, I’ll admit it: as a professional reader, I’m perpetually astonished at how few aspiring writers seem to look at their work critically and ask this question. All too often, when I bring it up, the response is a muttered (or even shouted) diatribe about how demeaning it is to think of art in marketing terms.

Yet it’s a perfectly reasonable question to put to any writer who hopes one day to sell his work: like it or not, very few agencies or publishing houses are non-profit institutions. If they’re going to take a chance on a new writer, they will need to figure out how to package her work in order to make it appeal to booksellers and their customers.

Like the industry, contest judges tend to think in book categories, not merely in generalities as broad as fiction, nonfiction, good, bad, marketable, appealing to only a niche market, and unmarketable. So it’s a GOOD thing when a judge starts thinking a paragraph or two into your entry, “Wow, this is one of the best (fill in genre or book category here) I’ve ever seen.”

In fact, at least two judges will pretty much have to produce that particular sentiment for your entry to proceed to the finalist round of any literary contest. Sometimes more.

So if YOU can’t look at your entry and your favorite example of a book in your chosen category and say, “Okay, these two have similar species markings,” you might want to reconsider whether you’ve selected the right category for it. Which brings me to:

coolclips_wb024789.gif(15) Does this entry fit the category in which I am entering it?

This is a slightly different question from the last one, because as I mentioned earlier in this series, contests do not always categorize writing — particularly fiction — in the same way that the publishing industry does. Just as they will frequently lump apparently unrelated book categories into megacategories (as, for instance, the Contest-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named’s rather perplexing practice of combining mainstream and literary fiction into a single designation), they will often define types of books differently from the pros.

Such ambiguities are not, alas, always apparent from a casual reading of the contest’s promotional materials. Double-, triple-, and quadruple-check the rules, not forgetting to scan contest’s ENTIRE website and entry form for semi-hidden expectations.

If you have the most miniscule doubt about whether you are entering the correct category, have someone you trust (preferably another writer, or at least a good reader with a sharp eye for detail) read over both the contest categories and your entire entry.

Yes, even if you’re reading this a few days before the deadline. Categorization is a crucial decision.

coolclips_wb024789.gif(16) Reading over this again, does this sound like my writing? Does it read like my BEST writing?

I know, I know: this last set of questions sounds like an appeal to your writerly vanity, but honestly, it isn’t. As I believe I have mentioned 2300 times within the last few weeks, original voices and premises tend to win good literary contests far more often than even excellent exercises in what we’ve all seen before.

Which is, of course, as it should be.

However, it can be genuinely difficult for a writer to see the difference in her own work, particularly if she happens to be writing in the same book category as her favorite author. Unconscious voice imitation is almost inevitable while one is developing a voice of one’s own.

You should save your blushes here, because virtually every author in the world has done this at one time or another, consciously or unconsciously. It’s only natural to think of our favorite books as the world’s best exemplars of great writing, and for what resembles them in our own work therefore to be better than what doesn’t.

But let’s put writerly ego in proper perspective here: you want to win a literary contest because of what is unique about your work, don’t you, rather than for a dutiful resemblance to a successful author’s best work?

Of course you do — just as you want to be signed by an agent who loves your writing for what is like no one else’s, and sell your book to an editor who doesn’t want to cut and paste until your book reads like the latest bestseller. So it honestly is in your best interests to weed out verbiage that doesn’t sound like YOU.

Think about that a little before you send off your entry — it may seem a tad counter-intuitive, especially to those of you who have taken many classes or attended many writers’ conferences, where one is so often TOLD to ape the latest bestseller. The folks who spout that advice are almost invariably talking about writing a SIMILAR book — which, in their minds, means one that could easily be marketed to the same vast audience, not a carbon copy of the original.

This is a business where small semantic distinctions can make a tremendous difference, my friends. Ponder the paradoxes — and keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on Telling your life story to the judge, part II

Telling your life story to the judge, part II

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Before I launch into today’s topic, campers, I have a bit of a modification to yesterday’s post. My interview on Dickien.fr is indeed located in the links I listed — here for English and here for French — but in order to leave a comment, readers will need to go to the site’s homepage and click on Commentaires. I know from delightful experience that many of you are inveterate web commenters.

Far be it from me to curtail your freedom of expression. That’s not my style. And frankly, it would be nice for the interviewer to hear that English-speaking readers are interested in my book.

Let’s get back to work.

After yesterday’s post on the advisability of quadruple-checking your memoir entries to make super-sure that they contain NO usages of your first or last name, I believe I heard some murmurs of dissent out there. “Wait just a second,” the voice in the ether I choose to attribute to my readers kept saying, “isn’t this tactic bordering on paranoid overkill? How is the judge ever going to know if I use my name? In a blind-judged contest, the judges never see the author’s name attached to the manuscript, and thus could not know that the name mentioned IS the author’s.”

Well, that’s a good point, disembodied voice. But you still shouldn’t do it for several reasons, all of which boil down to this: are you sure enough about that to risk your entry’s getting disqualified?

First, as I mentioned yesterday, such is the seriousness with which blind judging is taken that if a judge even SUSPECTS that an entry contains the author’s name, that entry may be toast. It doesn’t matter if the judge can GUESS who the author is — since the rules don’t call for complete negation of the memoirist’s identity, all they can catch you on is the use of your name. They watch for it like the proverbial hawks.

But, to be fair, it does not require much of a cognitive leap to conclude that the Sheila Mae who is narrating a memoir excerpt is, in fact, the same Sheila Mae who wrote it.

Second, it is not unheard-of for contests to employ (or, more commonly, impress volunteers into servitude as) initial screeners, whose SOLE function is to check the entries for rule violations before the entries are distributed to the judges who will rate them on more sophisticated bases.

These screeners sometimes do have your entire entry packet – and thus your name, and will be able to tell immediately if you have violated the don’t-use-your-name rule. So there.

Third — and while this one is the simplest, it is also the way self-namers are most often caught == even in a contest that does not pass entries under the watchful eyes of screeners, someone is going to have to slit open that envelope, if only to extract the check. Someone is going to have to note your name in the contest log, assign your entry the identification number that will allow it to be judged blindly, and pass your entry along to the proper section’s judges.

It’s a boring job. So tell me: how likely do you think it is that such a mail-sorter would glance at the first page of the entry, to render the process a trifle less tedious?

And how many memoir first pages have you ever seen that DIDN’T include SOME mention of the memoir subject’s name? I rest my case.

Except to say: I know that my harping on this is going to throw the more conscientious memoirists out there into a frenzy of proofreading. Actually, though, the entry where the writer has obviously made a determined effort to rid the document of his own name but missed a single instasnce is not usually the one that ends up getting disqualified. Oh, it will certainly get marked down, but probably not thrown into the trash.

So what kinds of violations of this rule DO tend to get the entry disqualified on sight? The one where the entrant clearly didn’t bother to read the rules, but simply printed up the already-existing first chapter and submitted it.

You’d be astonished at how common that is — and how obvious it is to the judges. At least, I hope you would be.

There is, as I mentioned yesterday, one absolutely foolproof, not very time-consuming means of avoiding the problem altogether, of course: use a pseudonym within the context of the entry, adding a note on your title page, STATING that you have changed the names in order to adhere to the rules of the contest.

“For the purposes of this entry,” you could write, “I have changed my family name to Parrothead.”

Yes, it’s kind of silly, but that way, you make it pellucidly clear that you’re not referring to yourself. And, after all, how is the judge to know whether you have substituted the names or not, if you do not say so?

Other good tip for memoirists entering their work in contests is to do a bit of market research prior to entry. (Actually, this is a good idea for anyone writing a book, and certainly for everyone who has to write a synopsis for a contest.) Are there memoirs currently on the market — and in case you were not aware of it, for the industry to consider a published book part of the market, a book either has to have been released within the last five years or have been a bestseller within the last ten — similar to yours?

To put it another way, is your memoir in fact absolutely unique, or does it fit into a well-defined market niche? If it’s the latter, is there a way that you can make its individual appeal to that particular segment of the market clearer in the pages you are submitting?

It is a question well worth asking before entering a memoir into a contest – or indeed, before trying to market it at all.

All of us tend to think of our own experiences as unique, which of course they are; every point of view is to a very great extent original. However, every memoir is about something in addition to the personality of the person writing it, right?

The frequency with which books on those other subjects turn up on the shelves of Barnes & Noble is definitely a matter of fashion; there are fads in memoir-writing, just as in any other kind of publishing, and you can bet your boots that if a particular subject matter is hot this year, the nonfiction rolls of every contest in the country will receive quantities of that type of memoir.

Remember, for instance, after Lance Armstrong’s book came out, and suddenly there were a zillion upbeat I-survived-a-lethal-illness memoirs?

Well, so do contest judges: they read thousands of them. Which meant, in practical terms, that it was quite a bit harder to wow a judge with an illness memoir in that period than at any other time in human history.

Also, certain life experiences tend to recur across a population with predictable regularity, and if you are writing about a well-trodden topic, it is IMPERATIVE that you make it clear in your contest entry PRECISELY how your book is different from the others currently on the market.

Because – and I tremble to tell you this, but it’s true – if you are writing on certain over-mined topics, even the most heart-felt prose can start those cliché warning bells pealing in the average judge’s brainpan.

This is not to say that your personal take is not worth telling – if you’re a good writer with a truly individual take on the world around you, it undoubtedly is. Remember, though, that judges tend to be reading for marketability, and if they perceive that you are writing in an already glutted submarket, your entry may not do as well as an entry on a less well-trodden topic.

Before you bemoan this, recall that not only do agents, editors, and contest judges get tired of seeing the same types of books over and over again; so do readers. Think about how many people suddenly started writing accounts of growing up poor immediately after ANGELA’S ASHES hit the big time, or about over-medicated, over-sexed teenagerhoods in the wake of PROZAC NATION, and plan accordingly.

Sheer repetition can wear down even the most conscientious judge after a while; remember, most contest judges do not judge a single contest only, but return year after year. Certain topics are perennial contest entry favorites.

The result? “Oh, God,” the judge whimpers, instinctively backing away from the papers in front of her, “not another well-written, emotionally rich story about a Baby Boomer daughter nursing her mother through her final illness, and in the process learning to heal the long-standing rift between them!”

Not that any of these judges have anything against women who care for their aging parents; nor is anyone is rooting for those life-long disagreements NOT to be mended. But honestly, after fifteen or twenty of these in a single year’s crop of entries — that’s not an exaggeration, incidentally — a judge does start to long for a nice entry about, say, someone who was mauled by a tiger. Or hit by lightning.

Or at least not following in the wheeltracks of Lance Armstrong.

Conditioned reflex, I’m afraid. Pavlov’s dogs salivated at the sound of a bell, and contest judges wince at the sight of the third similar entry of the day. That’s just the way they’re built.

So if you happen to be any of the following, you might want to give some serious thought to how your book ISN’T like the others: a former drug addict/alcoholic/workaholic rediscovering the beauty of day-to-day life; a former hippie/swinger/disco queen recounting his or her glory days; your magnificent weight loss or gain and how that journey made you a better person; a teacher from a white, upper-middle-class background who went to teach in the inner city; a new father confessing that he was not prepared for the practicalities of caring for children; a new mother discovering that motherhood is significantly harder than it is cracked up to be; anyone who worked at a dot com that went bust.

And any reworking of the concepts of THE DA VINCI CODE or the bestsellers of last year.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t bother to enter memoirs that encroach upon these well-trodden areas. You should, if that is the story you burn to tell.

But alert the judge to the ways your book is different and better as soon as possible: on page one of the entry, if you can, and within the first few paragraphs of the synopsis. And don’t just SAY that your book is unique: SHOW it.

For instance, if your memoir details your spiritual awakening, your discovery that the giant corporation for which you worked is corrupt — because, you know, that’s always a surprise — you might want to invest some time in market research to figure out how to make your book come across as fresh and exciting to jaded professional readers.

How? Well, if you check a well-stocked bookstore, or even run your subject matter through an Amazon search, you will get a pretty firm idea of how many other accounts there are that resemble your own, at least superficially.

Some of you are feeling a trifle grumpy at this prospect, aren’t you? I can’t say as I blame you, really. Try to
think of this research as practice for writing that inevitable book proposal.

(All of you memoirists are aware that memoirs are seldom sold on the entire book, right? I keep running into memoir-writers to whom this is news, so I will go ahead and say it: it is not necessary to have a completed memoir before selling it to a publishing house. As with other NF books, the average memoir book proposal contains only a chapter or two — and a WHOLE lot of marketing material.)

One of the best ways to make your work stand out from the crowd is to use the synopsis to show how YOUR memoir is QUITE different than the other memoirs on the subject — and knowing the existing memoir market will be most helpful in figuring out what aspects to stress. What made your experience special, unique, unforgettable from the point of view of a third party? Why couldn’t anyone else on earth have written it, and why will readers want to buy it?

If a reasonably intelligent judge could make it through your memoir entry without being able to answer these questions, you should probably consider a spot of revision before you mail off the entry.

“But wait!” I hear some of you cry. “My book may be on a common topic, but my literary voice is unique! But I can hardly say in my synopsis, this book is different from others on the market because it is better-written, without sounding like a jerk, can I?”

Well, no, but unfortunately, if you are writing about a common experience, you also probably cannot get away with assuming that the writing alone will differentiate it from the other submissions. Again, if there’s recently been a bestseller along similar lines as yours, yours will almost certainly not be the only entry that resembles it.

To put it another way, you can’t be certain that the finding a sense of wholeness after the death of a loved one memoir that the judge read immediately before yours was not written by Emily Brontë and Gustave Flaubert’s oddly gifted spiritual love child, can you?

Sad but true, if you are writing on a common topic, the bar automatically goes higher, alas, for making YOUR story stand out amongst the rest. You really have to knock their socks off, to an extent that you might not if your topic were not popular that year.

Sorry.

No need to turn your synopsis into a back jacket blurb, but do show how your work is UNLIKE anything else the judge is going to read. Yes, each judge will have your chapter, or few pages, or however much the contest allows you to show him, but sometimes, the difference between a “Thank you for entering” letter and one that says, “Congratulations – you’re a finalist!” is a synopsis that makes the case that THIS entry, out of the half-dozen entries on the same general topic, is the one that is going to hit the big time.

Yes, yes, I know: I’m asking a lot of you here, but I’m positive that you can do this.

You want to know how I know? Because a writer with the staggering courage and honestly to write a truly self-revealing memoir, rather than one that simply makes the self look good, is a writer who has had to master many subtle writing skills. Call me zany, but compared to laying your soul bare on paper, doing a little market research and a bit of book promotion is a walk in the park.

Not a very pleasant park, true, but still, not a minefield. Keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on The one text every literary contest entrant absolutely MUST read — and no, it’s not this blog post (but thanks for asking)

The one text every literary contest entrant absolutely MUST read — and no, it’s not this blog post (but thanks for asking)

Wouldn’t you know it? I spend days and days of blog time on how to do a synopsis for a contest entry, and I leave out the answer to one of the most basic possible questions: how does one number the pages?

That does it — today’s post is going to be on formatting contest entries.

Let me begin by answering the synopsis question before any of us get even a single minute older: it varies from contest to contest.

Most of the time, contests will simply specify that all pages of the entry should be numbered; some request that the synopsis or other support materials be numbered separately. If the rules say to number the synopsis sequentially with the rest of manuscript, by all means do so: if an entry consists of (in the order they appear) a title page, 24 pages of text, and a 3-page synopsis, the title page would be neither numbered nor counted, the text would be pp. 1-24, and the synopsis would be pp. 25-28. If they call for separate numbering, the title page and text would be the same, but the synopsis would start over at page 1.

Yes, you read that first part of the answer correctly: there is no standard answer to this, nor is there any substitute for going over the contest’s rules with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. In fact, I would HIGHLY recommend going through them with a fine-toothed comb, a nit-pick — and then making a checklist of ALL of the requirements, so you may check them off as you fulfill them.

Actually, if it were my entry, I would go a few steps farther: making the list, checking it twice for accuracy (à la the Furtive Non-Denominational Gift-Giver) — then photocopying it a couple of times, and not only checking off each item as you complete it on List #1, but going back just before sealing the envelope with List #2, to make sure that you didn’t miss anything in the rush to get the entry envelope-ready.

And perhaps — this was clever reader Tad’s excellent suggestion from a while back — handing List #3 to your significant other, flat mate, tennis partner, or some other sharp-eyed soul who either loves you enough to do you an unpleasantly tedious favor or is otherwise too polite to say no, and ask him/her/them/it to go through and check your entry for required elements.

I’m not just talking about making sure that you actually INCLUDE that synopsis you slaved over for so long, either. I’m also referring to adhering to formatting requirements.

So if you were entering a contest that required a synopsis, your first stop should be to consult the rules, to see if there are special ways they would like to see it formatted. If they do, follow them to the letter.

Do this even if what they are asking is silly, unheard-of, or downright obsolete. Like, for instance, the Organization-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named’s yearly insistence that section breaks should be denoted by at least three centered asterisks, like this:

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Now, those asterisks are not entirely without reason: back in the days of typewriters, they were indeed how a writer alerted the manual typesetter to a section break. Now that publishing houses expect writers to turn manuscripts over to them after contract signing in both hard and soft copy, the asterisked section break has gone the way of the horse and buggy: it’s still POSSIBLE to get around that way, but folks on the highway are going to get a might annoyed with you.

So if you were submitting the same page to an agent or editor, you would be best served by its looking like this:

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Which only goes to reiterate the point that I keep banging upon, drum-like, every time I bring up the topic of contest entries: contrary to popular belief amongst writers, the sheets of paper you submit to a contest and to an agent or editor should not necessarily be identical.

Yes, you’re going to want to adhere to standard manuscript format, where the rules do not specifically call for something different; since standard format is in fact industry standard (thus the name), contest judges expect to see it. In fact, if an entry is NOT in standard format (other than the little tweaks the contest’s organizers have amused themselves by adding to the rules), it usually loses either presentation or marketability points.

Remember, the judges want the finalists’ work to be market-ready — which means in the format that agents and editors prefer.

Do I hear some disgruntled shifting of feet out there? “But Anne,” I hear some of you mutter, “if they’re so hot on marketability, why don’t they just set up the rules so they’re identical with standard format and call it good?”

Ooh, good question, disgusted mutterers. If contest rules were set afresh every year, or even every decade, that would make abundant sense. Because, you see, contest organizers will frequently insist (in feedback, anyway) that the contest’s rules ARE standard format, even when — as in the case of the asterisks — that’s no longer true.

But the fact is, contest rules are NOT revised every year, generally speaking: in the vast majority of cases, the same rules have been used since the contest began, with additions as contest organizers thought of them, entrants objected, logical problems were noticed, and so forth. This is often true, incidentally, even of organizations who update their websites frequently.

I single out no PARTICULAR contest here, of course — but suffice it to say that if I were again entering a Contest-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named whose deadline is next week (on the 22nd, to be precise), I would not only go over the Rules and Guidelines section of their website with the proverbial fine-toothed comb, but also double-check the Category Definitions for EVERY category you intend to enter AND the entry form for minute differences.

I’m not saying that there’s a problem THIS year, of course. But still, it would be an excellent idea to triple-check, as there’s one less judge hanging around those parts who is aware of the problem to point it out to the others, if you catch my drift.

Because, realistically, if a contest judge duns you for not following a regulation that was not prominently displayed in the official rules, there’s not much you can do about it in retrospect. Think of it as the difference between the laws on the books and how a judge interprets them from the bench: you may be right in your interpretation, but the judge is the person in the room with the power to throw others in jail for contempt.

For all practical purposes, while you’re in his courtroom, his interpretation IS the law. This is why we have appellate courts.

Literary contests, however, do not have a Supreme Court to which writers may appeal. (Although it’s an interesting idea.) Unless a contest gives entrants feedback, it’s unlikely that you’d even find out what the particular charges against your entry were.

So read the rules (and all other relevant documents) CAREFULLY, follow them to the letter, and follow standard format where the rules do not specifically tell you what to do. (If you need a refresher on how manuscripts should be formatted, please see the rule-based STANDARD FORMAT BASICS and the more visually-based STANDARD FORMAT ILLUSTRATED categories at right. And please, if you have questions, ask — I’d much rather that you bring it up here than lose points on an entry.)

For those of you who are more conversant with standard format, let’s play a little game to show how differently an author, a regular reader, and a contest judge might view the same page of text. Here’s that first contest entry page again, an excerpt from EF Benson’s Mapp & Lucia: what’s wrong with it, from a judge’s point of view?

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Spot anything? Spot many things? (If you’re having trouble seeing the details of the text, try right-clicking on the image and saving it to your desktop.)

This is quite hard; I’ve set a multi-level test for you here. A few hints:

1) There’s an error that would be a disqualification-level offense for almost any contest,

2) a fairly universal pet peeve,

3) a common causer of knee-jerk reactions,

4) a couple of matters of style that would probably have lost Benson a crucial point or two, and

5) a more subtle problem that almost any professional reader would have caught, but most writers would not unless they were reading their own work out loud.

Here’s what the page would look like to a contest judge. The colored bits are the problems, one color per gaffe; I’ve backed up in the text a little, to make the more elusive problem clearer, so now it’s on two pages. (All the better to see standard format in action, my dear.) The one that would get the entry booted is in red.

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See ‘em more clearly now? Let’s go through the problems one by one:

1) In an entry, ANY reproduction of the author’s name usually results in instant disqualification. (Yes, even in a memoir.) So quadruple-check that slug line.

2) As the notes in orange point out, these paragraphs are pretty long, and do not necessarily break where the underlying thought does. Also, some of these sentences are pretty lengthy — okay, let’s just go ahead and use that dreaded term from English class, run-on sentence.

Contrary to popular opinion, run-on sentences do NOT make a narrative seem more conversational in tone, at least to your garden-variety contest judge: most of the time, they just look LONG. As do paragraphs more than half a page long. The average contest judge’s heart sinks at the first glimpse of either.

3) Notice the underlined bits in teal — there, the text has fallen into passive constructions. Like many Millicents, most contest judges respond to the passive voice with a negativity that most people reserve for rattlesnake bites, fender-benders, and telemarketing calls. In their minds, the passive voice is pretty much synonymous with poor writing.

It’s not fair, of course; plenty of good writers use the passive voice occasionally, because it can be darned useful. But that’s not an argument you’re going to win in a contest entry. Purge the passivity.

4) If you’re going to use semicolons (pink), make sure that you are using them correctly. In English, ; and is technically redundant, because a semicolon is an abbreviated form of comma + and. So a list should read: Jessamyn gathered armfuls of lavender; bushels of poppies; two thousand puppies, and a bottle of Spray-and-Wash.

Were you surprised to see then show up in color? Most contest entries overuse this word — which isn’t hard to do, as in print, if action A appears in the text prior to action B, it is always assumed that B followed A, unless the text gives some specific reason to believe otherwise. So then is almost always unnecessary, particularly in a list of actions.

5) See all of that blue? It looks like a sapphire inkwell came here to die — and that’s precisely what that much repetition of and looks like to a contest judge. It’s annoying to read, because it is so easy for the eye to stray accidentally from one line to the next. (For an explanation of why this phenomenon is so tiring to the eye, please see my former post on the subject.)

It’s not a bad idea to go through your contest entry with a highlighter, marking all of the ands, for where more than one appears per sentence, you will usually find run-ons. Had I mentioned that people who sign up to judge contests are usually sticklers for grammar?

I know, I know: people do use connective ands instead of periods in spoken English. That doesn’t mean it will work on the page. Trust me on this one — it DOES bug most professional readers and contest judges.

Did that vicious little run-down make you want to shove your contest entry back into the drawer to hide from human eyes? That would be understandable, but I choose rather to view this little exercise as empowering for a writer: your chances of polishing your work to contest-winning shininess is much, much higher if you know BEFORE you seal that envelope just how close a scrutiny the judges are likely to give it.

Is it shallow of me to like it when my readers win, place, and make the finals in contests? Possibly. But if judges react so strongly to textual problems like #2-5, how much more negatively are they likely to respond to an entry that breaks one of the contest’s rules?

Do not assume that your entry will be read by the laid-back, in other words. Read the rules, reread the rules, and FOLLOW THE RULES as if your life depended upon it. If you don’t find yourself waking in the night, muttering that under your breath, the night before you’re planning to drop your entry in the nearest mailbox, I can only advise that your first action the next morning should be to go back and DOUBLE-CHECK THAT YOU HAVE FOLLOWED THE RULES.

And then read the whole darned thing out loud, to weed out possible knee-jerk reaction-triggers. Like, for instance, the first two words of the previous sentence.

More tips to follow, of course. But a quick reminder to those of you who are planning to enter that contest with a deadline next week: my ruminations on entries will in fact be going on past that deadline, as I’m trying not to promote any individual contest this year. All of my trenchant observations on that particular contest from last year, when I was writing directly about it, are still available for your perusal under the CONTEST ENTRY PREP category at right.

Keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on That pesky contest synopsis, part V: the remains of the (caucus) day

That pesky contest synopsis, part V: the remains of the (caucus) day

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Well, my caucus day is finally over, and boy, is it odd to see the news reports reduce a thrilling, inspiring afternoon to a flat color on a map of the U.S.! Which isn’t even accurate in my state: we elected delegates for BOTH of the major candidates, thank you very much, not just for the one Wolf Blitzer keeps telling us won the entire state.

I volunteered to be my caucus’ secretary, which meant that my job was to document all of the twists and turns of everyone’s trying to figure out how proportional representation works. I know, I know: not really a task that required a professional writer’s hand, but hey, I get a kick out of seeing democracy in action.

The elementary school was SWAMPED, the rather acute parking situation exacerbated by the fact that some clever soul had scheduled the other party’s caucus ACROSS THE STREET, in a local high school, at the same time as several apparently fiercely-fought soccer games. If you’re willing to walk four blocks from your car just to convince someone who lives three houses away from you to support your candidate, you’ve got to be excited about electoral politics in a way that is rare in these decadent days.

My favorite moment: as we were cleaning up, a GORGEOUS 17-year-old (if you’ll be legal by election day, you can caucus here) brought over a stack of voter registration forms (heck, we’re so hospitable in Washington, you don’t even need to be registered to vote before caucusing! We’ll give you the forms, and we’ll provide the stamp!). She was glowing, because she had just been elected as a delegate to the county convention.

Naturally, as a former party hack (hey, someone has to write those platforms), I congratulated her winning the first elected office of her adult life. She burst into tears and threw her arms around me, cheering.

Imagine starting one’s adult political life like that. Long may it last, for all of the young people who are new to the process.

It reminded me of being at the national convention in 2000. Due to a freak accident during which a suddenly-turning cameraman, my body, and the convention floor abruptly made intimate, if not friendly, contact, I was sitting with my (broken, but we didn’t know that at the time) swollen ankle propped up on a chair near the press seats, explaining to a puzzled Russian journalist why the candidate had just been cheered for mentioning his mother, when I noticed that one of the security guards had tears rolling down her face. Believe me, when you sprain (we thought at the time) both of your ankles in the middle of a packed convention center, you make friends with the security guards, pronto. (My elevated gams also drew the attention of a very sweet cameraman with a pronounced foot fetish who worked for an East Coast newspaper which shall remain nameless, but that’s another story.)

Since I knew from previous conversations with this guard that she considered herself apolitical and the entire convention rather silly, I asked her why she was so moved. Apparently, on his way into the convention center, Gore had stopped and shaken hands with every single one of the security guards. She had grown up poor; it had never occurred to her that someone running for president might ever notice her existence.

And that, my friends, is a side of politics the media seldom covers.

Okay, that’s enough sentiment for today: back to work. Contest synopses ho!

Effectively, in a contest situation, the synopsis is the substitute for the rest of the book, right? It is where you demonstrate to judges that you are not merely a writer who can hold them in thrall for a few isolated pages: here is where you show that you have the vision, tenacity, and — chant it with me now — storytelling ability to take the compelling characters you have begun to reveal in your first chapter through an interesting story to a satisfying conclusion.

The synopsis, in short, is where you show that you can plot out a BOOK, baby.

For this reason, it is imperative that your synopsis makes it very, very clear how the chapter or excerpt you are submitting to the contest fits into the overall story arc of the book, regardless of whether you are submitting fiction or nonfiction.

Did I just notice many, many eyebrows shooting hairline-ward out there? “But Anne,” I seem to hear some of you asking, “isn’t that self-evident? Why would I be submitting anything other than the first chapter(s) of my book?”

Well, for starters: the rules. Quite a few contests allow writers to submit chapters other than the first. Still more do not explicitly specify: they merely tell the entrant to send X number of pages and a synopsis.

Sometimes, writers feel that their best writing falls in, say, Chapter 18; these writers might want to take advantage of such a loophole. However, if you elect to take them up on this offer, your synopsis had better make it absolutely plain where the enclosed excerpt will fall in the finished work.

Truth be told, I think it is seldom wise to submit either non-consecutive excerpts from a book or chapters other than the initial ones, even if later chapters contain writing that is truly wonderful. Non-consecutive excerpts require the judge to make the logical connections between them — which the judge may not be inclined to do in a way that is in your best interest.

An uncharitable judge might, for instance, draw the unkind inference that you had submitted the excerpts you chose because they were the only parts of the book you had written – a poor message to send in a category devoted to book-length works. Or that you simply can’t stand your introductory chapter.

Or, a judge may reason, no agent or editor in the world, is going to accept random excerpts from a book for which she’s been queried: she is going to expect to see the first chapter, or first three chapters, or some other increment up to and possibly including the entire manuscript. But no way, no how is an agent or editor going to ASK to see unrelated excerpts out of running order.

Well, okay, not unless the submitter is a celebrity for whom it would be a stunning surprise to the industry if s/he could string three coherent English sentences together. But in that case, the celebrity would be selling a platform more than the writing itself, right?

Since reputable contest judging is blind, this situation is unlikely to arise, anyway. So a judge might safely conclude that the author who submitted this patchwork entry isn’t anywhere near ready to submit work to professionals. In other words: next!

This is not, in short, a situation where it pays to rely upon the kindness of strangers.

If you DO decide to use non-contiguous excerpts, place your synopsis at the BEGINNING of your entry packet, unless the rules absolutely forbid you to do so, and make sure that the synopsis makes it QUITE clear that these excerpts are far and away the most important part of the book. Basically, the role of the synopsis in this instance is to make the judges EAGER to read THESE particular excerpts.

Obviously, this means that your storytelling skills had better be at their most polished, to meet the challenge. But really, why raise an already lofty bar even higher?

As for selecting a chapter other than the first for submission, effectively starting midway through the book, I would advise against it, too, even if when contest rules explicitly permit the possibility.

“But Anne,” I hear some of you point out, “the opening to my Chapter 58 knocked the socks off my mother, nearly slayed my writing teacher, and generally left my critique group in a state of panting incoherence. Are you saying that I SHOULDN’T loose that level of brilliance upon a contest judge?”

Before I answer that directly, let me acquaint you with some of the arguments against not beginning at the beginning in general. In the first place, the judge may well draw the same set of uncharitable inferences as with the non-continuous excerpts, and dismiss your submission as not ready for the big time.

Remember, they are typically judging marketability as well as writing quality. As I have mentioned repeatedly over the last couple of weeks, contest organizers LOVE it when their winners move on quickly to publication. If your submission looks like it needs a couple of years’ worth of polishing to become market-ready, it is unlikely to win a contest, even if you are extremely talented.

In the second place, while your best writing may well lie later in your book, the advantage of starting at the beginning of the book is that the judge and the reader will have an equal amount of information going in. To lay bare the secrets of the judging world, I’ve known a LOT of contest judges who resent having to go back and forth between the synopsis and the chapters to figure out what is going on.

There is a sneaky way to get around this – but I’m afraid I would have to scold you if you did it.

Here it is anyway: there is no contest in the world that is going to make you sign an affidavit swearing that your entry is identical to what you are submitting to agents and editors. If you win, no one is later going to come after you and say, “Hey, your book doesn’t start with the scene you entered in the contest!”

And even if someone did, so what? Professional writers change the running orders of their books all the time. And titles. And the name of the protagonist’s baby sister. Pretty much no one in the industry regards a manuscript as beyond revision until it is sitting on a shelf at Barnes & Noble.

With NF books that go into subsequent editions, not even then.

Thus, a clever entrant who feels her best writing occurs fifty pages into her novel might, for the purposes of competition, place her strongest scene first by starting the entry on page 50. Presenting it as page 1, of course.

The synopsis would have to be revised, naturally, to make it appear that this is indeed the usual running order of the book, and our heroine would have to edit carefully, to make sure that there is nothing in the skipped-over pages that is vital to understanding what happens in the chapters presented in the entry.

The job of the synopsis, then, in the hands of this tricky writer, would be to cover up the fact that the entry starts in the middle of the book. It would be just our little secret.

To put it in a less clever way: go ahead and submit your strongest chapter — but for heaven’s sake, do NOT label it as Chapter 8. Label it as Chapter 1, and write a new synopsis for a book where Chapter 8 IS Chapter 1. Just make sure that your synopsis is compelling and lucid enough that it makes sense as a story told in that order.

Are those eyebrows wiggling again? “But Anne,” some of you tireless running order-huggers maintain, “my story doesn’t make sense told out of order. Am I doomed to submit Chapter 1, just so the synopsis makes sense?”

Okay, come closer, and I’ll whisper a little secret that the pros use all the time: it’s perfectly acceptable in most fiction genres, and certainly in memoir, to open the book with a stunningly exciting scene that does not fall at the beginning of the story, chronologically speaking. It’s usually called a prologue, and it’s slapped onto the beginning of the book, before the set-up begins.

Does this seem a tad dishonest? It isn’t, really; it’s an accepted trick o’ the trade. If you trawl in bookstores much, you’ve probably seen this technique used in a novel or twelve lately. It’s become rather common in submissions, for the simple reason that a book that bursts into flame — literarily speaking — on page 1 tends to be a heck of a lot easier to sell to agents and editors than one that doesn’t really get going until page 27.

And that’s doubly true of contest entries, which judges are often reading for free and in their spare time.

Generally speaking, anything you can do to place your best writing within the first few pages of your contest entry, you should do. Judges’ impressions tend to be formed very fast, and if you can wow ‘em before page 3, you absolutely should.

Just as with work you submit to agents, the first page of your entry is far and away the most important thing the judges see — which is why, unless an entry features mid-book excerpts, the author’s platform is truly stellar, or the contest’s rules specify a particular order for the entry packet, I ALWAYS advice placing the synopsis AFTER the chapters, not before.

That way, your brilliant first page of text can jump out at the judges. (After the title page, of course.) And if you can include some very memorable incident or imagery within the first few paragraphs of your chapter, so much the better.

One final word to the wise: whatever you do, try not to save writing your synopsis for a contest for the very last moments before you stuff the entry into an envelope. Synopsis-writing is hard; budget adequate time for it. And make absolutely sure that the synopsis you submit supports the image of the book you want your submitted chapter to send.

Next time, I shall begin to cover the super-common entry mistakes that tend to raise even the most tolerant judges’ hackles, due to sheer repetition. Feel free to keep posting questions about synopses as you write them, though, and keep up the good work!

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That pesky contest synopsis, part IV: hold the phone!

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What a day this has been! What a rare mood I’m in! No, it’s not almost like being in love — it’s exactly like living in a caucus state the day before the big event. My telephone hasn’t rung this much since the days when my phone number was one digit off from my hometown’s most popular bar.

Why all the ringing? Why, so the recorded voices of people I have heard of and the live voices of people I haven’t may urge me to spend half a day tomorrow arguing with my neighbors at my local caucus, of course. All of a sudden, everyone in the other Washington can find Seattle on a map unassisted.

Heck, representatives from both major campaigns offered not only to give me directions to the elementary school where I will be caucusing; they offered to DRIVE me there.

To be fair, a certain amount of nagging is warranted in my neck of the woods — to attend my caucus is to take one’s life, and certainly one’s blood sugar, into one’s hands. Unlike a primary, where all the voter is asked to do is fill in a few bubbles, drop a form into a box, and go, caucus goers are expected to spend several HOURS holding forth on the relative merits of their chosen candidates.

While actual fisticuffs seldom occur, bullying often does; the last time I attended, my views on environmental preservation were challenged by a 6’5″, 400-pound ex-Marine willing — indeed, eager — to throw his considerable bulk in the direction of anyone who contradicted the views of the party leadership.

Since he was of the opinion that the merest discussion of any plank of the state’s platform, however minor, was tantamount to treason, a certain amount of physical intimidation was inevitable. I’ve seen him send entire salmon preservation leagues scurrying to the other side of the elementary school auditorium.

All the while, party volunteers proffer cookies, coffee, candy, coffee, hot dogs, coffee, Danish, coffee, brownies, coffee, and sometimes, in my neighborhood, a gigantic cake emblazoned with the iced likeness of our local baking maven’s choice for president. You should have seen it the year she went for Jesse Jackson.

Oh, heavens, there goes the phone again.

I’m back — now back to work.

It may seem odd that I hammered so hard yesterday about the importance of a finely-crafted synopsis to a contest entry’s overall chances of winning, but you would be astonished at how often a well-written chapter is accompanied by a synopsis obviously dashed off at the last minute, as though the writing quality, clarity, and organization of it weren’t actually being evaluated at all.

I suspect that this is a fairly accurate reading of what commonly occurs. All too often, writers (most of whom, after all, have full-time jobs and families and, well, lives to lead) push preparing their entries to the very last minute.

Frustrated at this crucial moment by what appears to be an arbitrary requirement — it’s the writing in the chapter that counts, right? — it’s tempting just to throw together a synopsis in a fatal rush and shove it into an envelope, hoping that no one will pay much attention to it.

Trust me on this one: judges WILL pay attention to it. Many a fine entry has been scuttled by a slipshod synopsis.

I won’t go so far as to say, of course, that if you do not expend careful consideration over the crafting of the synopsis for a book-length category, you might as well not enter at all. It is entirely fair to say, however, that if you have a well-written, well thought-out synopsis tucked into your entry packet, your work will automatically enjoy an edge toward winning.

I have a few more tips on how to increase that edge, of course — but while that darned phone keeps ringing every few minutes, I think my powers of concentration will be best spent on issues of format, rather than content.

I hadn’t realized it until reader Sheri asked a question about synopses the other day, but back in December, when I was posting examples of standard format, I somehow managed to neglect to include what a synopsis should look like. Today, I’m going to rectify that, for both contest and submission synopses.

First, let’s look at the first page of a synopsis one might submit to an agent:

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For the most part, as you may see, it simply adheres to standard manuscript format: one-inch margins all the way around, slug line in the top left margin, page number in the slug line, indented paragraphs, the works. (If you’re unclear on the hows and whys of standard manuscript format, or were unaware that such a thing existed, please see the STANDARD FORMAT BASICS category at right.)

Note, too, that the first time a character is introduced to the story, her name appears entirely in capital letters. That makes it easier for skimming eyes to follow — and if that seems like an invitation to screener laziness, bear in mind that Millicent and her compatriots are reading literally hundreds of pages per day. Their eyes are TIRED.

Do you want to be the writer who makes those eyes’ little lives easier or harder?

The title of the work is on the first line of the page, with the information that it is a synopsis on the second double-spaced line. Why state up front that it’s a synopsis? Well, remember a few months back, when I described that catastrophic collision between two interns in an agency hallway? Does “Hey, you got memoir in my thriller!” “No, you got thriller in my memoir!” ring a bell?

Since submitted manuscripts are unbound in any way, individual pieces of them tend to wander off on field trips of their own. Slug lines can go a long way toward allowing those hapless interns to piece the manuscripts back together.

Guess what? So can clearly labeled synopses.

For this reason, I like to label subsequent pages of the synopsis as such as well. It’s not strictly required, but hey, the subsequent pages are every bit as likely to go wandering as the first, right? The result looks like this:

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All clear on the format for the submission synopsis? May I suggest that this would be a dandy time to bring up questions, if not?

Okay, on to the contest synopsis. The primary difference is — anyone? Anyone?

Yes, that’s right: in a blind-judged contest (i.e., in the respectable ones that are worth your time and money to enter), the writer’s name cannot appear on any page of the entry. Not the first, and certainly not the last.

Obviously, this is going to affect the slug line, but it’s easily resolved. Lookee:

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See? Very simple. Notice any other differences?

If you are looking for purely cosmetic differences, there aren’t any, other than the slug line. However, on the content level, I did tighten up the synopsis a bit for the benefit of the contest judge.

Why, you ask? Because I happen to know (having read the contest rules as closely as I urge you all to do) that this contest accepts entries up to fifty pages long. Almost everything that happened within the first two pages of the submission synopsis occurs during the first fifty pages of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY.

The judge will most likely read the chapters before turning to the synopsis — that way, if the writing in the chapter is not good, they can skip the synopsis altogether. So why recap more than is necessary, especially if including a 4-page contest synopsis will allow Aunt Jane to include another page of text?

Seem rules-lawyerish? Exactly; contests are run by people who just adore rules. Go with the flow.

Next time, phone conditions permitting, I shall polish off the hot topic of contest synopsis-polishing. Happy caucusing, Washingtonians, Louisianans, and Nebraskans, and everybody, keep up the good work!

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That pesky contest synopsis, part III: an entry synopsis that stands out from the crowd, or, baa humbug

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Yes, the pun is a terrible one, but I’m in a giddy, hopeful mood today; specifically, I’m hoping that those rumors I’ve been hearing about an any-second-now settlement to the screenwriters’ strike are true. I’ve been hearing them from increasingly credible sources all week; if you picture an Oscar statuette whispering in my ear today, you wouldn’t be far off. Fingers crossed for all of those talented people getting back to work on reasonable terms.

For the past couple of days, I’ve been talking about how and why a successful contest synopsis and a killer submission synopsis can and should be different. I have to say, I had expected to hear a little more groaning from the peanut gallery about this — I am, after all, suggesting that you write a 3 – 5 page summary of your book for contest submission that you will pretty much never be able to use for any other purpose on God’s decreasingly green earth.

See? Nothing. You people must be getting desensitized to the idea that reading this blog may lead to more work for you.

Frankly, I think that nonfiction entrants typically have a harder time producing a winning synopsis — or perhaps I merely think that because I have more often been a judge in nonfiction than fiction categories. For fiction, the task at hand is a bit closer to writing a submission synopsis: tell a good story in a reasonable amount of juicy detail.

If this sounds vaguely familiar to those of you who suffered through last summer’s Book Marketing 101 series, you have an excellent memory: this is more or less the goal of the 2-minute pitch as well.

You would be AMAZED how few contest synopses-writers seem to realize that the point is to tell a terrific story, though. Seriously, in my experience, usually under 10% of the entries include synopses that indicate storytelling ability, rather than going through a rote exercise in summarization.

Where do the other 90% go wrong, you ask?

As I explained yesterday, all too often, writers just state the premise of the novel, rather than taking the reader through the plot, blow by blow. If the plot has twists and surprises, so should the synopsis. Show the story arc, and make it compelling enough that the judge will scrawl on the evaluation sheet, “Wow, I want to read this book when it comes out.”

Trust me, pretty much every contest winner and placer’s evaluation sheet has this sentiment, or something very similar to it, scrawled upon it in a judge’s hand. So make it your mission in the synopsis to evoke that wonderful response.

Yes, I know: it’s a tall order. But don’t forget that the synopsis is every bit as much an indication of your writing skill as the actual chapters that you are submitting. Both need to be compelling reads that draw the reader into the story you’re telling.

The easiest way to get the judges involved is not merely to summarize the plot as quickly as possible but to give the feel of a number of specific scenes. Don’t be afraid to use forceful imagery and strong sensual detail, and try to have the tone of the synopsis echo the tone of the book.

Yes, you read that correctly, too: a good synopsis should be written in the same voice as the book, for both contest and for submission. Changes the way you think of the synopsis, doesn’t it?

Again, this should sound familiar to some of you: a good pitch conveys the same tone as its book, too.

So if you’re writing a comedy, you had better make sure that the judge at least chuckles a couple of times while reading your synopsis — and, word to the wise, as nothing is more stale than a joke told twice with a ten-minute period, repeating the same funny line in both chapter and synopsis is not the best means of invoking hilarity.

A sexy book deserves a sexy contest synopsis, too, and a thriller’s synopsis had better be, well, thrilling. If your horror synopsis doesn’t make the reader blanch (try it out on strangers in a coffeeshop), add gory details until it does.

And so forth. You’re a writer; you’re good at this sort of thing.

For nonfiction, the assignment is slightly less straightforward: yes, you need to make it plain that you’re a good arguer making an intriguing argument, but it would also behoove you to include certain elements of the book proposal that you would never include in a submission synopsis.

Some indication of the target market, for instance. A passing reference to why your book is better at conveying this set of information than anything currently on the market. A miniscule tease about how the publication of THIS book, as opposed to any other entered into the contest, will make the world just a little bit better for those who read it.

Why shouldn’t you include these in a synopsis sent along with requested materials? For starters, it’s redundant with the both the book proposal and, most likely, with the query letter as well.

Think about it. You might, if an agent’s listing or website asked for it, include a synopsis with your query letter, but really, if you’re going to make the case that the agent should drop everything and read your book proposal, the argument belongs in your query letter. (For tips on how to construct this type of case, please see the HOW TO WRITE A QUERY LETTER category on the list at right.)

You MIGHT be asked to send a synopsis along with requested materials, but for nonfiction, an agent or editor is far more likely to ask to see the entire book proposal — which, naturally, would include entire sections on who the target audience is, why they would benefit from your book, and how your book is different and better than anything remotely similar currently on the market. (For some insights on the various necessary components of a NF book proposal, please see — you guessed it — the BOOK PROPOSAL category at right.)

For a memoir, admittedly, an agent is slightly more likely to ask to see the first couple of chapters plus a synopsis, but still, most memoirs, like other nonfiction, are sold on proposals, not the entire manuscript. (And no, I’m not sure why there are so many sources out there that say otherwise. I’ve sold two memoirs to publishers without having written more than the first chapter and a proposal for either.)

But as I mentioned yesterday, the trick to a memoir synopsis, for a contest or submission, is much closer to the goal for fiction: it needs to sound like a great yarn well told. What it does NOT need to be and should not be is an extended discussion of why you decided to write a memoir in the first place.

For some reason, it is hugely common in contest synopses for memoirists (and sometimes other NF writers as well) to treat the synopsis as though it were a response to an impassioned crowd storming their writing spaces, demanding to know who the heck the author is, to think he has the right to think his pet topic might interest even a single other human being, let alone thousands or millions. Defensive does not even begin to describe it.

A LOT of contest synopses go off on these tangents, to the detriment of the entry, and it costs them a plethora of presentation and professionalism points. Which means, unfortunately, that an experienced judge’s knee-jerk response to a synopsis that engages in this practice even a little tends to be exaggerated.

Yes, I am saying what you think I’m saying: “Next!”

“Wait just a minute!” I hear some of you out there saying. “Why is personal revelation regarded as a sign of a lack of professionalism? In a memoir, I would think that it would be downright desirable. Why aren’t my reasons for writing my own life story worth mentioning in the contest synopsis?”

It’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? In the eyes of the industry, though, there are only a few contexts where a lengthy discussion of why you chose to write a book is considered appropriate professional behavior:

(1) Within a nonfiction book proposal, where it is a necessary component to making the argument that you are uniquely qualified to write the book you are proposing. There, you may state your case in market terms in the section dedicated to that purpose.

(2) In a query letter or pitch, to show that you are uniquely qualified to write the book you are pitching. There, you may indulge in this impulse for as long as a couple of sentences.

(3) After you have signed with your agent, when she asks, “So, are there hidden selling points in this book that I should mention while I’m marketing it?” At that point, you may discourse for as long as it takes for the agent to drink a cup of coffee — or until her other line rings, whichever comes first.

(4) To your publisher’s marketing department just before your book is released, so they can include any relevant points in the press packet. They will be far more interested in your listing the addresses, phone numbers, and websites of every bookstore where any local might recognize your mug, but they’re going to want you to come up with a nice sound bite about why you wrote the book as well.

(5) Within the context of an interview AFTER the book is released. Interviewers LOVE hearing about writers’ motivations — which, I suspect is why aspiring writers so often want to tell everyone they see what is and is not autobiographical in their novels. So you can go to town after the book comes out.

(6) When you are chatting with other writers about why they wrote THEIR books. You can basically do this for the rest of your life.

Other than those few occasions, it’s considered over-sharing — yes, even for memoirists. In a contest entry, it is NEVER considered anything but self-indulgent.

Just don’t do it. In your contest synopsis, stick to the what of the book, and save the whys for later.

The only exception to this in a contest entry is if you have some very specific expertise or background that renders your take on a subject particularly valid. If so, make sure that information is stated within the first paragraph of your NF synopsis.

If you are writing a novel, and you feel that you have an inside perspective that simply MUST be mentioned to the judges, go back and reread that list above three more times. If you are still wedded to the idea after that, imagine me sighing gustily — then stick the information at the end of the synopsis, where it won’t be too intrusive.

For nonfiction, keep reminding yourself that your goal in a contest synopsis is threefold:

A) to show the argument of the book in some detail, along with some indication of how you intend to prove your case,

B) to show that the book will appeal to a large enough market niche to make publishing it worthwhile, and

C) to demonstrate that you are the best-qualified person in the universe to write the book.

In 3-5 pages, no less. Piece o’ proverbial cake, right?

In pursuit of Goal A, it is helpful to have an outline of your proposed chapters in front of you, so you can use the synopsis to demonstrate how each chapter will build upon the next to make your overall case. Even if you are writing a self-help book, history book, or memoir, you are always making a case when you write nonfiction, if only to argue that your take on the world around you is interesting, unique, and valid.

Make absolutely certain that by the time a judge finishes reading your synopsis, s/he will understand very clearly what this argument is – and what evidence you will be bringing in to demonstrate it. (Statistics? Extensive background research? Field experience? Interviews? A wealth of personal anecdotes? Etc.)

In doubt about whether you’ve pulled this off successfully? Hand your synopsis to an intelligent non-specialist in your area (intelligent adolescents are great for this), have him or her read it — then ask the reader to summarize the argument for you without looking at the paper. Take notes on what parts come back to you fuzzily: those are the parts of the synopsis that need work.

If you are pinched for space in your entry, you need only devote the first paragraph to marketing information. State outright why the world needs your book. If you are writing on a subject that is already quite full of authorial opinion, make it plain why your book is different and better. As in:

Have you ever wondered what goes on underneath the snow while you are skiing on top of it? Although there are many books currently on the market for snowboarding enthusiasts, MOUNTAINS MY WAY is the first to be written by a geologist.

If you have statistics on your prospective market, this is the place to mention them, as you would in a query letter or book proposal. Remember, one of the things that the judges are evaluating is the book’s marketability — how likely is a judge who thinks your target market is a quarter of its actual size to give you high marks? Go ahead and minimize this possibility:

There are currently 2 million Americans diagnosed with agoraphobia, yet there are few self-help books out there for them — and only one that is actually written by an agoraphobic, someone who truly understands what it feels like to be shut in.

The third desiratum is what is known in the industry as your platform. Admittedly, it is a trifle hard to explain why you are THE expert best qualified to write this book without saying a little something about yourself, so you may feel as though you are slipping into the realm of author bio, a potentially dangerous strategy in a contest where you might get disqualified for inadvertently mentioning your first name.

But rest assured, no one is going to disqualify you for mentioning that you have a Ph.D. or went to a specific culinary school. Go ahead and state your qualifications – just don’t slip up and mention yourself by name. As in:

A well-respected Seattle area caterer for twenty years, the author has extensive experience in crafting meals for the pickiest of eaters.

SHELLFISH AND YOU is the fruit of many years of postdoctoral research. The author, a graduate of the prestigious Scripps School of Oceanography, is recognized worldwide as an up-and-coming authority on mollusk behavior.

If your head is whirling from all of this – and whose wouldn’t be? — don’t worry. I’ll go into some tips on how to simplify the contest-writing synopsis process tomorrow. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

(PS: today’s photo appears courtesy of FreeFoto.com.)

Posted on - No Comments on That pesky contest synopsis, part II, or Synopsis #1 ? Synopsis #2

That pesky contest synopsis, part II, or Synopsis #1 ? Synopsis #2

Or, to put it graphically:
01_01_53-vulture_web.jpg is not the same fowl as 01_01_7_thumb.jpg

What, you ask, am I talking about? Well, last time, I began talking about the differences between a synopsis that an aspiring writer might submit along with a query or requested pages and one that works well in a contest submission. Although they are called by the same name, they actually serve different purposes, so it’s in your best interests to craft them differently.

Hey, both vultures and peacocks are birds, but you don’t expect them to move from Point A to Point B precisely the same way, do you? Would you feed a peacock Vulture Chow?

Of course not. You’d feed it Peacock Yummies.

Because I had gone over the ins and outs of constructing the former type fairly recently (a series of posts gathered for your reading pleasure under the HOW TO WRITE A SYNOPSIS category in that long list at right), I leapt right into the contest version last time with nary a backward glance. But perhaps that was a tad abrupt.

Let me back up for a moment and define synopsis, for those of you new to the term:

SYNOPSIS, n.: A brief exposition in the present tense of the plot of a novel or the argument of a book. Typically, synopses run from 1-5 pages (double-spaced), depending upon the requirements of the requesting agent, editor, or contest.

In other words, it’s our old bugbear, a coolclips_wb024789.gif

That’s going to be true, incidentally, no matter the context in which it is requested. But, unlike many of the other hoops through which aspiring writers need to jump through on the way to landing an agent, the ability to write a strong synopsis is a skill that’s going to serve you well for your entire literary career.

That’s right, folks: even the long-agented and often-published still need to write ‘em occasionally. Might as well learn to do it well.

Because, after all, no one likes a synopsis that just lies there like a dead trout. Except, perhaps, our friend the vulture.

Now, obviously, it’s a tough task to summarize a 400-page book in just a few pages — no one contests that. You’re going to need to cover that plot with dispatch. But that doesn’t necessarily mean being vague or leaving out eye-catching details.

In both types of synopsis, most fiction writers make the mistake of summarizing the plot in generalities, rather than giving a brief overview of the major conflicts of the plot through a series brief, vividly described scenes redolent with juicy concrete details. The latter is definitely more memorable — which is definitely a great trait in a synopsis.

Not clear on the difference? Let’s take a gander at a fairly typical opening paragraph for a synopsis:

JACQUELINE (42) is experiencing severe problems in her life: a boss who alternately seems to hate and praise her, a father who calls all the time to grill her about her love life, and a wacky neighbor who is constantly knocking on her door to borrow things. She feels like she’s going out of her mind until she meets the man of her dreams, an architect whose bedroom eyes make her swoon, but who may already have a wife. After a series of disturbing “chance” meetings with Josh, she finds that it’s easier to accept a temporary demotion than to keep on fighting battles on all fronts.

Okay, let me ask you: how many lines into that summary did your attention start to wander? How many lines before you started to become confused about what was going on? And if you made it all the way to the end, did you find yourself wondering whether Josh was the architect, the boss, or the neighbor?

Good; you’re thinking like an agency screener. And like a contest judge.

The primary reason that this excerpt doesn’t hold the attention is that it’s stuffed to the gills with generalities and clichés. But a synopsis does not need to present a story with either. Take a look at the same story, summarized with a bit more pizzazz and a lot more specifics:

Freshly-divorced graphic designer JACQUELINE (42) is finding it hard to sleep these days. Staying awake isn’t much of a picnic, either. Her boss, ALBERT (87) cannot seem to make it through a staff meeting at the magazine without criticizing her layouts while running a warm, greasy hand up her stockinged thighs under the conference table.

You already want to read this book, don’t you? That’s because the details are compelling and unusual. Let’s see where else dialing back the vague helps us:

Every morning at precisely 9:24, her habitually-marrying father (OWEN, 67) telephones her at work to see if she met Mr. Right the night before — and when she sheepishly says no, he regales her with tales of his latest paramour. Even her nights are disturbed by her lonely neighbor, CLIVE (24), who can’t seem to make it past midnight without scratching on her door to ask to borrow something — her milk, her hairdryer, her cat.

She manages to run carefully-balanced chaos of her life runs with relative smoothness until dreamy, suspender-wearing architect JOSH (48) comes to measure her office for long-overdue renovations. But is does that untanned line on his left ring finger mean that he, too, is recently separated, or that he’s the kind of rat who slips his wedding ring into his pocket every time he comes within smoldering range of an attractive woman?

Yes, this second synopsis is a trifle longer, but aren’t those few extra lines worth it, when they give the story so much more oomph?

Oomph is, after all, important in a contest entry. A contest judge, like our old friend Millicent the agency screener, typically reads quite a few entries within a single sitting. If you want yours to end up in the pile with the finalists, you’re going to want that judge to remember the STORY of your book, as well as the quality of the writing.

Remember them for positive reasons, that is. If your synopsis doesn’t make the judge make a mental note to rush out and buy that book the nanosecond it hits the shelves, it may be lacking in the oomph department.

Do I see a raised hand or two out there? “But Anne,” I hear some of you asking, “wouldn’t everything you’ve just said be applicable to either a submission OR a contest synopsis? I thought we were talking this week about contest synopses specifically.”

Good point, ethereal questioners. Yes, these principles would apply equally well to either type of synopsis. However, for a contest synopsis, since you will also be submitting the opening of the book — even if the rules merely say that you should include A chapter, rather than Chapter 1, you’re pretty much always going to be better off submitting the beginning — you can get away with covering those early pages only very lightly in the synopsis.

Actually, since those opening 10 pages (or 15, or 25) are all that the judges are going to see of the book, it is justifiable to streamline the plot more than you might for a regular synopsis. If you can make a better, more vivid story by sticking to only the book’s primary plotline (which, in a short synopsis of a long novel, is often the case), go ahead. The point of the contest synopsis, after all, is to wow the judges with what a great storyteller you are, not to reproduce every twist, turn, and minor character’s angst.

This may feel a touch misleading, but after you are wearing the first place ribbon, no one is going to come running up to you crying, “Hey! Your synopsis left out three major plotlines, and didn’t mention the protagonist’s sister! Foul! Foul!”

Trust me on this one.

For memoir, it’s especially important to streamline the story, since the number one problem that most memoir entries present is a tendency to include a little too much information extraneous to the primary plotline. For the synopsis, hit only the dramatic high points — and make sure to give some indication of how the main character grows and changes throughout the book.

Oh, and avoid making the common mistake of mentioning in either a contest or submission synopsis that the story being told is TRUE. Actually, you should eschew it in a query, too: in publishing circles, all nonfiction is assumed to be based upon truth.

Just ask James Frey.

Seriously, the true memoir is as much of an industry pet peeve as the fiction novel or the nonfiction how-to book. To the ears of the industry, all of these terms are redundant.

For other non-fiction entries, you’re going to want to reproduce the basic argument of the book in the synopsis. Starting with a thought-provoking question (“In a society as complex as America’s, why isn’t there more social acceptance of squirrel-lovers?”), then moving on to why the question is important enough to answer is often a good start. Present the essential planks of your argument in logical order, and give some indication of the kind of evidence you intend to use to back it up.

But again, remember to be SPECIFIC in your overview, not vaguely general.

I hear some throat-clearing out there. “Um, Anne? Again, dandy advice for either kind of synopsis, but how should I handle NF in a contest synopsis in particular?”

Tenacious, aren’t you? I can refuse you nothing, so here goes.

In a contest synopsis, it is usually a good idea to include some brief indication of the target market and why your book will serve that market better than what is currently available — essentially, a free taste of the argument that you will be making in your book proposal.

Do keep it short and to-the-point, though. Hyperbole does not work well in this context, so steer clear of grandiose claims (Everyone in North America will want to buy this book!) and stick mostly to saying what the book is ABOUT.

But most of all, make sure that the synopsis makes the book sound like a great read.

As with a novel, the way to achieve this in just a few pages may well involve leaving out some of the less important planks of your argument. Do not feel compelled to give the chapter-by-chapter summary as you would in a book proposal. Just because you have a chapter on the spiritual life of tadpoles in your book on frogs doesn’t necessarily mean than a description of it will read well in a contest synopsis.

Here again, we see that a single book may benefit from having one version of the synopsis that goes out to agents, and another, more streamlined one that gets tucked into contest entries. Different contexts — and sometimes even different contests — may call for different approaches.

Flexibility, after all, is as important a part of the writer’s tool bag as the ability to write an eye-catching opening paragraph. Don’t worry that a judge is going to assume that you don’t understand how to write a submission synopsis — this is a bird of another color, and everyone concerned understands that.

No one familiar with the vulture and the peacock would expect them to flap their wings in exactly the same manner or emit the same sounds, right?

Next time, I shall give a few more pointers on how to make that synopsis appeal a bit more to contest judges — and for those of you who are visually-oriented, I shall be showing examples of how a synopsis should be formatted later in the week. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on That pesky contest synopsis, where once again we see the value of that old literary bugbear, show, don’t tell

That pesky contest synopsis, where once again we see the value of that old literary bugbear, show, don’t tell

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I’ve spent the last week plus talking about the various types of literary contest that an agent-seeking writer might conceivably want to enter. As a freelance editor and not infrequent contest judge myself, I’m eager to move on to the nitty-gritty, how to make the small tweaks that often make the difference between reaching the finalist round and not — and avoiding the big mistakes that scuttle most entries before the end of page 2.

Not that I’m ambitious or anything.

Since I’m not gearing this series to a particular contest’s deadline, as I did last year (for the reasons behind that decision, please see my January 22 post), I’m going to put off discussion of the small points to concentrate for a few days on an aspect of contest entry that seems to frustrate nearly every entrant: the synopsis.

Why? Well, if you are entering a category that covers book-length material, you will pretty much always be asked to submit a synopsis — and since contest rules often specify an overarching page limit intended to cover both the submitted chapter and a synopsis for the whole book, many entrants yield to the temptation to skimp on this important part of the contest puzzle.

To summarize what promises to be several days’ worth of advice in a word: DON’T.

Contrary to widely-held writerly belief, a synopsis typically weighs MORE heavily in a contest entry’s success than in a submission to an agency’s, not less. Not to give away trade secrets or anything, but synopses tucked inside submission packets are not even always read — generally speaking, our pal Millicent the agency screener reserves that honor for those manuscripts she reads in their entirety.

Which is to say: not very many.

But the synopsis that accompanies a contest entry virtually always receives some critical attention.

Last September, just before I slid into the wonderland of glee that is mononucleosis, I spent a couple of weeks on how to write a stellar synopsis for querying agents. (Now well hidden under the startlingly opaque category title HOW TO WRITE A SYNOPSIS. Why oh why do I not make these things easier to track down?)

Unless any of you kick up a hue and cry, demanding that I revisit the issue now (anyone? Anyone?), I’m going to proceed on the assumption that most of you have already mastered the basics of writing an (ugh) synopsis. Now, I would like to focus on the differences between a synopsis that might wow an agent and one that might impress a contest judge.

In answer to that vast unspoken question my readership just flung in my general direction: yes, I am indeed suggesting that you write a separate synopsis to accompany contest entries.

Before you rend your garments and trouble heaven with your bootless cries on the subject of all of the extra work I tend to suggest above the bare minimum, hear me out. I’ve seen a LOT of otherwise excellent contest entries scuttled by bad synopses.

Bad how? Well, most entries read as though their authors regarded them as — get this — an annoying nuisance to be tossed off as quickly as humanly possible, generally in as few pages as feasible. Exactly as if the writing there were not being judged, too, in addition to the writing in the submitted chapter.

Did I just hear about 5,000 of you suck in your breath sharply in surprise? A surprisingly high percentage of entrants seem to be unaware that the synopsis is part of the writing being evaluated in a contest, just as in a submission.

I’ve said it before, and I shall no doubt say it again: every word of your writing that passes under the eyes of a professional reader is a writing sample.

Treat it accordingly.

Another common mistake is to submit a too-terse synopsis, presented in what is essentially outline form. (Sometimes, writers present it literally in outline format, believe or not.) Short on the sensual details and plot twists that enliven a story, they give no indication that the author is a talented storyteller. Just that s/he is darned good at making lists.

See my note above about every word of an entry being a writing sample.

Bearing that in mind might help a hopeful entrant from avoiding the frequent fault of repeating entire phrases, sentences, and even paragraphs from the entry itself. Trust me, judges are born nit-pickers: they’re going to notice.

(As will Millicent the agency screener, incidentally; it’s one of her predictable pet peeves.)

It’s also becoming increasingly common to conflate a screenplay synopsis — which typically has separate categories for action and major characters — with a literary synopsis, which is a linear, one-piece narrative concerned with plot for fiction and argument for nonfiction.

Remember how I mentioned yesterday that there are certain problems that prompt judges to slide an entry prematurely into the non-finalist pile as soon as they appear? This is one of ‘em.

Why? Well, such a synopsis makes it so very apparent that the entrant has not learned the norms of the literary world — and as I mentioned last time, one of the things being evaluated in a literary contest is a book’s marketability. To put the prevailing logic bluntly, the vast majority of judges will prefer an entry that is professionally presented — that is, one that adheres to standard format and resembles what a top-notch agent would expect to see in a successful submission — over even a brilliantly-written submission that does not conform with these standards.

Or, to put it another way, with many, many good entries, few judges are going to be willing to waste finalist space on an entry that flouts the expectations of submission. They want to promote writing that has a fighting chance in the marketplace.

Seriously, I’ve seen this criterion included on judges’ rating sheets.

Another type of synopsis that tends to elicit this knee-jerk reaction is the one that does not summarize the plot or argument of the book at all. Instead, it reads like promotional copy: This is the best book about the undead since Interview with the Vampire! This cookbook will change cuisine as we know it!

Or, even more common: This is the moving, insightful, beautifully written story of two kids in love.

Clearly, the entrant has confused a synopsis with a back-jacket promotional blurb. Judges are seldom amused by this, for precisely the same reason that Millicent tends not to be: they want to make up their own minds about how good/important/marketable a piece of writing is, not have it announced to them.

Once again, an old nag from the writing advice stable may be trotted out to admonish us all: show, don’t tell, the high quality of your writing.

The final frequent strategic error is also often seen in submissions to agencies: devoting virtually the entire synopsis to the premise of the book, often to the exclusion of the major conflicts of the book or the ending.

The usual authorial justification for this, of course, is I don’t want to give the ending away. Understandable, of course — were these writers not asking the judges to recognize the high quality of a book that they’re not going to read in its entirety.

Surely, it isn’t SO unreasonable for the judges to want to be provided with proof that the author has at least thought through the ending of the book, as well as the beginning?

Of course, any entrant is free to interpret the synopsis requirement as s/he pleases, but it’s only fair to tell you that in every contest I’ve judges, none of these synopses would have made it to the semifinalist round, much less been seriously considered for the top prize.

As if all that weren’t enough to make even the bravest first-time contest entrant tremble like a leaf at composition time, contest synopses often need to be shorter than submission synopses — which means that writing them is often harder.

Why harder? Well, most contest entries set absolute maximum page limits, which means page space will be at a premium. For instance, if the chapter you want to submit is currently 23 pages long, and the page limit (exclusive of title page, which is never counted in a contest’s maximum page count) is 25, you’re either going to need to shorten your already-existing synopsis to 2 pages or make some serious cuts to your chapter to permit something longer.

Guess which option most contest entrants pick?

Yep, you guessed it: contest judges see many, many single-page synopses. Unless the contest rules actually call for it to be that short, however, those synopses tend to lose style points for the entry — because, after all, it’s pretty hard to tell the story of a reasonably complex book within a couple of dozen lines of text.

Even if the contest rules specify an absurdly short synopsis (or make it sound shorter by calling it a plot outline), PLEASE do not give into the quite substantial temptation to fudge a little to stay within the specified parameters. Even if you have been asked to produce a 3-paragraph synopsis of a 500-page book, DO NOT single-space it, shrink the print size, or fudge the margins to make it fit within the specified limits, unless the contest rules say you may.

Why am I being so adamant about this? Simple: if you do it, you will get caught and penalized.

It’s kind of a no-brainer for the judge, actually. Trust me, if the rest of your entry is in 12-point Times New Roman with 1-inch margins, double-spaced, almost any judge is going to be able to tell right away if your synopsis is presented differently.

Because judges are expected to rate entries for professional presentation, unless contest rules specify otherwise, NEVER allow a contest synopsis to run over 5 pages or under 2.

Why those limits? A synopsis that is much shorter will make you look as if you are unable to sustain a longer exposition; if it is much longer, you will look as though you aren’t aware that a 3- to 5-page synopsis is fairly standard in the industry.

If this is starting to sound a bit repetitious, congratulations — you’ve grasped a fundamental truth about literary contests. An entry’s synopsis, just like its chapter(s), is subject to judging for clarity, coherence, marketability…and professionalism.

Which is why a synopsis that reads like a SYNOPSIS is almost always going to receive higher points than one that sounds like a back-jacket blurb (My writing teacher says this is the best novel since THE SUN ALSO RISES!) or an exposition on why the author chose to write the book (It isn’t autobiographical, but…).

Instead, if you are entering fiction, make sure that the novel sounds engaging, marketable — and like the best yarn since TREASURE ISLAND. For a memoir, ditto. And for other nonfiction, present the argument as fascinating and rigorously supported.

But use the synopsis to SHOW that your book is all of these things, not to tell about it.

Admittedly, that’s a fairly tall order. Don’t worry, I shall be giving some tips o’ the trade in the days to come, to give your synopsis some platform heels. Perhaps even a ladder, to enable it to stand head and shoulders above the other entries.

Before that metaphor falls of its own weight, I’m going to sign off for the day. Keep up the good work!