If you think I am going to be personally giving you tips here on writing a synopsis, well, hate to disappoint. But I am going to provide a couple links to a site with a particular article that I found quite enlightening.
To date, the stories I have submitted to editors and agents at the NJ SCBWI conferences and workshops have been picture books, as I wish to, (ideally anyway), both write and illustrate. However, one of my PB stories was looked at by an editor awhile back and her comment was that there was too much backstory for a PB, and she felt I would do much better with it as a chapter book. This, of course, sent me into researching what chapter books were all about, reading a bunch, and re-working this particular story. Chapter books also have lots of illustration opportunity, so this is still a good thing.
I am submitting this for the June Conference at NJ SCBWI. If you’re anywhere in the area and able to attend, do go and learn more about this wonderful opportunity to meet editors and agents, and learn a bundle about this field. I am very pleased to be meeting with an editor that had critiqued this story at a first-page session last year, and had some good things to say. Now I shall find out if I’ve gotten 15 pages of it right.
What needs to accompany these 15 pages is a synopsis, something I’ve not had to be concerned about with a picture book. So after asking fellow writers, reading up on the subject and searching the web for the best way to write a synopsis, I came across a two part article on the blog of Rachelle Gardner, a literary agent for Wordserve Literary. The article is written by one of her clients, Gordon Carroll, who does something no one else has done — he shows us how to write a synopsis on a story we all know, Bambi. Excellent idea.
Carroll’s using a well-known tale in developing the stages of the synopsis has made it so much easier to approach this new challenge. I’m actually now looking forward to it! Here are Writing A Synopsis, Part 1 and Writing A Synopsis, Part 2. Hope it may be of help to you.
As for that photo? Where I hope I’ll be doing some of my writing tomorrow … on my back porch!
Still A Dreamer 
Is that your porch? Looks very inviting.
thanks for pointing out Rachelle’s blog. I think I was on their the other day, but I didn’t see this.
Here’s my take on the synopsis. http://kathytemean.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/synopsis-tips/
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Thanks. I do love sitting back there with coffee and a good book!
I had actually read your article on the synopsis – thank you! But never having written one, needed still more help, and a search revealed this. I’m ready to type it up now!
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