How to Create and Submit Your Synopsis

• Write a synopsis of your work. 1-2 pages. A good guide would be the synopsis in STORY of the film LES DIABOLIQUES

• Additionally, 1-2 pages on the genesis and intent of your work.  

Bass has yet to read a full screenplay or novel which possessed problems that were not already apparent in the synopsis. This is not only how he conducts all his consultations, but how he writes his own work for readers to critique.) 

He will accept one synopsis a month from each member who has been a part of Storylogue for at least three months, until the new website has been launched. All our communication will take place in personal messaging on the site, one-to-one.

For those of you who may not have tried to do a synopsis or are unsure the best way to do it, some advice:

• Exposition — a handy technique for yourself to monitor your exposition is to put the proper names of characters, places, or key pieces of information, in CAPITALS in your synopsis. This way you can easily see if you have loaded all your exposition at the front, and see what you may be able to turn into a set-up or pay-off. Obviously, when sending me the synopsis, remove the capitals.

• Dialogue — One or two lines are fine, such as “we did it!” from the LES DIABOLIQUES synopsis in STORY, but by and large, try not to use dialogue. Try to plainly state the events.

• Causality — A simple method to make sure your story is flowing; consider not using “and then” but rather “but” and “therefore”. Your synopsis doesn’t literally need to incorporate “but” and “therefore”, rather think of emphasising the gaps and the pay-offs to events in your story.

• Series — If you are working on a series of stories, you can send a synopsis for just the first instalment (book/episode) or the entire series as you wish. Just keep it to one-to-two pages.

• Hype — The trend arising from pitching stories and log lines has writers saying things like, “then there is the most incredible fight you’ve ever seen” or “there are a series of hilarious failed blind dates” or “in a very moving scene, they break up”. Do not do this. Don’t tell me the fight will be incredible or the date will be funny or the break up will be moving. Actually make the fight incredible, the date funny, and the break up moving. Just focus on turning points and causality. If your work is good, it will move and excite and laugh.

• Terminology — Don’t interject story terminology like “inciting incident” or “this is the act one climax” into your synopsis. This undoes your hard work; you want your work to draw in your readers, and putting terminology pushes the reader away. In your follow-up page on the genesis/intent, by all means, go through terminology, it’s very helpful. But in the synopsis itself, just clearly state the turning points with style.

Send Bass a personal message with a link to the file of your synopsis and he will get to them as quickly as he can.  Please know that he will do one a month so your patience is appreciated. We will look forward to you taking advantage of Bass’s offer. Till we meet again in the new site, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.  

The McKee Story/Storylogue Team,

Luke (Luke@Storylogue.com), Shannon (shannon@storylogue.com), Bass and Oliver