Make Friends with Synopsis-Writing

Why synopses are the perfect tool for developing and editing as well as selling your writing

Everyone hates writing synopses, don’t they? A mentee and I have just scheduled a review of their submission package, and they signed off with ‘The synopsis might break me!’ (For more about working with me one-to-one, click here.)

When I confessed online that I’d come to actively¹ enjoy writing them, and often use them in tutoring, the first responses were a slew of ‘You’re mad, they’re the worst thing any writer has to write - your poor students!’ Only then did my fellow synopsis-lovers cautiously put their heads above the parapet to agree with me.

But we all have to learn to write them, so why not turn necessity into advantage, or even pleasure?

This post starts by looking at why so many of us would do anything rather than write a synopsis, then at how thinking differently might help with that loathing, and finishes with the practicalities of writing both working and selling synopses.