A synopsis is a one-to-two-page, present-tense summary of your entire novel from opening to ending, including the ending, written so that an agent or editor can see the whole shape of the story without reading the manuscript. Where the query letter withholds, the synopsis reveals: it exists to prove that the plot holds together, the character arc completes, and the climax pays off what the premise set up.
It is the document most writers dread because it strips the book of everything they are proud of, the voice and the scenes and the texture, and asks whether the skeleton underneath can stand on its own. That is exactly what it is for. Here is what goes in, how long it should run, how to handle the ending and the arc, and how to keep it from reading like a list.
The working standard is one page, single-spaced, around 500 words, and most agents who ask for a synopsis without specifying a length mean something close to that. Some ask for two pages, a few for longer, and their guidelines win every time. Prepare a one-page version first; it is the harder one to write and the easier one to expand. Anything beyond three pages is a treatment, and it stops being read as a synopsis and starts being skimmed.
At one page, a novel gets roughly one paragraph per act: the setup and inciting incident, the escalation to the midpoint, the collapse and low point, and the climax and resolution. That allotment forces the right decisions. Subplots survive only if they change the main plot. Secondary characters appear only if the summary breaks without them. A scene that took you a month to write is one clause if it is a turning point and nothing if it is not.
Open with the protagonist, their situation, and the inciting incident, in that order and fast; the first sentence should already have something going wrong. Put character names in capitals on first mention, a convention that lets the reader track the cast, and keep the named cast small: the protagonist, the antagonist, the love interest or key ally, and whoever else the plot literally cannot be told without. Everyone else is 'her brother' or 'a rival detective'.
From there, follow cause and effect through the turning points, giving each its consequence: not just what happens, but what it forces the protagonist to decide next. That is the difference between a synopsis and a plot summary; a summary lists events, a synopsis shows why each one leads to the next. Write in present tense, third person, regardless of the novel's tense and point of view, and in a plain, confident voice that carries a hint of the book's tone without trying to perform it. No dialogue, no rhetorical questions, no teasers.
Tell the ending. Every agent who asks for a synopsis is asking specifically to see whether you can land the plane, and 'and then she must make the hardest choice of her life' is a refusal to answer the question. State what the protagonist does at the climax, what it costs, and how things stand afterward. If there is a twist, reveal it, and if the book is a mystery, name the culprit and explain how the detective gets there. The synopsis is a confidential professional document, not marketing copy, and withholding reads as either coyness or a sign the ending is weak.
Alongside the plot, the synopsis has to show the internal arc: who the protagonist is at the start, what belief or wound governs them, and how the events change that by the end. This is usually a sentence at the opening, a clause at the midpoint, and a sentence at the climax, and it is the part that most often goes missing when writers summarize events alone. A synopsis where things happen to a protagonist who never changes reads as a plot without a story, and that is the note it will earn.
The commonest failure is the 'and then' synopsis: a flat sequence of events with no causation, no stakes, and no sense of why any of it matters. Fix it by inserting the consequence after every turning point and cutting any event that does not produce one. The second is overpopulation: a dozen named characters in a page the reader will never keep straight. The third is the vague ending, discussed above. The fourth is trying to reproduce the novel's voice at length, with jokes, atmosphere, and lines of dialogue; the synopsis is the diagram, and the pages are the proof of voice.
Read the finished synopsis to someone who has not read the book and ask them to tell it back. If their version has a hole, the synopsis has a hole, and quite possibly so does the book; more than one writer has discovered a missing motivation or an unearned climax from a page of summary. Treat that as the document's real value. A synopsis that is hard to write is telling you something, and a clean one is evidence to an agent that the manuscript behind it is under control.
A synopsis is the logline unfolded - the same protagonist, goal, obstacle, and stakes, followed through to the ending. Sharpen the one-sentence version and the page falls into order.
Get the logline right firstWritten and edited by the One More Draft team - working writers and editors building the workshop we wanted. About us
