Writing a Synopsis (Because I Had To)

I recently had the (mis)fortune of having to write a synopsis for my current work in progress, GIRLS BREAK THINGS. You may recall my fever-dream reverse outline from a couple weeks ago, which was also about this work.

This manuscript is still pretty fresh – if it were paint on a wall, it’d be in that tacky stage – but I thought, hey, let’s start putting it out there and see what kind of response I get. On Valentine’s Day, I participated in a pitch event for this work on Twitter. Amazingly, I had a couple agents request pages. Of course, in their submission requirements, they asked for a synopsis.

Womp.

Insert about three days of me flopping around the house, moaning that I didn’t want to write a synopsis because they’re hard and I don’t wanna and can’t the agent just read my manuscript please so I don’t hafta. Honestly, I probably should’ve had a synopsis ready before I tweeted about this work in the first place, but I did this to myself, so I don’t even pity myself and you shouldn’t either. Regardless, a synopsis was needed, and I had to write one if I ever wanted this work to go anywhere.

So what follows is my (messy) process of writing GIRLS BREAK THINGS and getting to this point – it’s all relevant, I promise. Let me also preface this by saying that I did zero research on how to write a synopsis before I started writing mine. Operation Awesome has posted about writing a synopsis before, so if you're looking for something more like instructions, you should check out this post.

When I wrote GIRLS BREAK THINGS, I started with an outline. I followed the 90-day novel process of getting into my characters’ heads and repeatedly fine-tuning my outline before I even began writing. (I started writing this manuscript a couple times with very limited success, so this was super weird to me.) I began this draft about a week before NaNoWriMo 2018 and finished a few days shy of the end of the month. After letting the manuscript sit for a couple months, I went back and wrote my reverse outline.

The reverse outline was the most helpful tool I had while writing my synopsis. I had the major plot points already laid out in order, as well as the finer influences each of those points had on the plot overall. From there, it was a matter of deciding which points absolutely needed to be included as written and which ones could be further reduced, summarized, or glossed over. I copied those points over into a new document and set about transforming them from bullet points to proper sentences that flowed from one to the next, adding in details as needed.

The hardest thing with writing the synopsis was deciding how many characters to talk about. I have at least thirty characters of varying importance, and while it was clear that the waiter I wrote about in chapter nine wasn’t going to make the cut, deciding which major players were important enough was a challenge. Ultimately, I realized that the players could be reduced to five characters: main character Joyce, love interest Nyx, Joyce’s BFF Laddie, Nyx’s mom/the high school principal Mrs. Otero, and robotics club adviser Mr. Reed. There are certainly other characters who impacted the plot, but it was easier to refer to them by their role (Joyce's moms, Nyx's ex-girlfriend, etc.) rather than by name.

The synopsis clocks in a bit shy of two pages. I’ve seen suggestions that a synopsis should be anywhere from 1-10 pages, but the agent submission pages I’ve visited usually say “Please copy/paste your 1-2 page synopsis here” so that’s the length I went with. And to be honest, I’m pretty pleased with it. I think it does a good job of referencing the stakes while also connecting with the characters and their emotions – but I might be a little biased. I did get a request for more pages from one of the agents I submitted to from the pitch event, so maybe it wasn’t a total dumpster fire.

Writing a Reverse Outline

Hello friends! I don't know about the rest of you, but it seems that every time I do NaNoWriMo, I burn out for a while afterwards. And this year/cycle/whatever you want to call it, I burned out for a solid two and a half months. I stopped querying my manuscript, I stopped reading for my critique partners even though I'd just taken on a new one, and in general I stayed in bed about 18 hours of the day and didn't really leave the house.

Yeah. It was bad.

Recently, though, my partner nagged me into being vertical for an extended period of time. I needed something to do, and I'd played way too many hours of video games. So I came to terms with the fact that it was Time.

It was Time to Revise My NaNoWriMo Manuscript.

Ughhhhh.

I started by dragging myself to my laptop rereading what I'd written. It wasn't terrible, and I was pretty pleased with some parts of it that I had thought were dumpster fires while I was writing them. But I just...didn't know where to go from there. I vented to one of my writing buddies that I knew what I wanted to change, but not how to change it. And, like the gorgeous font of amazing ideas and perfect advice that she is, she suggested I make a reverse outline.

A reverse outline?

What is this mysterious creature, you ask? Yeah, I hadn't heard of reverse outlines, either. The idea is that some people make outlines before they write their manuscripts with the major plot points or what needs to be revealed at what point, etc. With a reverse outline, you make an outline after the manuscript is completed. That way, you can get a better sense of where to insert the changes you want to make, and you don't have to be searching through the whole document for that one scene where I think the main character says this to her friend but then her friend is ambivalent, yeah, where'd that go?

Yes thank you I am very organized.

Anyway, if you're stuck in the revision trenches like I was, give this a shot. It might give you a better sense of the timing of your manuscript and just where you should be making edits. Make sure to get down not only the major plot points but also the things they influence, like character reactions that will be important later or information this plot point brings out. Then you can go through and note where you want to make revisions. It's also a good idea to note where you did a good job! It's like encouragement from your past self :)

And because I'd be remiss if I didn't include an example, here's an excerpt from my own reverse outline:

Excerpt from my reverse outline for my manuscript, tentatively titled GIRLS BREAK THINGS. The main bullet points are the major plot points, and the secondary ones are reactions to that plot point. I've also commented on the outline to make notes to myself about other things to consider that didn't appear in the manuscript.

Check out the Dear O'Abby post this Thursday for more information about revising!