I can never seem to write a nice little synopsis. I end up getting carried away too much and then I lose my confidence! I've no idea how to write the bare minimum of the story and condense it into a short summary. Does anybody have any good examples? Or perhaps somebody can help me themselves? I keep going around in circles because I keep losing my train of thought. Any help would be appreciated.
There is a thread in General Writing about writing Short, Short stories. These are a great exercise in writing concisely, and that's exactly what a good synopsis boils down to,
Here's advice on synopses from the CWA (Crime Writer's Association) - I found it quite helpful myself. Doesn't exactly tell you how to boil your plot down to a page but it's good advice anyway. My own synopsis is just over 3 pages long, so still too long I think. But that's still way shorter than what I could normally manage! The way I did it was make bullet points of my plot - the exact event and people involved and each event must propel the main plot forward. I ended up with 6 points. Maybe you could do that too - so you can see right away what you MUST include. It'll still come out longer than it should, but it'll be nonetheless shorter than it would've been otherwise! And then you just have to edit it to death CWA's advice (in the context of submitting for one of their competitions for the crime genre, but I think it can be applied generally):
i've helped many of my mentees write their synopses, so if you want one-on-one help, i'm only a mouse-click away... love and hugs, maia maia3maia@hotmail.com
How could you summarize your plot to six points? Can you show me an example so I know what sort of information I'm to bullet-point?
