Christian Speculative Fiction discussion

Does anyone else find writing a good synopsis challenging?

Thomas wrote: "Does anyone else find writing a good synopsis challenging?"

It's harder than writing the book! It's like taking an x-ray of a supermodel and trying to convince someone how beautiful the person is by just seeing the bones. I honestly think it's a waste of time. I would stand on my head to get traditionally published, so I do them.

The synopsis is important because it and the cover draw a potential reader in. But writing it is challenging, especially when you want to work in keywords that help promote your book.

Lara wrote: "It's harder than writing the book! It's like taking an x-ray of a supermodel and trying to convince someone how beautiful the person is by just seeing the bones. ..."

Fantastic image, Lara! That describes it exactly. I couldn’t agree more about the challenge. Does anyone else find, like me, that your whole book sounds totally lame in a synopsis?? You read it, and wonder "Did I really write that rubbish?"! Getting it to sound interesting and mysterious rather than just plain stupid takes many, many rewrites—for me, at least!

I'm sure that depends a lot on the subject matter. I think it's especially fantasy books that sound that way in a synopsis. What do others think?

Ella Rose wrote: " ..."

Ha! That's a great gif!

Yes, I do. But the following guidelines will help. A synopsis comes in two forms:

SALES COPY/BOOK BLURB
I have to complete the ones for my upcoming books this year. I think you need a hook of some type, the main character mention, his or her job/career and the emotional journey or challenge that he or she faces. Then we can dive into a few plotting specifics and the setting/time frames if it’s critical for the reader to understand the story. If you can close the synopsis with a final ‘punch’ statement or question to seal the sales copy deal that can represent the hook to get readers to buy and read.

BOOK PROPOSAL
If you’re talking about a synopsis you send say in a book proposal to an agent or publisher, I’d take the story outline with the key plot points and add some brief character description and motivation along the way. The traditional publication powers that be want to know the ending so give it to them and that’s that. This works easier if you’re a plotter as opposed to a pantser. But the advice stays the same. The writer knows his story better than anyone so for pantsers, find those high story points and hang your synopsis structure on them.

Things have gotten pretty murky as of late. I have seen several promotions where they literally say "strong female lead" as the first words in the synopsis. That seems strange to me.

I have found that in order to accurate synopsize my book I have to take a few liberties with the plot. Some things are just too complicated to write out in such limited space.

For example, my characters open a portal 90 years into the future but then go on to find that the destruction they see happened 50 years "ago". So I just say they opened a portal 40 years into the future. Lots of stuff like that.

I've been querying agents for the past 7+ months and I'm wondering if any of my synopsis "hooks" are doing any good. The problem is that a good story is like a mountain--it looks different from every side, but every path leads to the same main point.

I've tried starting with the love-hate romance angle, the lost-treasure adventure angle, and even the "this is a vision of marriage based on God's design for mankind". Even though I'm trying to personalize each hook to the agent, it doesn't seem to be making much difference.

I guess the impression I'm getting is that many agents and submissions editors just skim-read through the synopsis anyways, so the luck of being picked for a full manuscript request seems to depend more on what time of day and how much caffeine they're on when they pick up the proposal.

You're not wrong. Agents get so many queries that they (or the assistants reading them) have only a few seconds to make a decision. Plus they all have their own biases as to what they want "right now". And if they do happen to read a couple chapters they expect you to be a professional author. The smallest misstep in action verbs, grammar or whatever is a rejection regardless of how good the story is.

And I don't know that I can blame them. Like I said, so many submissions, so little time. They want to take those with the best chance of success with the least amount of work for them.

I am certain that there are good agents, but in some cases they feel like middle men.

I also think that Christian fiction and fantasy is a hard genre to promote. You are battling the agents, publishers, and book stores biases all at once. There are a lot of really good christian authors, but you have to look for them. Before I found internet sources I was at the mercy of the local Christian bookstore. The store seemed to specialize in Amish romance novels. If I was lucky they would stock Blackstock or Peretti. It is a viscous circle. People think that all people read are those novels and want no part of it. Stores don't stock the scifi/fantasy titles and they don't sell. As a result the publishers think that there is no market.

My husband worked as a manager for a Christian book store for a while and it is actually more than just business issues that keep speculative Christian fiction off the shelves. The boards of these big chains actually have theological problems with fantasy fiction, specifically, and some issues with sci-fi pertaining to moral issues concerning technology. They consciously choose not to carry these books on purpose, but now both of those chains are out of buisness. You are now left with Mardels and church stores as physical Christian bookstores. Publishers used to follow the lead of the bookstores, but I am curious what will happen now that you can only get most Christian fiction online.

Lara wrote: "My husband worked as a manager for a Christian book store for a while and it is actually more than just business issues that keep speculative Christian fiction off the shelves. The boards of these ..."

What is the deal with these Christian bookstores closing so rapidly anyway? I would think that their operations weren't as large in scope as B&N, or as Borders/Waldenbooks were. Does your husband have any insight on why this hit like it did? Thanks, Lara.

Lifeway was a little bit of a surprise, but they were the strictest chain when it came to what fiction books they would carry. They were struggling to make a profit since 2008 like everyone else.

Family Christian Store had a horrible selection of books and survived mostly on Jesus junk which makes more of a profit than books. People wore getting burned by the bad policies, bad book seltion, and cheap junk. The company had launched a membership website that had Christian music and stuff that you could find free elsewhere. Lots of bad money wasting choices destroyed the chain.

Books have a very small profit margin. That's why Barnes&Noble is carrying more toys and games. The choice to carry less books and invest in the Nook is why they have just been sold rather than going bankrupt.

All the bookstores in the USA, other than second-hand stores like Half-Price Books, have seen massive drops in sales from their high point in the 80s. The great rescession hit book stores really hard, closing most small ones. Many associations have opened to indie authors, publishers, and booksellers because their memberships shrunk by half from all the store closings. The decent sales in last few years haven't been able to erase the deep debt these store accumulated to make it this far.

It sounds like doom and gloom, but new indie stores are opening up and doing well. Things will bounce back with new chains who will hopefully learn from the past.

I think it's the cost of having all that retail space for such a low-margin item. That makes the books have to cost more in-store than what you'd pay on Amazon. I'm sure a lot of people just browse online now. The "smart" shoppers go to the stores to peruse then go home and buy online. That's what's killing the bookstore.

Lara wrote: "Lifeway was a little bit of a surprise, but they were the strictest chain when it came to what fiction books they would carry. They were struggling to make a profit since 2008 like everyone else.

..."

Thanks for that insight, Lara!

From the statistics I've seen, people read more books now than ever... they just don't pay full paperback retail prices for it.

Also, Stoney is right about the cost of retail space vs overhead. Rent has gone up nation wide for retail space... nearly double in some locations according to some people. We had once thought about opening a bookstore and sat down to do the math. A bookstore needs to be moving tons of stock quickly to pay the bills. It wasn't worth the risk to us.

Lara wrote: "My husband worked as a manager for a Christian book store for a while and it is actually more than just business issues that keep speculative Christian fiction off the shelves. The boards of these ..."

That is an interesting point. I've also seen the inverse in my local Christian bookstores. Their supplier is Ingram, one of the largest book distributors out there. Ingram is a secular company that bought out the Christian distributors and now has its own "Christian" subdivision. The problem is, this "Christian" subdivision does not decide which books to carry based on Christian values; it bases its supply on the whims of business leaders who are not Christian and understand very little of the Christian market. One insider who would frequently meet with them over this issue told me they would decide which books to present to the Christian reader solely by the cover art. So of course, Christians looking for what they want to read were basically forced to go online to find the books Ingram would not carry.

Thomas wrote: "Things have gotten pretty murky as of late. I have seen several promotions where they literally say "strong female lead" as the first words in the synopsis. That seems strange to me."

"Strong female lead" must be something those agents are looking for (regardless of whether the story is any good). I've seen a lot of that, too.

A lot of the traditional publishing industry has gone bonkers with recent politics. Most of the agents I queried (or decided not to query) had "#ownvoices" and "#diversity" in their list of genres they were looking for. Turns out this is another one of those movements that, in my opinion, seems like a good idea at the time but never ends up where they think it's going to take them.

For example: #ownvoices is some movement where they only want to allow Native Americans to write about Native Americans and only Chinese people to write about Chinese people, etc. It sounds like a good idea until you get to the melting pot that is America and find writers who (for example) had a grandmother who taught them her Native American values but the agent only sees a "white" person.

Thanks everybody for your insight, especially Lara. Interesting thread.

Daniel wrote: "Thanks everybody for your insight, especially Lara. Interesting thread."

I agree with Daniel! I really appreciate this thread and hearing about everyone's experiences in the bookstore industry. As a teenager, I was often that person going into the Christian store looking for fantasy or sci-fi novels, only to be disappointed by shelves upon shelves of Amish romances (totally not my genre!). I'm a lot like Ella Rose in that I prefer holding a physical book in my hand, so I think it's a bit sad so many Christian bookstores have closed. However, it's good to hear about new indie stores that are popping up.

Also, I loved Lara's supermodel analogy about writing a synopsis! lol. From personal experience I can say, YES! It is about that hard!!!

Lara wrote: "From the statistics I've seen, people read more books now than ever... they just don't pay full paperback retail prices for it."

I wonder how much of that reading is Kindle Unlimited and "received the book from the publisher for an honest review". Then, used or discounted paperbacks.

Are book sales actually increasing or are people finding used books or using the library?

Also, loved the "supermodel" explanation!

Stan wrote: "Lara wrote: "From the statistics I've seen, people read more books now than ever... they just don't pay full paperback retail prices for it."

I wonder how much of that reading is Kindle Unlimited ..."

I suspect that the statistic for reading is from self-reporting (I read X number of books this year), so it may come from their personal library, schools, borrowing, Kindle Unlimited, or whatever.

Synopses are very challenging for all of the reasons listed above! I feel like I'm still not super great at synopses, but I've done some research on how to write an effective synopsis, and I found some useful tips. When I write synopses for my books on Kindle, I follow this formula. Each of these steps usually only takes up one paragraph.

Setup - Briefly describe any important details of the world of the novel, and introduce the main character and their situation at the beginning of the plot.

Raise the stakes - Describe what's complicating the situation or standing in the way of a resolution. Tease additional interesting plot details, but don't give them entirely away.

Ask questions - Lead the reader into wondering how things are going to turn out--which they can only discover by reading the book. (I guess they could also ask someone who's already read the book, but we won't remind them that's an option.)

Sum up your book's overall tone - Let the reader know what kind of a reading experience they should expect from this book. Is it lighthearted? Thought-provoking? Fast-paced? What major themes are you incorporating?

Here's an example of how I used this formula for one of my books:

Setup - Introduced the heroine, who wants an ordinary summer internship at a museum but has been tasked with an epic quest by magic fossils. Also let drop that the story takes place in an alternate-history 1890's America.

Raise the stakes - Inform the reader that a villain is after the heroine's magic amulet. Also the amulet might be cursed. To get the reader curious (and avoid major plot spoilers), I purposely do not go into much detail about either the villain or the curse.

Ask questions - Ask the reader if the heroine will be able to fulfill the fossils' quest. Not stated, but definitely implied: read the book to find out!

Sum up tone - Described book as "fun-filled" and "slightly nerdy" and characterized it as a steampunk fantasy Western.

Does that help any? Please feel free to play around with this formula until you find something that works for you and your books!