Hi Reader,

I’ve been working with a lot of synopses lately.

(That’s a summary of your entire manuscript in about 500 to 1000 words. You’ll send it along with your query letter when you pitch agents.)

I’ve been reading them. Critiquing them. Revising them. Even, occasionally, trying my hand at writing them.

Here’s how I felt about that writing part:

This is, in fact, not just in. Anyone who has tried to write a synopsis knows that they are TOUGH to write.

I haven’t yet found a writer who enjoys summarizing their entire story in under a thousand words. Nor does anyone enjoy the pressure—that agents will judge whether to request your manuscript or not based on that summary.

But right now, knee-deep in synopses, I’m struck by something else.

Not how difficult synopses are to write. Not how much rides on getting them just right.

I’m struck by how incredibly useful they are as a revision tool.

The thing about summarizing a story in a thousand words is there’s nowhere to hide. Plot fuzziness that you can sweep aside with pretty words in the manuscript becomes starkly apparent in the synopsis.

Cause-and-effect connections that aren’t there. Shifts in the protagonist’s goal without explanation or motivation. Dangling plot threads that don’t resolve.

Every synopsis I’ve encountered this month has illuminated plot, character arc, and story structure gaps in the manuscript.

To be fair, that fact alone hasn’t made my writers happy. But here’s the even better part:

Thinking through how to fix those gaps in the synopsis . . .

. . . has illuminated solutions in the manuscript, too.

See, the synopsis forces you to distill your story down to its essential core. What is it really about?

Not “what are all the fun subplots doing.” Not “how will you introduce all the cool side characters.” Not “what exciting event happens midway through a scene.”

What is the story, at its core, really about?

The synopsis forces you to find the throughline.

Then, it forces you to follow that throughline all the way from the beginning of the story to the end, without any fluff or flourish or excess explanation. Just the throughline, nothing more.

That makes it really clear when the throughline breaks down.

And when you finally know what the throughline actually is and can see where the throughline breaks down, you can find your way to the solution.

Writing the synopsis is hard because both steps are hard.

It is tough to figure out what your story is really about. (This is much harder than you might think, and most writers I encounter don’t yet know.)

And it is tough to follow that meaning from the beginning to the end of the story. It’s tough because there are so many other fun details enriching the story, and it’s tough because it’s so hard to figure out what your story is about in the first place.

But it is exactly those two things that makes the exercise of writing the synopsis so powerful.

This is especially helpful when you’ve revised the story so many times that you’ve lost perspective. You’re so close to the story that you know it like the back of your hand. Everything is working perfectly, and nothing is working at all. Your story is about a thousand things, and also nothing. You’re lost and overwhelmed.

If that feels all too familiar, try stepping away from the manuscript and telling yourself the story again in a different form.

Take a stab at writing a synopsis. 1000 words, the core arc of the story, start to finish.

This will be hard. You probably won’t enjoy doing it.

But the things you learn from it—

—what your story is really about, and where the throughline breaks—

—will be more than worth it.

After all, revising a novel is simply telling yourself the story over and over and over again until it’s finally clear.

What will one thousand words reveal? Give it a try and see.

Happy editing,

Alice

P.S. Not sure what your story’s core is? Here’s how to start exploring it.​