I've just finished Oceans of Fire and I'm getting ready to send it out to various contacts.

Believe it or not I haven't written an outline for an agent or publisher for about twenty years. When I got into the business it was a lot less rigid and it was fairly easy to get people to read your stuff. I think I wrote about one page last time. Oh well, those days are gone.

Can anyone tell me how long the outline for an 80,000 word manuscript should be. Should I break it down by chapter? Is there a prefered format? Should it be businesslike or reflect the tone of the book?

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Hilary

Hilary, I assume you mean a synopsis? My theory about them (and I must stress that this is only my idea) is that the synopsis should be roughly 1% of the manuscript – so yours should be about 800 words.

Don’t break it down by chapter, introduce your main characters as soon as possible, and include how the story wraps up. Most agents these days only read the synopsis if they like the sample chapters, so they're in a positive mood already, and they just want to make sure you can construct an interesting plot. Keep it businesslike but, if you can introduce a flavour of the story, that’s a bonus.

Have a go, and post it up. You'll get plenty of feedback.

Dee

Thanks for your help Dee. I actaully find this more intimidating than writing the entire book. It would be really helpful to have a look a some examples. Do you know if there were any posted on the site that might be in the archives?

Hilary

There are quite a few in the Synopsis group archive, but they're not always the final versions. It’s worth reading them, though, along with the comments they’ve attracted, to work out the pitfalls.

Everyone finds them bloody awful. Yes, personally, I’d rather write an entire novel. I've read loads of them now, and the most common problem I see is including too much detail – about half way through it suddenly turns into a short story, which is not what agents want to see. It’s so difficult, after writing a full ms in all its fine detail, to pare it down to bare bones.

Have a go and post it up, on the assumption that it will need a complete rewrite. We’ll take it from there.

Dee

Yes, it's a horrible, horrible job. Dee's absolutely right, though.

For what it's worth I'd say, keep it to one page if at all possible, or one and a half, single spaced 11 or 12pt. The important thing is to show how the main plot develops - that's what the agent's reading it to find out. So you need who the main characters are, when and where it's happening, where they start, what events change them and how, and how they finish. Perhaps withhold the very end of the resolution: I remember finishing with '...and she realises what she must do' rather than actually saying what she did. Any subplots are only worth putting in if their theme counterpoints/parallels the main one. Better to leave out lots of names and events than skimp on conveying the force of the important ones. You don't want to write in the voice/s of the novel but more neutrally. On the other hand your words shouldn't be too bland. Think full and descriptive jacket copy, rather than blow-by-blow scene breakdown, perhaps.

If there's a space in it, you could always join the synopsis group for more sustained critiquing.

Emma

Thanks so much for the advice Dee and Emma. You've given me something to work with.

I just wrote a few paragraphs which I thought worked quite well until I realised I'd omitted to mention that my protagonists are mermaids. That's quite an important point I feel. AHHHHHH!

There is obviously a real art to this.

Hilary

There is obviously a real art to this.

I don't know about art, but it's certainly real craft. You have to work at it quite as hard as anything more creative. It's worth leaving for days or weeks when you think it's perfect, again, just as you would with anything. You'll see it much more clearly, and can revise.

Emma

Panic over, for now at least. I spoke to an agent I know in New York and she said to send the complete manuscript and not bother about a synopsis unless I'd already written it.

However, I can't count on others being so accomodating so I'll continue to work on a synopis in case she doesn't take it on. She did say she thought it was the kind of thing she could sell though, so I'm cautiously optimstic