Mystery Synopsis

I don't know if this is the best place to post this, but I thought I would try here. I am posting the synopsis of a YA murder mystery manuscript that I am currently working on and that I will have finished in about a week. I'd be interested in some feedback:

Does the story draw you in?
Does the synopsis seem like it would be interesting to an agent should I choose to go that route?
Are there any minor changes in mechanics that you would make?

The finished manuscript will be between 25,000 and 30,000 words.

Thank you,

Maria Sanchez, the most infamous lesbian at Hunter High, has been murdered. Now Brian Marks, a 16-year-old student at the same school, finds himself the main suspect, as he was the only one known to be near the scene of the crime when it occurred.


As Brian works to clear his name and maintain his freedom, he uncovers a secret relationship between Maria Sanchez and Paula Akers—Blake Rode’s recently ex-girlfriend. And now that Maria is dead, Blake uses the murder as a means to reestablish his relationship with Paula, the girl he believes to be the love of his life. Brian immediately suspects that Blake is behind Maria’s death, and he works tirelessly to uncover enough clues to prove the boy’s guilt.


Eventually Brian finds that Blake has a twisted friendship with Nathan Miller, the high school principal’s son, and he begins to wonder if it was actually Blake who killed Maria after all. It turns out that Blake sought a sort of private revenge against Paula for breaking up with him to be with a girl, and he did so by engaging in a faux-gay relationship with Nathan.


That relationship between Blake and Nathan took the form of violence. Blake’s abuse of Nathan, however, is the very spice that Nathan feels he needs to prove that Blake actually cares about him. Only after some time does Nathan grow weary of the beatings—especially knowing that Paula bore the brunt of Blake’s cruelty when he was in a relationship with her only a few weeks prior.


With no other reasonable suspects at play, the police move closer to arresting Brian. Now he feels more pressure than ever to discover who killed Maria Sanchez. After talking to his own short list of suspects and even spying on them, he soon realizes that it was Nathan who killed Maria in an effort to draw Blake and Paula back together. With Maria out of the way, Blake’s and Paula’s relationship might survive, and Nathan’s beatings would surely stop once Blake was back with Paula and abusing her instead.


Nathan had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to kill Maria. The morning of the murder, Nathan tells Blake that Maria is dead, even before he kills her. Nathan knows that this false news will cause Blake to seek out Paula to try to mend their relationship, and Blake’s absence will provide Nathan the opportunity he needs to carry out the crime during a blackout at the school.


Once Brian has collected all the evidence and assessed all the clues, he confronts the three suspects and accuses Nathan of committing the crime. Nathan denies his guilt at first, but he eventually confesses when Brian presents the mounting proof against him. The police quickly enter the room and arrest Nathan, and Brian’s name is cleared.


When Brian has lunch with his best friend the following day, he admits feelings of extreme guilt that Nathan must be punished when he merely sought to defend himself against Blake’s abuse. After talking to his friend, however, Brian realizes—even at his young age—that life is often unfair, but that justice must always prevail.

 

Overall an interesting plot. You set it up well and proved several people who could have committed the murder. However, I don't like that the murder victim is a lesbian. Lesbians are already under represented in any forms of media, and when they do appear it's nearly always as murder victims. That dose not make your choice wrong, but it is something to keep in mind.

 

Yes, that is understandable @Terbus , and I had thought of that. This may fall in the category of LGBT novella anyway because all the potential suspects fall somewhere on the LGBT spectrum, and the book is silent as to where the protag falls, but he could potentially also be gay because I felt like I modeled him after me, and I'm gay haha. We will see. I'm four chapters into the book. I have 18 total to write. We'll see how this works. I'll let you know when I get the MS done.

 

What makes Maria 'infamous' and how does her sexual preference relate to it? It's seems odd to say it that way. I don't think one would say "Maria, the most infamous heterosexual".

 

That may be true @Bruce Johnson , but her lesbian categorization is key to the story. It provides a potential motive for the crime (which turns out to be secondary to the real motive).

 

The problem I see is people misunderstanding your meaning. Anytime I read "the most infamous xyz" I assume that xyz is something negative, or perceived as negative in the context. You haven't given any reason to explain why being lesbian would warrant such a view at Hunter High.

I would just be careful these days as many people, and I'm assuming agents and publishers too, are sensitive to these things.

It might make more sense to say something like, "Maria Sanchez, the most outspoken lesbian at Hunter High, a public school in the middle of the bible belt, has been murdered." because in this context we know why her sexuality stands out or would make her unpopular.

I'm very wary about kicking a hornets nest among more progressive audiences, so maybe I tend to be more cautious or cynical. But to play devils advocate, would you write "the most infamous Latina" or "the most infamous female"? Because that may also part of her identity and when it follows 'infamous' people may think you are suggesting it contributed to their infamy.

TL, DR: it may seem pedantic, but there is a big difference between "most infamous lesbian" and "most infamous student that happens to be lesbian" and the first one may turn off some readers.

 

I haven't read your synopsis yet, but I will say that 25-30k is not a novel. That's a novella, and those are notoriously hard to sell. Not many agents look for novellas.

For it to be officially a novel, it must be a minimum of 40k words - and that's only for the romance and fast fiction categories. Typical industry standard sits at 80k words for adult, and for YA it's 60-80k. If you're hoping to go the trad route and this is your debut, you might not have any luck with a novella even if it is excellent.

 

@Mckk , you're right. It is definitely a novella. I see your concern that some audiences may not be interested in novellas, but I disagree that they're hard to sell. When I was writing a lot of romance, I was selling hundreds of 10,000 word short stories a month for $2.99 to $3.99 a piece. Novellas are the in thing now. People want something they can read in an hour and be done with. With e-readers all the rage, you don't have to worry about them being too expensive to produce because they're just air, nothing more.

@big soft moose , I always write the synopsis and the teaser copy well before I finish the manuscript, sometimes before I even start. This has never been an issue for me. I like to take my time with the synopsis, revise it multiple times, and make it as good as I can. Having to write a synopsis after the MS is complete can stall a writer for a long time, not to mention that fatigue has likely set in from the energy it took to write the MS. I'm at peace with my process. I am very much a planner, so I always know pretty much how my story is going to go, so a synopsis is no big deal to write before the MS is complete, and nothing new to me.

@Bruce Johnson , I absolutely love the word outspoken. I hope you don't mind my using it? It's your idea of course, but I just think it would work much better here than infamous.

 

Sure, no problem. It's just one word, I don't have a monopoly on any individual words (except maybe a few made up words in a sci-fi piece I'm working on, assuming I copyright it one day).

 

@Mckk I do see what you're saying about going the trad route with novellas, and I agree with you. It may be hard to sell to publisher, but for self-publishing, I did reasonably well--at least for a supplemental income--with short stories and novellas. I think for things like Kindle and Nook and selling them for a few bucks, people are more likely to buy them. We will see. Some of the high school students who struggle with reading may do well with something shorter, and those increasingly with their own form of ADHD may find them easier to digest. Just a thought.

 

@big soft moose , Yes that is true, I did it more as an exercise. I still play with the idea of traditional publishing, and I wanted to have it done. It is done anyway, and I will get started on the teaser copy. You are right, for self-publishing you only need teaser copy.

 

Overall, an interesting little pot boiler. Having recently published a small book of just under 20,000 words, I wonder if you can really cover all the twists and turns you have built into your synopsis in 25,000 to 30,000 words, but I hope that's a flexible limit rather than a line in the sand.

One thing about it bothers me:

Until I got to "only a few weeks prior," I had the impression that this situation played out over a period of several months, or maybe a year plus. I understand it's a book (and s short one, at that) so there needs to be a bit of compression or simplification, but to me the notion that within just a few weeks Paula would have broken up with Blake; Blake would have ginned up a fake homosexual relationship with Nathan AND abused Nathan to the point that Nathan was ready to commit murder to end it; and that Nathan would actually have committed murder strikes me as being a bit too compressed to be plausible.

 

@Moor123 - You make good points. Funny how fast the publishing industry is changing. Indeed if it's only e-books and esp for self-publishing, novellas are probably fine. I'm still going for the trad publishing dream, so I haven't looked real hard at self-pub yet - I can't see myself wanting to do the marketing and promotion, the real business side of things However, since you did ask if getting an agent was a possibility, I'd probably say no to that question, unless you have a large, established readership - then it's a different matter. All agents and publishers care about is whether it'll sell and make money, after all.

As for your synopsis, I only managed the first 3 paragraphs or so because I got awfully confused as to who's who. If going the trad route is something you think you may want in the future, perhaps practice writing it according to industry standard - so simple things like bolding and capsing character names when they're introduced the first time, and I think you shouldn't mention more than 3-4 characters in a single synopsis. I feel like you could take more time to establish the connections just so the reader is clear as to who's related to whom. It reads a bit like a soap.

@big soft moose - I think his synopsis is more to figure out structure and pacing. That's really the purpose of a synopsis anyway, and it isn't really for the public eye or for submissions.

 

Oh I agree that the writing quality doesn't matter at all if the synopsis is written for the author's own purposes of figuring out the novel structure before investing the time in to writing it. But overall, I guess apart from his final question about minor mechanics, I thought he was asking for story feedback - whether people find it to be an interesting story.

 

I believe synopses are a LOT harder to write than the manuscript itself. You're taking a twisty, turny piece and compressing it into 500 words or so. I was curious if the story sounded interesting. I have a separate document for the outline, and I have not yet written the teaser copy. I played with the idea of traditional publishing but as @Mckk pointed out, this is probably not going to work for that.

This is a very straightforward piece, there are twists of course, but nothing in the way of a subplot. All except for one scene is told from the POV of the "detective." I'm testing the waters in YA mystery fiction, as erotic romance and just erotica in general is making me a little queasy at this point. I wanted to write something more wholesome. In any case, I do appreciate the feedback.

Thanks to @SapereAude for your feedback. The murder occurred around October, so maybe months is a better timeframe. I toyed with this idea myself, not sure how to time it. I do of course want it to be a short timeframe, and in fact, the entire story itself only takes place over the course of a few days.

 

@Mckk , good idea about all caps for the characters the first time they come up. I also contemplated that the names Brian and Blake may be too similar to put them in this book, as readers might get confused, but I like the idea of bolding and capitalizing the character names the first time they appear in the synopsis.

 

Why didn't Nathan kill Blake?

That would make a whole lot more sense.

 

@Thomas Larmore , Nathan loves Blake and is afraid of him. Plus it was easier to hide the fact that he killed Maria. And it wouldn't be much of a story if he had killed Blake. I think we have to suspend some disbelief here. It's a good point though, I can see that.

 

So, is Blake heterosexual and faking it with Nathan, homosexual and was faking it with Paula, or bisexual?

If Paula was the live of Blake's life, why did he abuse her?

 

Brian should have a motive to kill Maria, a relationship with her, so the cops will have reason to think he's the killer. Also, it would be good if Nathan framed Brian for the crime.

 

This could easily be done by having a
backstory where Maria beat him handily on the debate team, or Maria got first chair in the band instead of Brian, etc.