(Hi all! Eloy here. I’m filling in while Anna recovers from the London Book Fair.)
In 1977, Charles and Ray Eames—the same designer duo who helped define post-war aesthetics and gave us so many chairs—made a short film called Powers of Ten. The film opens with a shot of a man and a woman lying on a picnic blanket in a park. From there, the camera begins zooming out by—you guessed it—powers of ten. We rise ten meters above the picnickers, then one hundred, a thousand. Soon we are above Earth, the solar system, and eventually—at 10²⁴ power—the galaxy.
Eames’s film holds a lesson for the would-be writer. Whether writing a novel, a memoir, or a reported work of nonfiction, a writer must constantly shift between different “powers of ten” as they bring their work to market. During the drafting process, a writer works one meter off the ground. Every comma, every sentence, every word needs to sing. But during the querying process, a writer must zoom way, way out and consider the broader tableau: the query letter; the overview and chapter outline, if you’re writing nonfiction; and finally the subject of this week’s newsletter, THE SYNOPSIS.
WHY DO I NEED A SYNOPSIS?
I have a confession to make: I rarely ever read synopses, and Neon doesn’t require them in submissions (although plenty of agents do—be sure to check individual agencies’ guidelines). I always read the query letter and, if I’m intrigued, the sample pages. But as an agent who specializes in fiction (and I’ll be speaking mainly of fiction this week), I prefer to approach a novel more or less cold. It helps place me in the seat of a future editor or reader who is starting from page one with relatively few preconceptions.
Yet even if the agents you plan to query do not request a synopsis in their guidelines, I still recommend everyone try their hand at writing one. At some point, someone important will ask every successful author to tell them, usually at a moment’s notice, “So what’s your book about?” Cue the flop sweat, the panicked fumbling, the vague hand gestures. The ability to succinctly describe the broad strokes of your story—and why they’re so captivating—can be your lifeline in these uncomfortable moments.
Crafting a synopsis forces you to strip your plot down to its essential components. When you can only summarize a story in a single page, every event and character has to justify its existence. If you struggle to explain what your protagonist wants and what stands in their way, that may signal that your narrative engine lacks gas. Subplots that once felt rich and atmospheric can reveal themselves as distractions, while your central conflict either sharpens into focus or dissolves into incoherence under the powers of ten.
A manuscript allows room for digressions, atmosphere, and voice, which can sometimes conceal a sagging middle or a climax that arrives too late. But when you summarize the story in sequence, link-by-link, those squishy problem spots become harder to ignore. You may discover that the protagonist spends the first third of the novel waiting for others to act rather than making decisions on her own or that a major turning point occurs offstage. Writing the synopsis can reveal that two minor characters serve nearly identical functions, or that an emotional payoff arrives too late.
By forcing yourself to sit down and articulate the narrative in clean, causal sentences, you begin to see hidden patterns underneath the scenes you have already written. You start to see which plot points truly drive the story forward and which serve as adornment. The result is not only a deeper insight into your novel but perhaps a clue as to what still needs tweaking. In this way, crafting a synopsis is less about satisfying an agent’s submission guidelines than about understanding the floor plans of the house you’ve built.
WHERE TO START?
