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The elusive selling synopsis....
I've been reading (and doing the exercises, thank you very much) a book called WRITING THE FICTION SYNOPSIS: A step by step approach by Pam McCutcheon. I feel I've always had competent synopses--indeed, I even wrote an article once on a smart, five page synopsis style--but between illness and overwork, I haven't been trusting my instincts lately.
Especially, could I change the focus of a synopsis, to try and sell it to another market--without doing a rewrite of the book? If the book needs anything, it needs 1% tweaking. But first, I want to know if anyone wants to buy it. So I must present it to a new market.
So I need to look AT the book in a new way. I heard that Pam's book was a good one, so I thought I'd try her system.
The fascinating thing is, this **is** how I write a synopsis--a working synopsis. Almost topic sentences for scenes, etc. But I've never tried to do this and then pare it down to a selling synopsis.
So I'm halfway through re-reading and writing up topic sentences/paragraphs for each scene. And I've gotten so much out of the book so far, that even if I do not come up with a synopsis I like--I've learned so much about my own thought processes in creation, I think I'll lay out books with her technique before writing them, just to see if it shortens the "fumbling around until the note is true" portion of starting a book.
I'll let you know if I like the synopsis.
Especially, could I change the focus of a synopsis, to try and sell it to another market--without doing a rewrite of the book? If the book needs anything, it needs 1% tweaking. But first, I want to know if anyone wants to buy it. So I must present it to a new market.
So I need to look AT the book in a new way. I heard that Pam's book was a good one, so I thought I'd try her system.
The fascinating thing is, this **is** how I write a synopsis--a working synopsis. Almost topic sentences for scenes, etc. But I've never tried to do this and then pare it down to a selling synopsis.
So I'm halfway through re-reading and writing up topic sentences/paragraphs for each scene. And I've gotten so much out of the book so far, that even if I do not come up with a synopsis I like--I've learned so much about my own thought processes in creation, I think I'll lay out books with her technique before writing them, just to see if it shortens the "fumbling around until the note is true" portion of starting a book.
I'll let you know if I like the synopsis.
no subject
My synopses are long...as you soon may learn. I have been told by an agent, however, that this isn't necessarily a bad thing if you're trying to sell in another genre. The more detail the better, as it gives the editor a fuzzier feeling that you'll hit the right marks with the book.
no subject
I, too, write long synopses--usually in the range of 25 pages, which is why I know I wasn't settled enough to do selling synopses of current projects--I was trying to wrestle them down to two pages, which is not me. I suspect that if we can find our own style for synopses, we can get away with length--if we're getting across tons of useful info to the editor.
(I don't share writing synopses--I've written one hundreds of pages long, with dialog in it. But that was a series tie-in, so I had to prove to myself I had the tone down. I did, but the publisher started doing weird things with the line...)
Maybe this will help with selling this idea to Luna--I think the book might work for them.