Book synopsis template for novels

What a synopsis is, and why agents ask for one

A synopsis is a summary of your whole novel, start to finish, ending included. An agent who asks for one wants to see that the plot holds together and that the ending pays off what the opening promised, without reading 90,000 words to find out.

It is not the pitch in your query letter. The query sells the book and stops before the ending. The synopsis tells the story and gives the ending away.

How long should a synopsis be?

Usually one to two pages, about 500 to 1,000 words, single spaced. That is the range Jane Friedman gives in her guide to writing a novel synopsis: if yours runs long, anything up to two single-spaced pages is usually acceptable.

If an agent's guidelines name a length, theirs wins. If they ask for one page, cut subplots before you cut the ending: a one-page synopsis is the main plot and nothing else.

Synopsis format rules

• Write in the third person and the present tense, even if the novel is in first person or past tense.
• Put each character's name in capitals the first time it appears, then write it normally.
• Name only the characters who change what happens, and mention each one at least twice. Everyone else gets a role: a neighbor, the coroner.
• Tell the ending, including how the main conflict is resolved.
• Leave out the cast list, the craft terms (climax, inciting incident) and rhetorical questions. Tell the story in plain sentences, with only as much backstory as the plot needs.

A synopsis example

Here is a full synopsis for THE LAST FERRY, the invented mystery from our query letter example, split into the parts of the template. Together they come to about 350 words, comfortably inside one page.

• Opening: When her father, the last lighthouse keeper on the Scottish island of Skerra, is reported missing, NELL GARROW comes home for the first time in eighteen years to settle his debts. She means to leave on the last ferry before winter, in fourteen days. In the empty lighthouse she finds his logbook: years of entries recording ships no harbor ever registered.
• Rising action: Nell matches three of the phantom ships to three drownings the coroner ruled accidents. Every report is signed by the harbormaster, CALUM REID, who knew her mother. Calum warns her off, then admits the island leaned on him to sign. As Nell keeps asking, Skerra turns against her: her father's boat is holed, her rented room is searched, and her father's oldest friend, AGNES MOWAT, stops speaking to her. Reading the logbook against the tide tables, Nell sees that the ships are a code. Her father logged the nights a fishing crew landed cargo that was not fish, and the drowned men were three who tried to report it.
• Crisis: Calum tells her the rest. Nell's mother was the first to try to report the landings, twenty-four years ago, and her drowning was no accident. Her father knew, kept silent to protect Nell, and kept the logbook as the only record of what he could not say. Its last entry names a ship for the night of the final ferry. If Nell leaves, the island keeps its story. If she stays, she spends the winter on Skerra with the people who killed her mother.
• Climax and ending: Nell gives up her seat on the ferry. From the lighthouse, with Calum beside her, she watches the landing and radios the coastguard on the mainland, as her father never dared to. The crew, led by Agnes's son, is arrested at the harbor. Her father walks in from the bothy on the north shore, where he has been hiding, and tells the coastguard what his logbook recorded.
• How she has changed: The last ferry sails without her. Nell, who left Skerra at the first chance at eighteen, stays the winter with her father, this time because it matters.

Notice what it leaves out: the chapter structure, most of the islanders and every clue that does not change the outcome. It names three people, and each one comes back.

Common synopsis mistakes

• Retelling the book chapter by chapter. Follow the main plot and let the rest go.
• Too many names. One page rarely needs more than four or five; everyone else can be a role.
• Subplots that do not change the ending. If cutting one changes nothing in the last paragraph, cut it.
• Writing it like back-cover copy. A blurb teases; a synopsis explains, in plain sentences, all the way to the end.

Test the plot before you summarize it

Writing a synopsis is often the first time you see the whole plot on one page, and the gaps show: a clue that never pays off, a timeline that does not add up. StoryWith AI reads the full manuscript and flags gaps like these, each linked to its scene, so you can fix the book before you summarize it.

When the book is ready, the pitch kit drafts a query letter and a back-cover blurb from your manuscript, and its submission checklist tracks what is still missing, the synopsis included. The synopsis itself is yours to write.