WRITE YOUR SYNOPSIS IN 7 EASY STEPS!

March 21, 2025March 27, 2025 / Edwina Shaw / Leave a comment

a winding dirt road over a stream, where children play — The winding path of writing your synopsis can be fun!

WHAT A SYNOPSIS IS NOT.

A synopsis in not a pitch. If you’re needing to send out a query email or a pitch to a publisher or producer, see my post on writing PITCHES HERE. In a pitch you cover genre, comparative titles, author information and give a one paragraph synopsis that gives the main action and themes of your story, but not the ending.

SO WHAT IS A SYNOPSIS?

A synopsis is your entire story in a page, or two if you’re lucky. I can hear the screams from here! “What? How do I get my 80 000 word novel into one page. It’s impossible!”

Well yes, writing your whole book in a page IS impossible. But if you do a good job of writing your synopsis you can give your reader (a prospective agent, publisher or producer), a good idea of what you story is about and how the plot unfolds.

Your synopsis will introduce your main character/protagonist and their primary story goals; and also let us know who or what is opposing that goal. The body of your synopsis shows us how the battle between our hope that the protagonist will achieve their goal and our fear that they won’t and the worst will happen, plays out. For more on this see SUSPENSE = HOPE + FEAR.

Your synopsis needs to include all major plot points, including the ending. Yes, even if there’s a twist you don’t want to give away.

Let’s get to it!

STEP 1

Who is your main character?

Brainstorm your protagonist – what makes them stand out from the crowd? Harry Potter isn’t just a child wizard, he’s an orphaned child wizard whose parents were killed by Voldemort. In Jaws, Chief Brody isn’t just the police chief on the island, he feels responsible for the deaths on his watch, and he’s afraid of the water (important detail to include when he’s fighting a shark).

Think of some contrasting adjectives to describe your character. In ‘Dear Madman’, my work in progress, the murderer is violent but vulnerable after a childhood of abuse in institutions.

Write a sentence describing your protagonist. Remember to make them as interesting as possible. We want our characters to be a little MORE than us regular humans. A passionate but psychotic police officer is a lot more interesting than a lazy accountant.

STEP 2

What does your character want?

What is your character’s goal? Your primary character goal is established in your inciting incident – the unexpected event that sets the whole story in motion.

In Harry Potter, Harry gets a letter inviting him to attend Hogwarts. In Jaws, a shark kills a swimmer at the same time as the holiday crowds arrive. In ‘Dear Madman’, the man is hired to work on the family farm.

Brainstorm your character’s goals. You can do this on three levels:

Physical – the material world (this is where the synopsis will mainly focus)

Emotional – the world of love, romance, feelings

Spiritual – often, as in Harry Potter, this comes down to the battle between good and evil

STEP 3

What opposes your main character’s goal?

Who or what is stopping them get what they want? If you’ve written a romance, this may be a love rival, or societal or cultural issues, or even warring families (think Romeo and Juliet). It may be an antagonist like Voldemort or the shark in Jaws, or it may be the political or social setting of the story as in Hunger Games, or even the sea, if you’re writing a story about a lone sailor circumnavigating the world. Setting is important. See my article on setting HERE.

Identify the opposition to your main character’s goal and write it down.

STEP 4

What is at stake?

What’s the very worst thing that could happen if your character doesn’t achieve their goal? Make it worse!

In Harry Potter, Voldemort will come to power and the world will be plunged into darkness. In Jaws, the shark will go on a human feeding frenzy and in Dear Madman, the man will murder the entire family in their beds.

Brainstorm what’s at stake.

You should already have all the answers within your story. If you’re having trouble coming up with answers to any of these questions, you may need to rethink before submitting. Write your synopsis then use it to ramp up the tension in your whole book/screenplay.

STEP 5

Write your logline/premise

Put STEPS 1, 2, 3 and 4 together to make your logline. For example: A police chief who’s afraid of the water and blames himself for the deaths on his watch, must hunt down and kill a giant shark before it kills again. Or: An orphaned child wizard must defeat the powerful warlock who killed his parents or the whole world will be plunged into darkness.

Write your logline and use it to keep a tight focus in step 5.

STEP 5

Write down all your main plot points

Focusing on the primary goal of your character as identified in your logline, and the actions they take to achieve that goal, jot down all the major plot points in your book. Include other characters that play a significant role in the story, but don’t include subplots or other characters that don’t move the story goal forward.

If you’re not sure what I mean by plot points, think of all the key emotional turning points in your story.

Start with your inciting incident or hook. Then move onto what happens that makes it impossible not to take on the challenge, the plans your character makes, what happens to those plans, and a big unexpected event at the middle of your story – the midpoint – that makes everything worse.

What actions does the antagonist take, or what events derail things? What’s the next big plan that fails and your character’s darkest moment? What gives them the determination to defeat the antagonist and achieve their goal? How do they change and grow? What’s the biggest plan and the big emotional moments in the climax? And then of course, what’s your ending.

Don’t worry if this takes pages, the next step will narrow it down.

STEP 6

Focus and finesse your list of plot points and write them in sentences.

Remember to keep the focus in tight on your premise, and your protagonists attempts to achieve their main story goal. Start with your inciting incident and logline: Eg When a man-eating shark kills a young woman at the start of holiday season, a police chief who’s afraid of the water and blames himself for the death, must hunt down the shark before it kills again. Then move on through each of your significant plot turning points.

Include your setting. This is vital for speculative fiction set in other worlds, or in any story where the setting impacts the action.

Cut, cut and cut again until you get as close to one page as you can. Then cut again.

STEP 7

Inject your unique tone or voice

This is the trickiest part. If you’ve written a comedy, your synopsis needs to be funny. If you’ve written a thriller, the synopsis needs to keep us guessing. If you’ve written a romance, then the reader has to sigh and get dreamy. If you’ve written a literary novel your own unique voice needs to shine through.

Redraft your synopsis making sure it matches the tone and genre of your book.

Don’t despair the hardest part is done!

DONE!

Well not really, synopsis writing takes time. Be prepared to work on it for over a week, refining and finessing it. Show it to your writing buddies who know your story, but also to writing buddies who don’t.

Have you shown enough of the storyline to hook them in? Does the story still make sense cut down to such a minimal outline?

Does it feel dead on the page? Often they do – don’t worry – as long as your storyline has enough action, it will still work. You can try including a line or two of dialogue, especially if that’s one of your strengths.

Don’t give up. Yes, writing a synopsis is hard, but you’ve done hard things before. You’ve written a whole book!

Be proud of yourself!

I hope you’ll find these steps useful. Let me know how you go!

Lots of love

Edwina xx

PERFECTING YOUR PITCH!

April 29, 2023 / Edwina Shaw / 5 Comments

Recently I attended my third ASA Literary Speed Dating pitching event. This great initiative by the Australian Society of Authors brings writers face to face with publishers and agents to pitch their work. For $27 or so per pitch you get three minutes to sell your book to trade publishers or agents. YAY! These opportunities are the best way to get your work noticed by the publishers or agents you’re aiming for, and I highly recommend you give it a go once your MS is ready. Here’s more info on LITERARY SPEED DATING. Next sessions are in July.

But you don’t need to do the Speed Dating to pitch. You can still submit your pitch online to most trade publishers or agents through their slush piles, or directly to any publishing contacts you may have, if they’re happy for you to do so.

Here are a few Australian publishers accepting direct submissions right now – no agent needed.

PAN MACMILLAN AUSTRALIA Open for submissions

HACHETTE AUSTRALIA – ONLY ACCEPTING Children’s, YA and non-fiction (As at end April 2023)

UQP looking for Literary fiction, non-fiction and Stories for the Future

ALLEN AND UNWIN – Friday Pitch! Submit your pitch on a Friday!

TEXT PUBLISHING – 6 months wait here

PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE AUSTRALIA Currently closed for submissions but opening up for children’s books in August.

You don’t need to limit your pitching to Australian publishers either – my first two books were published by a small UK press – so do your research and find a publisher that feels like the right fit for your book. Follow their submission guidelines to a tee.

A general rule I follow when submitting is to AIM HIGH – GO FOR GOLD! Start with the big guns – those dream publishers or agents. If you don’t hear back or get a rejection (gird your loins – you’ll be facing a few of these. All badges of honour!!) then send out your next round of pitches to smaller trade presses, and so on, until you’re left with hybrid publishers or independent publishing. Independent publishing isn’t tricky and is very empowering. All you need is a good book designer to do the interior and cover for you and a printer to create the books. And now with the ASA DISTRIBUTION SERVICE for Independent Authors our books also make it to bookstores. Plus of course, make sure it’s been properly edited! Essential. There’s no use having the fanciest cover in the world if your story doesn’t make sense.

So onto – THE PITCH.

If you are pitching in person or in an email you only have a bare minimum of space and time, so it’s essential you cover all the most important elements quickly. We want our pitches working perfectly to hook the interest of our targeted publishers.

OPENING

Start with the TITLE of your book, the GENRE you’re writing, the WORD COUNT and the LOGLINE ( a sentence or two that gives the essence of your story in a nutshell – think of the movie descriptions on movie streaming apps) plus some COMPARATIVE TITLES (these are important as they automatically give the reader an idea of the flavour of your work). You can also include your target audience – Eg Women readers from 30 to 50 or in my case Readers of true crime searching for more depth and meaning.

Here are my opening paragraphs:

TITLE Shadowman is GENRE literary true crime (88 000 words WORD COUNT) based on a tragedy that has haunted my family for generations. Think Garner’s search for meaning This House of Grief meets Schmidt’s first person murderer narrator in See What I Have Done. COMPARATIVES

In 1911 my great grandfather, Bill Williams, unwittingly hired a dangerously disturbed man with a history of violent crimes against girls to work on the family farm, endangering the lives of his wife and four young daughters. LOGLINE

LOGLINES

The logline needs to identify the protagonist, why they are of interest, their main story goal, and what is at stake if they fail to achieve it.

Here’s a simple template to help you write your logline

An ADJECTIVE, CONTRASTING ADJECTIVE OCCUPATION (describe the character through contrasting traits and their job if relevant) must DO SOMETHING OR STRUGGLE AGAINST SOMETHING or else RISK – WHAT IS AT STAKE?

SYNOPSIS

After the logline you need a greater explanation of your plot in a paragraph long synopsis. This is tricky! How do you take 80 000 words and shrink it to one paragraph? For a pitch synopsis you don’t need to include the ending so you can leave the reader with a hook. You need to include at least a couple of actions that the protagonist takes in pursuit of their goal and show the tension and stakes rising. If you can, inject some of the tone or style of your book. Eg, if you’re writing a comedy make it funny, a thriller? – make it suspenseful.

Here’s my SYNOPSIS

The farmhand, Joseph Throsby, suffered horrific ongoing abuse in an orphanage as a child and this combined with untreated epilepsy has resulted in a vulnerable but violent man who has only recently been released from jail. Rejected by his family and the community and desperate to create a new life for himself, he gives a false name to secure the job, but when he accidentally reveals his true identity, Williams fires him, setting in motion a chain of events that leads to murder. Not long afterwards, Throsby attacks the eldest Williams girl, Grace, in her bed. She bravely fights him off and Throsby is imprisoned, but only for six months. In court, he swears his vengeance. True to his word, as soon as he’s released, he returns to the farm and lies in wait where Grace always takes the cows out. That day however, she sends her younger sister in her place.

After we’ve got the main gist of the story across, we then need to add another paragraph about ourselves as writers. This can be the trickiest part! How to not sound like a wanker?!!

Here is where we show off about any previous publications or prizes or courses we’ve done, any manuscript development we’ve undertaken or professional edits of the work etc. MOST IMPORTANTLY though is to state why you are so passionate about this topic you had to write a whole book about it! You can also make a note about HOW you have written it, to give the publisher an idea of the style and tone of the book.

Here’s my WHY ME, WHY NOW or ABOUT THE AUTHOR section.

The story is told in 3 interwoven sections, the first-person colloquial voice of the murderer, the omniscient voice of the Williams family, and the contemporary voice of the writer herself, reflecting on the echoes of violent crime and her attempts to break the family curse.

I’ve been writing and publishing for over 20 years. My first book Thrill Seekers was shortlisted for the 2012 NSW Premiers Awards and since then I’ve published another 4 titles as both author and editor. I teach Creative Writing at UQ and to adult survivors of institutional abuse whose experiences have informed Shadowman. This MS has undergone multiple drafts with support from a Varuna Residency award and an ASA mentorship award.

That’s it for your elevator pitch! Keep it as short as possible – under 300 words if you can. Remember to leave time for questions if the pitch is in person and to research where you submit your pitch. There’s no use submitting a rural romance to a military history publisher or vice versa.

So, what do you think of my pitch? I was very lucky to get requests for materials from both an agent and publisher. Now comes step 2 – THE WAIT! Please cross your fingers for me, a little luck can go a long, long way in this crazy business. And when we finally get our chance let’s all party by the light of the moon!