Submission-Ready Course - Session Two

This session is all about the synopsis and timing of your submission. We'll also be doing a wee exercise on comparative titles and authors.

Hi everyone,

I hope the first session was helpful! If you missed it, you can still have a look at it here: Session One.

This week's session is all about the (dreaded) synopsis and a discussion on timing (both in terms of when you know when you're ready to submit, and the best time of year for submitting to agents/publishers).

There will be an exercise about finding comps at the end of this post. Comps are the comparative titles we use to give an idea of the genre and market for your book.

The Synopsis

Synopses have a nasty habit of intimidating writers. Perhaps you worry that people will judge you for a subpar synopsis when you know your book is great.

Well, I'm here to tell you that, yes synopses are important, but by no means (to me, at least) the most important part of your submission. Synopses are a very small part of the journey and aren't really used by anyone apart from an agent and/or editor. (I don't ever send synopses to editors when I'm submitting an author's manuscript.) They're useful in that they give me an idea of where the story is going, and the twists and turns along the way. To be perfectly honest, most people aren't great at writing them¹, myself included. They're tricky! I'd much rather the book itself is great, rather than reading the most polished synopsis of all time, then not loving the book.

So now that we know an amazing and mind-blowing synopsis is not the be all and end all, let's work on what's important: writing one that does the job without making you feel inadequate and/or taking too much time. (We all have better things to do.)

So how do we write one?