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As a writer, I’ve had to write a synopsis for every novel I’ve written. Some of them were written for a literary agent or publisher and were lengthy, others were just a blurb meant to explain what the book was about. In any case, I had to find a way to drastically condense the narrative so that it would fit the given spatial constraints.

I bet you’ve been there yourself, as a writer.

You’ve struggled, perhaps even agonized for hours, days, weeks trying to come up with the perfect text that would summarize your novel. So, here’s a little secret:

It’s impossible.

Nobody can ever fit a narrative requiring the length of a novel in a paragraph, page, or even ten pages. If that were the case, it’s self-evident that the novel wouldn’t exist. Why writing 80,000 words when you can express the same thing in 1000?

The reason a synopsis can never be perfect is based on this. However, with this out of the way, we could perhaps rephrase the question and ask: How to write a synopsis for a novel, making it the best it can be?

This is the topic of today’s post. As the title suggests, in order to learn how to write a synopsis for a novel – in a way that serves its purpose – we must learn how to overcome a certain disconnect; a paradox, caused by the inherent nature of a novel.

A Synopsis Is Not a Shorter Version of the Novel

As a first thing, let’s unpack something I said right above: “To learn how to write a synopsis for a novel – in a way that serves its purpose – we must learn how to overcome a certain disconnect”.

Before we take another step, we need to first talk about the purpose of a synopsis.

As I’ve said time after time, a novel is not about telling a story. Rather, a novel is about expressing affect – instances of thoughts, emotions, states of mind. To the extent an author has responsibilities, they function as translators of experience.

An author takes an experience, transforms it in some way (perhaps based on individual or sociocultural circumstances and contexts), and offers it to an (intended) audience in order to help them create their own version of the experience – that might or might not be similar or even related to the original experience.

In simpler words: A novel is meant to make you feel something when you read it.

That’s certainly not the function of a synopsis. Though synopses come in various flavors – we’ll talk about this right below – the general gist of a synopsis is telling their recipient what to expect from the book.

Notice how I used the word “recipient”, not “audience”. Synopses have recipients because they have a specific purpose: to quickly let someone know what to expect from the book before they commit to reading it in its entirety. A novel, on the other hand, in its artistic (rather than marketing) component, has no specific purpose.

Types of Synopses

As I mentioned above, a synopsis comes in various flavors. Each has different dynamics, is of different length, and is aimed at different recipients – that is to say, it serves a different purpose. I’ll just arbitrarily divide them into three grand categories, for the purposes of this post.

• Full Synopses. They can be several pages long (a few thousand words) and they’re supposed to offer a full, detailed outline of the plot structure. They’re meant for literary agents or publishers who want to know precisely how the novel progresses.
• Shorter Synopses. These can be shorter (a couple of pages; a few hundred words) and though they’re also supposed to tell you “what the book is about”, they don’t have to offer the full details. Think of them as offering the checkpoints of the story. They’re also meant for agents and publishers.
• Blurbs. These are what you see on the back cover of a book or on Amazon listings. They’re short, no more than a couple of paragraphs or so. They’re meant for the intended audience. Though they very often describe “what the book is about”, they ought to instead describe “what the book feels like“, for reasons we’ll see further below.

So, what does all this mean in terms of learning how to write a synopsis for a novel?

Learning How to Write a Synopsis for a Novel Involves Understanding the Disconnect

Now that we’ve seen the purpose of a synopsis, we must learn how to write one so that it serves its purpose. No matter what the context and circumstances, this involves addressing the disconnect that exists between a novel and its synopsis:

Novels are about “how it feels”; Synopses are about “what it is”.

In other words, a novel is meant to offer an affective/subjective/”readerly” response, whereas a synopsis is meant to offer a factual/objective/”professional” response. You can see this in various possible ways: Novels aren’t meant to fully make sense, whereas a synopsis should. While a novel involves symbolism, irony, and all sorts of literary devices, a synopsis can’t operate on that level.

And so, to learn how to write a synopsis for your novel, you must first understand this disconnect. A synopsis is not a “short” version of the novel, the way a short story isn’t a mini novel.

Objectivity and Subjectivity, Facts and Affect

Notice that I make no claim about whether knowing “what it is” is preferable to “how it feels”. That is beyond the scope of the post. Or, to put it this way, if you have marketing considerations – meaning, you need to supply a literary agent or a publisher with what they want – you just have to do what you need to.

Marketing involves quantification, objectification, and overall things that are graspable to the extent it’s possible. Which means, agents and publishers want the “what it is”. If that’s important to you, give them what they want.

There are also things you can shape to your liking, which can involve less objectivity and more affect. A good example of such a flavor of synopsis would be the blurb.

What about Blurbs

As I mentioned above, blurbs are often about “what the book is about”, whereas they perhaps ought to be about “what the book feels like”. Indeed, as I mentioned in my post about overrated plots, a long, divulging description usually tells me that the author is preoccupied with the plot.

Here’s the blurb for my latest novel, The Perfect Gray:

“There is something you could do for me,” he says, and in this moment, of this deceptively mundane afternoon, I can read the future and see that this man will destroy my life as I know it.

Hecate, trying to mend her relationship with her mother while recovering from a past trauma, leads a solitary existence shared only with her pet chameleon, Apollo. But a chance encounter with a younger man will throw her into a world where conflicts are necessary, pleasing others is secondary, and ethics are negotiable.

Part of me would’ve wanted to simply go with the quoted excerpt, but my marketing side (don’t laugh) felt I should add the second paragraph. But that’s the limit of what I’d do.

Learning How to Write a Synopsis for a Novel Involves Overcoming the Disconnect

Having understood the disconnect, it’s time to overcome it. Meaning, now that you know that the synopsis of the novel and the novel itself are two entirely different things, it’s time to talk about how to address the issue. In other words, how to write the synopsis of your novel in a way that serves its purpose.

So far I’ve approached the topic from a necessarily theoretical perspective. Now it’s time for the practicalities. To help you, I’ll structure my analysis as a step-by-step list. Moreover, I’ll begin it by reiterating what we have learned so far. This way, you can have all that is needed in the same handy list.

How to Write a Synopsis for Your Novel: a Checklist

• Consider the kind of synopsis you need to write:
  • Is it for an agent or publisher, therefore involving strict guidelines?
  • Or is it something like a blurb for a back cover, or a free synopsis for an article?
• Depending on the above, decide on the balance between factuality (plot; “what it is”) and affect (narrative; “what it feels like”):
  • Certain genre novels (e.g. crime or historical fiction) might require more plot elements.
  • Others, such as literary or experimental fiction, should generally attempt to convey the affective foundation.
  • If you write for an agent or publisher, and particularly if they’ve mentioned a detailed outline, they want the plot. Don’t bother with symbolism, allegory, or anything of the sort. By the way, there are few things worse than having to explain a literary device – it’s just disrespectful to your work. Just don’t bother.
• If you’re writing a blurb or free synopsis – meaning, you can include affective elements – you need to be careful deciding what to include, and how:
  • Ponder, once again, on the purpose. Assumingly, you want people who read the blurb to commit to the novel. Or, perhaps it’s more important to have people liking the novel – even if it means less people committing.
  • Should the affective impact be high-risk and high-reward in terms of interpretation? Or low-risk, low-reward? Take the blurb I offered about The Perfect Gray, for example. I’ve chosen words (“destroy my life”, “ethics are negotiable”) that are ambiguous and can convey very different meanings. They are high-risk, high-reward, meaning that there will be people who will misinterpret them, but I prefer that, knowing there will be people who will grasp the concepts I wanted to emphasize.
• Ultimately, be in control of your synopsis. You are the one writing, you get to choose what will be in it. Even if there are limitations involved (in space or content), understanding them and working your way through them can result in the best possible synopsis.

It’s All About Understanding

We can’t address an issue if we’re not aware of it. In our context, we can’t write a successful synopsis if we’re not sure about certain key aspects, such as the ones I described in this post.

All in all, to expand on the last item of the list above, a bad synopsis is one that has escaped control of its author. Most often this happens when an author erroneously believes a synopsis is simply a “short version” of the novel. This is impossible to produce. Even purely plot-wise, and certainly affect-wise, a synopsis cannot express the same.

Understanding this disconnect is crucial. In most cases, the disconnect materializes as a discrepancy between the “what it is” and the “how it feels” parts of the narrative. To put it simply, you often just can’t convey the affective aspects of the narrative. This can be a problem, especially with narratives that rely primarily on affect – such as literary fiction.

In the end, remember that a synopsis is not a work of art. It’s not text that it’s meant to be artistic. As a blurb or article promoting your work, it might partially emulate an artistic text, in that it tries to replicate the affective response the audience would get committing to the novel.

Still, a synopsis is a synopsis. And a novel is a novel. Treat them for what they are, and they’ll treat you fairly in return.

4 Comments

1. Igor Livramento

   January 31, 2022 at 23:03

   The intended reader is not the extended (actually existing out there in the wild) reader, as Walter Benjamin once wrote: An unforgettable life remains never forgotten, even if no one remembers it — even if no one reads it, the book has a reader (still, it remains unreadable, unread even — inexhaustible).

   I really liked the expression “‘readerly’ response”, as it made me think that a novel should propel the (intended or extended?) reader to make something to read, i.e. to write. Isn’t that the very notion of (artistic) influence? One text has as its conditions to induce the existence of another text. That’s why Agamben wrote To Whom is Poetry Addressed?

   To whom is poetry addressed? [Translation from Italian to English by Daniel Heller-Roazen]

   It is only possible to answer this question if it is understood that the addressee of a poem is not a real person but an exigency.
   An exigency coincides with none of the modal categories with which we are familiar; the object of an exigency is neither necessary nor contingent, neither possible nor impossible.
   One can say, instead, that one thing ‘exacts’ or demands another when, if the first thing is, the other, too, will be, without the first thing’s either logically implying the second or forcing it to exist in the field of facts. An exigency is, simply, beyond all necessity and all possibility. Like a promise that can be fulfilled only by the one who receives it.

   Benjamin once wrote that the life of Prince Mishkin demands to remain unforgettable, even if everyone forgets it. In the same way, a poem demands to be read, even if no one reads it.

   This can also be expressed by saying that, insofar as it demands to be read, poetry must remain illegible. Properly speaking, there is no reader of poetry.

   This is perhaps what César Vallejo had in mind when, defining the final intention and almost the dedicatee of all his poetry, he found no words but por el analfabeto a quien escribo. It is worth considering the seemingly redundant formulation, “for the illiterate to whom I write”. Here por means less “for” than “in place of”, just as Primo Levi said he bore witness for — that is, “in place of” — those called Muselmänner in the jargon of Auschwitz, who could not in any case have borne witness. The true addressee of poetry is the one who is not in a position to read it. But this also means that the book, which is destined to the one who cannot read it — the illiterate — has been written by a hand that, in a certain sense, does not know how to write, an illiterate hand. Poetry is what gives all writing back to the illegible from which it comes and towards which it remains underway.
   1. 🚩 Chris

      February 1, 2022 at 05:50

      I think that one of the greatest errors authors make is when, in their fierce desire to seek the extended reader – as you aptly described it – they neglect the intended reader. More importantly, they forget who the first intended reader is: the author themselves!
      In other words, we have countless authors out there – experienced and inexperienced alike, professional or aspiring – who wrote not having themselves in mind; what they would like to read. That can be disastrous for the affective framework.
2. Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt

   February 1, 2022 at 04:29

   Very useful thoughts, and also explains why I’m not satisfied with mine – I didn’t take this kind of care with analyzing why and what before writing things such as the Amazon description or the back cover matter for the paperback. Or ad copy.

   My goal is to persuade someone to start reading – if they are part of my target audience (target is such a loaded word – I think of arrows), they will continue. But it’s difficult – try it – to describe a mainstream or literary love story without saying ‘NOT a Romance’ – and Romance readers don’t like what I write – and they do know exactly what they like.

   It’s important now because I’m finally getting close to finishing the second volume in my trilogy, and I’ll have to write new text for it, and it’s a good time to review the first volume. Doesn’t mean it will be easy – but it’s worth the effort. Publishers may or may not do it better, but at least they take the task off your hands. Not worth the whole rest of the relationship, but there is that part.

   Still have no clue how, but the what is clearer. Thanks!
   1. 🚩 Chris

      February 1, 2022 at 05:45

      Thanks for your interesting insights – and glad to hear you’ve found the post useful!

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