The slushpile

I’m very chuffed to be able to introduce Nicola Morgan onto this great blog to talk about her new ebook, Write a Great Synopsis: An Expert Guide. Hopefully it will help readers here as much as it’s helped me!

Hello, Strictly Writing readers and thanks for hosting me on the Write a Great Synopsis (WAGS) blog tour.

I have always liked writing synopses and I hadn’t realised what a problem writers had with them until so many people started angsting about it. Many of the questions I get are about how to write this thing that seems to me to be the simplest part of a writer’s work. So, that’s what Write a Great Synopsis is about. I aim to solve the problems and make the task simple and stressfree.

The WAGS blog tour consists of a mix of interviews and extracts. It’s an extract that I thought I’d offer you today. And there’s a competition, too – with prizes of synopsis critiques!

One of the crucial things that writers find most difficult is knowing what to leave out of a synopsis. My extract below consists of two analogies that help you visualise the answer to this.

(Reproduced from Write a Great Synopsis – An Expert Guide)

The synopsis as a journey
Here is a way of thinking that I find useful. Imagine your synopsis as a journey. This is what we need to know:
1. Who is on the journey and why?
2. What is the intended destination and why?
3. What terrible thing will happen if they don’t reach their destination and who or what is trying to stop them?
4. What happens to knock the travellers off course?
5. What characteristics and tools do they use to get back on course?
6. What is their actual destination and who survives and with what injuries?

Here’s what we do NOT need to know:
1. The detours they took along the way.
2. The weather.
3. What they had for their picnic.
4. What they said to each other.
5. What the scenery was like.
6. The route in order.
7. The people they met on the journey, unless one of them is an axe-murderer or someone equally useful.

The synopsis as a healthy human
This is my other analogy. If your synopsis were a human, in order to see that the human is alive and strong we would need to see the healthy glow of the skin and that it is supported by a strong skeleton. We don’t actually see the skeleton, but we know it’s all there. We don’t need to see that the organs are all present and working – that’s obvious from the healthy glow of the skin and the light shining from the eyes. We do need to see the feet: the end of the story. A synopsis without an end is like a human without feet.
(Extract ends)

Analogies never present the whole picture but they are often a good start, offering a visual element to boost understanding of the rest of the argument. Write a Great Synopsis covers everything about synopsis-writing, clearly and reassuringly. At the end of it I believe you truly will say to yourself, “Don’t panic – it’s only a synopsis!” That is my aim.

All commenters below (by Feb 15th) will be entered into the Big WAGS Competition, with chances to win a critique of your synopsis by the Crabbit Old Bat herself! One comment per person on each blog – though you can add to your chances by commenting on the other posts on the tour. Details of all stops on the tour will appear on Help! I Need a Publisher! as they go out.

Thank you for listening and I do hope I can help you write a great synopsis! For details about the book, including buying options, go here.

Guest post by Kirsty McLachlan - Step out of the slush pile and into the hands of an agent

For a few weeks now, I’ve been raising the issue of the slush pile in our agency meetings on Monday mornings (when we discuss new authors, deals and Other Business). SAE’s seem so last decade and isn’t it time we geared ourselves up towards the digital decade? And just how many people have we found in the slush pile anyway? For the past few years, many of our clients have come to us through the ‘back door routes’ – those routes that ensure a manuscript lands firmly with a loud plop and a bit of glitter on the desk instead of the floor. Those authors haven’t asked for their work to be returned – either they are too cool for that or they assume – quite rightly – that we will agree to represent them.

So what are these ‘back door routes’? Let me name a few:

1/Friends of friends of friends – or just-who-do-you-know? Think about six degrees of separation – someone in your circle of friends, your family, your work colleagues will know someone in an agency or in publishing – it’s just inevitable. It might take a bit of working out – a bit of detective work but I reckon 50% of writers, will be able to locate a name with more than just a whiff of publishing about them.

2/Get noticed – start platform building - start a facebook page, start blogging, start twittering. I’m meeting an author this week who I found via twitter. Get your readers following you now, even as you write your book – get them involved in the writing process. Ask them questions. By making a name for yourself, you might just get an agent approach you.

3/Rules are for fools – start breaking them. I work in a busy but small agency. We have guidelines but there are times when people duck under these and aim straight for David Godwin, the agent, they email him and grab his attention. He’ll respond straight away if you ‘seduce’ him with your email – I’ve known him to read a synopsis that day and respond. So don’t feel you have to always tow the line. Be a bit daring.

4/Do your homework – target each and every agent you send your work to. Look for hungry agents – those with small lists and who have just moved agencies or have just been made an agent. They will be the ones who will read your work quickly and get back to you with a response.

5/Stalk your favourite agent – get to know them – who do they agent? Look for author events where the agent might be present. Learn what their likes and dislikes are. I’m obsessed with books set in snowy locations – so when a book came to me set in a cabin north of the Arctic circle, I leapt on it. It’s a personal business, so get personal – each agent will have their own little quirks and patterns so you need to find out what they are.

6/Get involved in a writers’ community – writing is no longer an isolated occupation. We’ve found at London Writers’ Club that writers love to network, chat, compare notes and use each others experiences to take their writing to the next level.

7/Get on your soap-box – start talking – shouting – about your book. Someone, somewhere just might overhear the conversation and will help you get your manuscript to the desk of an agent.



So it’s time to be a bit canny, a bit bold and a bit tricky. Look for the gaps and you might just bypass the slush pile completely. Be passionate and that passion will take you places, I promise.

Kirsty McLachlan is an agent with David Godwin Associates and co runs The London Writers' Club with agent Jacqueline Burns.

The next LWC Live which is on Tuesday, 23rd Feb. (next Tuesday) details here: www.londonwritersclub.com