Synopsis Quotes & Sayings

I plot as I go. Many novelists write an outline that has almost as many pages as their ultimate book. Others knock out a brief synopsis ... Do what is comfortable. If you have to plot out every move your characters make, so be it. Just make sure there is a plausible purpose behind their machinations. A good reader can smell a phony plot a block away. — Clive Cussler

This just gets worse and worse," Rob Pierre sighed as he skimmed Leonard Boardman's synopsis of his latest gleanings from the Solarian League reporters covering the PRH. "How can one person - one person, Oscar! - do this much damage? She's like some damned elemental force of nature!"
"Harrington?" Oscar Saint-Just quirked an eyebrow and snorted harshly at Pierre's nodded confirmation.
"She's just happened to be in the right places - or the wrong ones, I suppose, from our perspective - for the last, oh, ten years or so. That's the official consensus from my analysts, at least. The other theory, which seems to have been gaining a broader following of late, is that she's in league with the Devil. — David Weber

And we talk it out. Lately, I've had Roy Thomas come in, and he sits and makes notes while we discuss it. Then he types them up, which gives us a written synopsis. Originally - I have a little tape recorder - I had tried taping it, but then I found no one on staff has time to listen to the tape again later. But this way he makes notes, types it quickly, I get a carbon, the artist gets a carbon ... so we don't have to worry that we'll forget what we've said. — Stan Lee

I am asked to submit a 2-3 page synopsis to my publisher ahead of time, so by the time I begin writing, I have a fair idea of where the story will begin, the main conflicts, and the basic ending point. But that still leaves plenty of room for changes and discovery along the way. — Julie Klassen

It would not be amiss for the novice to write the last paragraph of his story first, once a synopsis of the plot has been carefully prepared - as it always should be. — H.P. Lovecraft

First she would try to kill him, but failing this give him food and her body, breast-feed him back to a state of childishness and even, perhaps, feel affection for him. Then, the moment he was asleep, cut his throat. The synopsis of the ideal marriage. — J.G. Ballard

I can't just react on the strength of an email and three pages of synopsis, and say I'm going to take off for three months of my life. — Emmanuelle Beart

An author's ability to bring a marketing synopsis to the table - along with a great manuscript - makes a difference in what books get picked up. This is true for both fiction and nonfiction titles. You need to show your publisher what you've got in your marketing arsenal. — M.J. Rose

I feel sick when I look at the parody synopsis, at the letters from the film company ... The novel is 'about' a colour problem. I said nothing in it that wasn't true. But the emotion it came out of was something frightening, the unhealthy, feverish illicit excitement of wartime, a lying nostalgia, a longing for licence, for freedom, for the jungle, for formlessness. It is so clear to me that I can't read that novel now without feeling ashamed, as if I were in a street naked. Yet no one else seems to see it. Not one of the reviewers saw it. Not one of my cultivated and literary friends saw it. It is an immoral novel because that terrible lying nostalgia lights every sentence. — Doris Lessing

I chart a little first-list of names, rough synopsis of chapters, and so on. But one daren't overplan; so many things are generated by the sheer act of writing. — Anthony Burgess

Winston knew better than to give a heartfelt synopsis of a grainy black-and-white film that had inadvertently touched his heart and caused him to empathize with a loafer-shod French boy, Doinel, the young, unloved Parisian, running toward the sea in the last reel. Winston had wanted to chase behind him, clasp him on the shoulder ... — Paul Beatty

A synopsis of every story we do: someone gets over their own stupid ass. — Kieron Gillen

A synopsis is a cold thing. You do it with the front of your mind. If you're going to stay with it, you never get quite the same magic as when you're going all out. — J.B. Priestley

The synopsis looked good,
the cover looked nice,
you opened the book,
and began a new life.
You found a new home,
you met some new friends,
you kept on reading,
hoping it would never end.
You danced through the pages,
you sang out the words,
you felt all their joy,
and all their pain and hurt.

The pages cut your fingers,
the words cut your heart,
like the author had a knife,
and was tearing your soul apart.
You laughed with the characters,
and with them you cried,
you fell in love with them, too,
and with them you died,
and when the book reached its end,
and your broken heart couldn't heal,
you suddenly realized that
It's not real — Unknown

Write out the story - rapidly, fluently, and not too critically - following the second or narrative-order synopsis. Change incidents and plot whenever the developing process seems to suggest such change, never being bound by any previous design. — H.P. Lovecraft

The bane of my existence is the synopses that publishers request for a new novel or series. That's where I'm really producing fiction - my final book never ends up looking like the synopsis. — Michelle Gagnon

Normally I start with a plot, and write a synopsis, and the ideas come from the construction. — Jo Nesbo

I hate even the idea of a synopsis. When stories are really working, when you're providing subtextual exploration and things that are deeply layered, you're obligated to not say things out loud. — Shane Carruth

I hardly ever work from a synopsis
I find they act like chains. — Tanith Lee