One of the most sobering and terrifying moments for first-time novelists is when their agent or publisher demands a synopsis of their book. Boiling the story down to a very, very short but coherent synopsis is much harder than you might think, and if you polled a room full of writers about their least favorite aspect of professional fiction, the synopsis will absolutely be in the top three.
If you think it’s easy, try it on any novel you’re familiar with. Go on, we’ll wait.
The thing is, the synopsis is a useful tool, and not just for marketing purposes. In fact, one of the best things you can do for any steaming-fresh manuscript is to sit down and try to work out the “elevator pitch” for your plot.
Thirty Seconds to Glory
An Elevator Pitch is a fast, effective, razor-sharp description that can be rattled off in the time it takes for an elevator ride. The basic idea is a salesperson or other employee who finds themselves riding the elevator with their boss or a potential client—they have thirty seconds to pitch them, so they need to have that pitch ready to go, written, practiced, and perfected.
One thing you need to know about the book you just wrote is whether or not the plot works, and unfortunately you’re probably too close to it to truly know the answer to that question. Letting your book sit for a while will help, because time will erode your memory of it and you’ll come back to it a bit fresh, but working up an Elevator Pitch for your plot—basically, writing the plot synopsis long before anyone actually asks you to do so—is even better. It offers up three distinct benefits:
1. It will reveal plot obscurities: If you can’t find a simple way to convey a concept, chances are no one will understand what you did there.
2. It will exposed logical fallacies: Sometimes we’re so intent on getting from Plot Point A to Plot Point C we overlook the fact that Plot Point B makes zero sense—or simply doesn’t exist.
3. It will give you a hint as to the marketability of your book: Even if you don’t care about commercial success, if you can’t give potential readers a short, punchy reason to read the book, you won’t have any readers.
So, start boiling. The fewer words you need to convey the basic spine and tone of your novel, the more successful a novel it is. If you find yourself writing a second novel to explain your novel, something has gone horribly wrong.