Hello again,
Last time I reached out, I asked you if writing got less ‘soul sucking’.
You were right! It did. I’ve got a 107k near future sci-fi manuscript that I’m querying. Though I’m noticing that some agents also want a synopsis.
Would you happen to have any tips on what milestones a synopsis should hit, or any general tips on querying itself? I’ve been trolling QT and PM, trying to cross reference them, but I’m also thinking I just query everyone who’s open to sci-fi.
No worries if not! Hope you’re well and hanging in there,
Thanks,
Melanie
Hey there! Hanging in as best I can.
Meanwhile, first of all, re: queries: I am absolutely the wrong person to be asking about this, as (looking backwards over a longish list of novels) I don't believe I've ever queried... not the way we usually mean it these days: as a "cold" inquiry to someone who has no idea who you are before you turn up (as it were) in their inbox.
See, the problem is that—jeez, sort of forty-five years ago now? possibly more?—my agent came looking for me (on the recommendation of my first book's editor), rather than the other way around. And once you've got an agent, they're the one who handles further queries for you, to editors and publishers and so forth. So unfortunately I have zero useful data to contribute on the subject. And as a seriously outlying outlier in this regard, I should probably be referred to as Spiders DD, who should definitely not be included in the dataset. 😏
As for synopsis milestones: I think these are going to depend heavily on two things: (a) What the work in question is like, in terms of subject, length, and tone, and (b) who you're pitching to. (By which I mean, what editor personally. Regardless of how it may look, you're not really pitching to a publisher: you're pitching to a person.) With this in mind, if the person has any kind of online presence, I'd want to look at that with some care and see how their public tone presents itself: then reflect that tone somewhat in the synopsis, and work to complement it.
In the case of the synopsis proper, since it's an already-completed MS we're discussing here, I'd be tempted to turn my usual outlining technique on its head and analyze the MS for the most important things that had to happen for the story to complete itself satisfactorily. I would maybe pick a couple of these from the beginning of the story, a couple from the middle, and a couple from the end; then interlace these as tightly as possible with a similar number and arrangement of emotional / character beats. Then write it up, edit carefully for tightness (because a synopsis so long and leisurely that it puts your editor-to-be to sleep is probably not what you want...), smooth out the "voice" of the synopsis—as with outlines, I would routinely keep a synopsis's tone fairly cool/calm, so as not to upstage the story content—and send it off.
Again: it's ages since I've had to do any such thing... so as regards the suggestions above, look around for the table salt and add what seems to be necessary. Also: keep hunting around online for websites run by agents or editors who have standing to discuss this usefully and meaningfully. (When I finally open up the FicFoundry.com writing-advice website that I’ve been slowly pulling together over the couple of years, I hope to gather together in one place at least some of the resources that people now most often suggest as useful for new novelists getting into the querying end of things.)
Anyway: hope this has helped! 🙂