Synopsis of the novel

Writing the synopsis of your novel is one of the hardest things.  I did finish my novel Shadow Birds finally, which  I had been writing for more than a decade. Now it is time to learn how to find a publisher, which means writing cover letters, synopsis, and all that.

Stone artwork by Syrian artist Nizar Ali Badr. Courtesy of Julietinparis.net blog. 

 Or, choose to self-publish, which again demands a lot of homework assignments.

Caro Clarke made a nice point that writing the synopsis of your novel is like writing the obituary of your novel.  Your story is done, characters are gone and you are in a grieving stage.  Though you feel the void you got to get up and write the obituary, not a long boring one but a short, sweet one that embraces all the important points and plucks the right chord for the reader.

Merissa Meyer makes it easy breaking down in 6 major steps, while Graeme Shimmin cautions that it is not a ' blurb' of the sort you'd find on the back cover of a book. The synopsis must tell it all, no teaser for the reader.

I am confused. I have to write the summary of a 200-page book, which needed 50,835 words to tell what I wanted to say in two or three pages, in just 500  to 800 words?

'Oh no! We don't have that much time for you', I hear. 'Make it shorter. Just an elevator speech.  We have barely six seconds for you.  So say it all in one long sentence.'

That is exactly what had happened when I went to a conference last spring.  I was stuck with an agent in an elevator. The lady put on her glasses that were hanging like a necklace and looked at me right in the eye and asked, "So what do you write?"

I kept an eye on the blinking numbers on top of the door and inhaled " Fiction."

"About what? What kind of fiction?"

"It's a story of a girl during the partition of India in 1947 who became a refugee and joined fourteen million people who lost their homes and families." I breathed.

"Historical fiction. Young adults, I suppose. Could be in Women's fiction genre  too?" She nodded adjusting her huge briefcase.

"Yes. " I gulped trying to be confident that I  understand genres.

"Why did you write it?" She crossed her brows.

How could I explain to her that  I could not help not writing it?  Like Maya Angelou had said, 'There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you'.

 For the last thirteen years, this little girl kept on chasing me to tell her story, I mean my protagonist. I saw her growing up from a missing one-tooth seven-year-old little girl to a teenager of seventeen.  So, for all these years I wrote and rewrote until I felt I had done everything I could.

"The seed of the story came from my mother, all that she had told me in her last four years, while she was stuck in bed as a stroke victim. Her memory was sharp. The nostalgia of her beautiful childhood days kept her going and then she also told me the agony of leaving her home because of the Partition."

from radhikaranjanmarxist.blogspot.com

The elevator stopped. We reached our destination. I knew this was the end of my story. But she stayed with me as we walked out. "Interesting."

" Yes, and as I was writing I found that this is not an isolated story of one single girl of a distant past, in a faraway country. It is happening everywhere.  It is happening now." I added.

I was thinking of my experience in Greece that I had a couple of years ago. I saw the anxiety in a Greek lady whom  I met at a store.

"We are up to here with our own problems here.  We have to work two jobs to meet the two ends meet and see now there are all these refugees."  The Greek lady touched her forehead.

An image flashed in my mind that I had seen on the T.V. screen the night before. A boatful of refugees from Syria, a brother and a sister holding each other's hand, who had just become orphans, a pregnant lady clutching her protruded belly, the blank stare in an elderly woman's eyes with her hands stretched expecting someone would help.

What was their fault?

"See the geography is changing, maps are constantly altering. Cities are bombed, countries are wiped out. They are getting new names or erased and forgotten. But history repeats itself." I said.

" History repeats itself!" She echoed. "Finish your book." With a smile, she disappeared.

Shucks!  Who was she?  Why didn't I care to ask anything about her? Why didn't I get her business card?  I was too wrapped up in my own self, too excited to tell my story and didn't care to listen. That was my BIG mistake.

So, I beg you, please do tell me your story. Who are you that came to visit my blog? Do you know a refugee, or were you one?  Do you write?  Are you struggling with writing synopsis?  Please do leave a comment.  Thank you.