Articles·The document nobody enjoys
The synopsis
A synopsis is the whole story, including the ending, told plainly. It is not a blurb, and it is not the place to be mysterious.
Agents and editors ask for a synopsis because they need to know whether the story works before they invest a weekend. Tell them what happens. Tell them the ending. A synopsis that withholds the twist is a blurb, and they did not ask for a blurb.
Write in the present tense, third person, even if the novel is not. Stay with the spine: who wants what, what opposes them, what changes, how it ends. Subplots appear only if the ending is unintelligible without them. One to two pages is usually enough. A ten-page synopsis is a short story nobody requested.
Use the characters’ names and be consistent. Do not review your own prose. ‘In a stunning climax’ is advertising. ‘She burns the letter and keeps the child’ is a synopsis. The plain version is harder to write and much more useful.
If you cannot tell the story in that space, the novel may not yet know what it is about. That is valuable information. Fix the book, then the synopsis will shorten itself.