These are words I never thought I’d write. I toiled through writing a synopsis for my first novel, begrudging the effort. It was more work on top of the work of writing my novel. But it was a useful exercise and helped me spot holes in the narrative, boring moments (not that there were any, nope, not at all), and places where I could ramp up the action, all things I couldn’t see when I was inside my work.
It wasn’t until I completed my second book, Anthra’s Moon, that I realized a synopsis could do much, much more.
I put it to work. I sent the longer, more formal synopsis to agents and publishers and used it to pitch my story at a writer’s conference. I cut the synopsis down a bit and posted the shorter version on my personal website to describe my book. I reduced it further, to a couple of paragraphs for my various author’s pages (Facebook, Goodreads, etc) and the back cover of my book. Finally, I condensed it to a few sentences for a press release announcing the publication of my book.
I now have different versions to pop into any situation. I’m grateful for this hardworking piece of writing.
Signe Kopps 