Synopsis for a Novel

by Sudarsan N
1st December 2014

Dear friends, Whenever we submit our work to the publisher, they have a thing called Synopsis in which we need to give details regarding the novel which we wrote. My question is what should an ideal synopsis should contain for submitting to the publishers. Many thanks in advance.

Replies

There are some great articles on this site, actually. Click on the advice tab on the top left of this page. They provide tips from agents and authors. Also, often the agents' sites will give specifics of what they want in a synopsis. Some ask for one page but some allow a larger word count. I got mine down to one page and am using it for all.

Good luck!

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Welsh
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Welsh Dragon
05/12/2014

You'll find no end of articles about this topic online with a quick 'Google' search, or you could try a book by Nicola Morgan (I think it's available as an ebook on Amazon).

In brief, a synopsis is a summary of the story and needs to include all major characters and all major plot points including the ending (unlike the blurb on the back of a book, it does need all the spoilers). Each agent/publisher may specify how long it should be if you check their website.

Good luck

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Katy W
01/12/2014