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Template · By Prosematter · Updated 2026-08-30

How to write a novel synopsis

A synopsis tells the agent how the book ends. That single rule is the one most first drafts break, and it is what separates a synopsis from a blurb.

Seven worn objects laid in one unbroken touching line that grows larger and brighter, from a bent pin and a burnt match to a horn button, a clock gear, a broken lead seal, a dark pebble and a heavy brass key

A synopsis is a plain, present-tense account of everything that happens in your novel, ending included. It is not a teaser and it is not the back cover. An agent reads it to find out whether the plot holds together, which they cannot do if you withhold the last act.

One page is the usual ask, which is roughly 500 to 700 words single-spaced. Some agents want two pages, a few want five, and some want it double-spaced, which halves the word count. The submission page says which. Write the one-page version first: a shorter synopsis is harder, and everything longer is an expansion of it.

The example below is a full one-page synopsis of a novel you have almost certainly met, written to the same rules an agent would apply to yours.

The seven beats a one-page synopsis carries

Fill these in and you have a synopsis. Each one is a sentence or two, and the whole thing should read as continuous prose rather than as a list once you assemble it.

Every field is filled in for Dracula — Bram Stoker, 1897. Synopsised as though it were being submitted today, at the length an agent asks for. It is a useful test case because the novel has five viewpoint characters and a synopsis has room for two.

  1. DRACULA. 160,000 words. Gothic horror.

Start here

7 fields

  1. JONATHAN HARKER, a young English solicitor, travels to Transylvania to close a property sale.

  2. His client, Count Dracula, imprisons him and leaves for England by ship.

  3. The decision, not the feeling. A synopsis has no room for interiority and an agent is reading for cause and effect.

  4. Two or three sentences. Each one should be joinable to the last with so or therefore rather than and then.

  5. Where the cost becomes personal and the protagonist can no longer walk away.

  6. What is actually done, by whom, to whom.

  7. Who lives, who does not, and what has changed. Withholding this is the commonest reason a synopsis is rejected.

The versions you write afterwards

Every one of these is cut down from or grown out of the one-page version, which is why that one comes first.

The two-page synopsis

1 fields
Asked for often enough to be worth having ready. The extra page goes on the middle act, not on the opening, because the middle is where a synopsis thins out and where a reader's doubts collect.

  1. One subplot, and the second turn in the middle act. Resist adding a third named character.

The paragraph in the query letter

1 fields
Different job. This one does withhold the ending, because it is a pitch rather than a summary.

  1. Who, what breaks, and what it will cost. Then stop. The [[page:templates/query-letter|query letter template]] has the full shape.

A memoir synopsis

1 fields
The same seven beats, with one difference that catches people out.

  1. Write it in third person and refer to yourself by name, as the convention asks. A chronology of events is still not a synopsis: the beats have to be beats.

A series synopsis

1 fields
Only when asked for.

  1. One page on book one, then a paragraph each on the rest, ending with where the series lands.

Novel synopsis template (PDF)Novel synopsis (Word)

Both files are blank and both are generated from this page, so the prompts match the seven beats above.

A complete one-page synopsis

Most novel synopsis examples are drawn from a book the reader cannot check. This one is Dracula, at 566 words, written to the rules above. Names are capitalised on first appearance, the tense is present throughout, and the last paragraph gives the ending away because that is the job. It carries six capitalised names, which is one more than the guidance below: an ensemble novel costs you names, and this is what that cost looks like.

Dracula, one page, 566 words

DRACULA. 160,000 words. Gothic horror.

JONATHAN HARKER, a young English solicitor, is sent to Transylvania by his firm to close a property sale for a client it has never met. His host, COUNT DRACULA, is courteous and learned, and within a week Harker understands that the doors are locked from the outside, that the castle has no servants, and that he is not a guest. He watches Dracula crawl head-first down the outer wall. He writes down what he sees because he expects to die there.

Dracula sails for England with fifty boxes of Transylvanian earth. The ship makes landfall at Whitby with its crew gone and its captain lashed dead to the wheel. Harker's fiancee MINA is staying nearby with her friend LUCY, who begins to sleepwalk and to weaken. Dracula is feeding on her at night, and the two small wounds at her throat heal and reopen. Mina is called away to Budapest, where Harker has surfaced in a hospital, and she marries him there. She is four hundred miles away for what happens next.

Lucy's doctor cannot explain the blood loss and sends for his old teacher, PROFESSOR VAN HELSING, who recognises a vampire and says so to nobody, because he knows he will not be believed. He orders transfusions and garlic. Twice the sickroom is opened by someone meaning well, and twice Lucy is left unguarded. She dies. She rises, and she is seen taking children onto Hampstead Heath at night, and Van Helsing brings her suitors to the tomb, shows them what she has become, and they destroy her.

Harker brings his Transylvanian journal to Van Helsing, and a group forms around it: Van Helsing, the Harkers, Lucy's doctor, her former fiance, and a Texan named QUINCEY MORRIS. Mina collates every diary, letter and telegram into one chronology. Harker traces the shipping agents and carriers who moved the fifty boxes. Between the two documents they locate Dracula's refuges across London and begin sterilising them, closing his ground one house at a time.

Dracula answers by attacking Mina. He comes to her at night while the men are out hunting, forces her to drink his blood, and tells her she belongs to him. She is dying by degrees, and the same bond lets her sense where he is when Van Helsing hypnotises her. She insists they use her, and that decision is what makes the pursuit possible.

They drive him out of England. Dracula runs for Varna by ship and the group splits, following overland and by river against a deadline none of them states aloud, which is Mina's own transformation. Van Helsing takes Mina ahead to the castle and destroys the three women there. The others intercept the Count's cart on the road at sunset, in the snow, fighting off the Szgany drivers as the light goes.

They break open the box. Harker cuts the Count's throat, Morris drives a bowie knife into his heart, and Dracula crumbles to dust as the sun sets. Morris dies of his wounds within minutes, on the ground, in front of all of them. The scar on Mina's forehead vanishes.

Seven years later the Harkers have a son, named for the men who were on that road. Harker's closing note is that the papers they collected prove nothing, being copies and typescript, and that they have only their own word for any of it.

The same book, cut to two paragraphs

JONATHAN HARKER is imprisoned in a Transylvanian castle by COUNT DRACULA, a vampire, who then sails for England. While Harker is missing, his fiancee MINA is staying in Whitby with her friend LUCY, on whom Dracula begins to feed. Mina leaves to nurse Harker in Budapest and is absent when Lucy dies and rises. PROFESSOR VAN HELSING, called in too late, takes Lucy's suitors to the tomb and they destroy her.

Harker's journal brings the survivors together as a group. Mina's chronology and Harker's paper trail locate Dracula's fifty boxes of earth across London, and they begin destroying them. He retaliates by forcing his blood on Mina, which is both a death sentence and the link that lets her track him under hypnosis. They pursue him to Transylvania and kill him on the road at sunset, at the cost of QUINCEY MORRIS's life. The scar on Mina's forehead vanishes, and seven years later the Harkers have a son.

Tense, names, length, and what it is not

Write it in present tense throughout, even where the novel is in past tense. The convention comes from film treatments and summary practice, and the practical reason to follow it is simple: an agent who opens a past-tense synopsis knows before the first full stop that you did not read the guidelines.

Capitalise a character's name in full the first time it appears, then use normal capitalisation afterwards. HARKER on first mention, Harker from then on. It marks who matters without costing a sentence of explanation, and it lets a reader count your cast at a glance, which is part of what they are doing.

One page means 500 to 700 words single-spaced, in the same font as the manuscript, and about half that if the agency asks for double spacing. Word counts here are a convention and not a threshold. A synopsis arriving at 1,400 words when one page was asked for has still answered a question about whether you follow submission guidelines, and it answered it before the plot was read.

A synopsis is not a blurb, a logline or a pitch. A blurb sells and withholds. A logline compresses to one sentence. A synopsis reveals, in order, with causes attached, and it is the only one of the three that shows an agent whether your third act works.

One last practical note. Write the synopsis from the finished manuscript, not from your outline. The two diverge in most books, and a synopsis describing the novel you planned is a document no reader can use, including you.

What gets a synopsis rejected

The first group is fatal on its own. The second makes the plot look weaker than it is. The third is presentation, and it is the cheapest to fix.

Fatal on its own

  • withholding the ending, or promising it in the last line
  • asking a question instead of answering one
  • a synopsis of the first act with the rest summarised as events unfold
  • no protagonist decision anywhere in it

Makes the plot look weaker

  • and then, repeatedly, where so or therefore should be
  • a name for each character who speaks
  • backstory in the opening sentence
  • the theme stated rather than the events that carry it
  • past tense, which reads as not having checked the guidelines

Presentation

  • names not capitalised on first appearance
  • chapter numbers or part headings
  • dialogue, or a quoted line from the manuscript

Questions & Answers

What is a synopsis?
A plain summary of a novel's whole plot, in present tense, including the ending. Agents and editors use it to check that the story holds together structurally before they commit to reading the manuscript.
How long should a novel synopsis be?
One page, which is 500 to 700 words if the agency wants it single-spaced and roughly half that if they ask for double. Check the submission page, because both conventions are in use and UK agencies lean double-spaced. Write the one-page version first: the shorter one is harder, and the longer ones are built out of it.
Do you reveal the ending in a synopsis?
Yes, and it is the rule most first attempts break. A synopsis that withholds the ending has become a blurb, and an agent reading it cannot do the one thing they opened it for, which is check that your third act resolves what your first act set up.
Is a synopsis the same as a summary?
Close, with one difference that matters. A summary lists what happens. A synopsis links each event to the one that caused it, which is why the sentences should join with so and therefore rather than with and then.
How do you start a synopsis?
With your protagonist, their situation, and the thing that breaks it, inside the first two sentences. No prologue, no world-building paragraph, no rhetorical question. The title, word count and category go on a line above it.
What tense should a synopsis be in?
Present tense, third person, whatever the novel does. A first-person past-tense novel still gets a third-person present-tense synopsis, and a memoir does too, so you refer to yourself by name rather than as I.
How many characters should you name in a synopsis?
Four or five, capitalised on first appearance, and anyone else gets a role instead. An ensemble novel costs you more than that, which is why the Dracula example above carries six. A one-page synopsis naming each character who speaks reads as a plot the writer has not compressed.
What are the three types of synopsis?
In practice you write three lengths rather than three kinds: the one-page synopsis for submissions, the two-page version some agents ask for, and the short paragraph inside a query letter. Only the last one holds anything back, and some agents want the ending there as well.

Öffne ein Kapitel. Alles, was dazugehört, liegt schon daneben.

Das Ensemble, die Orte, die Regeln, die du erfunden hast, die Notiz, die du dir im November hinterlassen hast. Nichts zu suchen, nichts von Hand abzugleichen — und wenn die Reibung weg ist, summieren sich die Tage, an denen du schreibst.