More in the way of victorious things

[megwrites]

I have now managed to wrangle my synopsis down to one page, which was an accomplishment that I will be forever proud of, because it was kind of like climbing Mt. Everest in my shorts on a windy day, except not that easy and with more pain and angst and gnashing of teeth. Sherpas were lost, people left to die on the icy heights. It wasn't pretty.

So after I have fought and struggled and have narrowed down 82,000 words into a one page summary, there is the problem of formatting. There is, apparently, no consolidated format for a synopsis. Some have things hanging out on the right margins, some in the left. Double and single spacing are both valid, and some have full headers, some just put the genre (but apparently not the title) in one of the upper corners.

The format that is suggested in Give 'Em What They Want: The Right Way to Pitch your Novel to Editors and Agents is much simpler than some of the ones I've seen online, but that book only touches on mainstream and mystery genres. Maybe there's some sort of SF/F genre type format that agents who see SF/F queries and synopses prefer. ID-fucking-K.

But there are folks out there who have done this dance before, so any help you could give would mean that I owe you big time. I'm broke, but I can move furniture and bury bodies like a champ, so if you ever need me.

Also, it would be good for my hair because it will help me to stop pulling them out and also keep me from using the ALL CAPS ITALICS OF RAGE.

Comments

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

There's no standard format that I know of--either double space, or single space with in-between para spacing. No one seems to care, really.

Have you read Donald Maass's The Career Novelist? (Free download here (http://www.maassagency.com/books.html).) I'm about halfway through, it does address synopses and says "Whatever's reasonable is okay." It also addresses quite a bit of stuff that would have been of interest to me in starting the agent search, though I was convinced the book was beyond me at that point, and put off reading it.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

It eases my mind that it's not something that agents are sticklers about, because I've researched the agents I have on my list and none of them have specified anything I can find, either in their blogs, sites, or interviews they've given, that they have a preference for any format. So, *whew*.

I haven't read the book by Donald Maass, but I just downloaded it and am going to. I am definitely not above any reference material or advice, especially from someone who runs a very successful literary agency.

Thanks for the recommendation!