Can you sum up your novel in three sentences?

Filed under Get Published.

If you want to get your book noticed by an agent or publisher you need an excellent book proposal.

Book proposals consist of three parts:

  1. 1. Cover letter,
  2. 2. Synopsis,
  3. 3. Extract.

This earlier post explains how to write a book proposal in more detail, but here I want to focus on one key aspect of the cover letter – your book outline.

The job of the cover letter is to demonstrate to an agent/publisher three things. The first is that you can write and have a good book, the second is that your book has a market and the third is that you can be marketed as a writer.

One key aspect to this is your book outline. This is a paragraph that summarises your book in to three or four sentences. You should include an outline of the plot with reference to the main characters. This is not an extended synopsis, just enough information to get the agent/publisher excited.

Outlines are tough to write and I found the best approach is practice and more practice. In the example below I have used a well known fairy tale:

This is a coming-of-age tale that sees three little pigs looking to make their way in a world terrorised by a serial killer known simply as The Big Bad Wolf! When the pigs leave home they face the immediate problem of finding accommodation, but below par building regulations and a ‘huff and puff’ quickly sees the first two pigs coming to a bloody end. The final pig is ready to put up a fight, but will a pile of bricks, a chimney and a hot fire really be enough to save the hair on his chinny, chin, chin?

Anyone else brave enough to summarise a well known fairy tale? Just pop it in the comments…

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  • Anonymous

    Very torn by this.

    On the one hand if I can’t summarise my own book, suggests that I’m not and never have been in full control of my material. Yet in doing so, can’t help feeling that if the book was reducible to a 3 line pith, then tghere isn’t much point in writing it in the first place…

    marc nash

    Rapacious home intruder The Wolf, breaks into Grandma’s house and devours her. Still lusting for blood, he disguises himself as his victim and lies in wait for the youngest and most innocent member of her family making her way to the cottage through the foreboding woods… (did it in 2!)

    • garysmailes

      Marc,

      wow this is great…

      Two things. The first is that I feel that when pitching a book it is vital that a writer sees their work as a product to be sold. This way they can look at the story from an aspect of finding what it offers to a reader that is different from other books. After all, this is exactly how an agent or publisher will view the book. Secondly, it is more about presenting you book in a shortened form, rather than length. I aim for three sentences, though four is fine.

      • Anonymous

        I agree with both your points Gary, doesn’t stop a little bit of my soul dying each time one is tasked with this. Of course it is product and art always trails in a poor second…

        • garysmailes

          I find it interesting that ‘commercial’ and ‘artistic’ are often not considered to be the case. My view is that a writer needs to become a salesperson, if only to ensure their work has the best possible chance.

          • http://twitter.com/crows Marie Raven

            To butt in, here… I’m not published, yet, so this does come from a perspective of not having a very heavy onus of selling my own work on my back yet, and I think I naturally look at this kind of thing through the lens of having an entire family of self-employed people in one industry or another. Either way, I’ve managed to disentangle a little bit from the distastefulness of ‘selling’ my work as a ‘product’. The business of being a writer – the business of any creative profession – is not, in my eye, very different than operating any other kind of small business. The word ‘product’ seems to take on this connotation of something that is mass produced and probably low quality; something that has no art or personality because it is replicated over and over, and is not original in and of itself. If product is only used as a functional term, like inventory or anything else, then I believe there’s more room for the business of being a writer not to intrude as much psychologically on the creativity of it. If you want to have a small shop in a community because you feel that kind of business needs to exist (specialty toys is my pet for this – my mother owns a specialty toy store), and it provides positive things to the community through its inventory and you carry good quality products (access to wholesome playthings is extremely important for the children in a community!), then that’s all positive. But it takes a lot more to be successful in even a relatively small business venture with one storefront and a few employees in a small town than just a good solid product and honest intentions. You have to be disciplined about your budget and your credit, be constantly analytical of the million zillion factors that go into your inventory balance and merchandising and your particular customer base…

            I like thinking about the work of being a writer like this, because it’s easier for me to grasp than the somewhat more amorphous ‘writing for your audience’ and ‘social networking’ thing. Sure, the other businesses that will be involved in my eventual (wildly, wildly successful + big movie deals + whatever the writer equivalent of roadies is… we get those, right? Someone to carry my pens?) publishing endeavor need to have my back. I expect that in order to be successful I will need to have some kind of good relationship with editors/an agent/a publisher/whatever. But that’s like having manufacturers who have your back as a small business, don’t put their product in WalMart at your cost, pay more attention to your actual actions than your credit sheet especially before Christmas, and ship when they say they’re going to :) It’s not a ‘power of positive thinking!’ solution to grappling with the balance between pragmatic business-doing and creative writing-awesome-stuff-doing, but framing my own perspective that way at least makes it not terrifying to think about trying to get my novel out there, which in turn allows me to do charming things like actually edit it.

            Cheers!

          • garysmailes

            thanks for a great insight…it is refreshing to hear such a pragmatic view.

            I use the word product to be purposefully provocative. However, as a professional writer, I see my work very much as a product. A product that I can sell to my agent, that he can sell to a publisher and that a publisher can sell to readers.

            I suspect it is all too easy for writers to hide behind the idea that their work is art and therefore can’t be published without compromise. This may be true, but I suspect the reason many writers struggle to get published is that they fail to convince agents/publishers that their writing has commercial merit.

            Now don’t get me wrong, I am as high brow as the next man. In fact Caroline Smailes (co-founder of BubbleCow) writes literary fiction. However, if a writer is looking to have their work read on a wide scale they have two choices. The first is to play the game and go down the traditional publishing route with a ‘product’. The second is to be proactive, build their own platform and then sell their work off their own bat.

  • Anonymous

    In the sense that I have self-published, then the salesman role has necessarily fallen upon me anyway. But it is my impression that even mid-list writers with book deals are expected to do the overwhelming majority of their own promotion in this Social Networking age and that therefore there is little difference, other than maybe some point of sale material and a few publisher’s contacts.

    • garysmailes

      Agree, I would say that very few publishers put aside budget for social media marketing. If a writer is to survive then they simply must market themselves. I feel this is a positive with writers having the chance to build platforms that don’t need big publishers.

  • marcnash

    Very torn by this.

    On the one hand if I can't summarise my own book, suggests that I'm not and never have been in full control of my material. Yet in doing so, can't help feeling that if the book was reducible to a 3 line pith, then tghere isn't much point in writing it in the first place…

    marc nash

    Rapacious home intruder The Wolf, breaks into Grandma's house and devours her. Still lusting for blood, he disguises himself as his victim and lies in wait for the youngest and most innocent member of her family making her way to the cottage through the foreboding woods… (did it in 2!)

  • garysmailes

    Marc,

    wow this is great…

    Two things. The first is that I feel that when pitching a book it is vital that a writer sees their work as a product to be sold. This way they can look at the story from an aspect of finding what it offers to a reader that is different from other books. After all, this is exactly how an agent or publisher will view the book. Secondly, it is more about presenting you book in a shortened form, rather than length. I aim for three sentences, though four is fine.

  • marcnash

    I agree with both your points Gary, doesn't stop a little bit of my soul dying each time one is tasked with this. Of course it is product and art always trails in a poor second…

  • garysmailes

    I find it interesting that 'commercial' and 'artistic' are often not considered to be the case. My view is that a writer needs to become a salesperson, if only to ensure their work has the best possible chance.

  • marcnash

    In the sense that I have self-published, then the salesman role has necessarily fallen upon me anyway. But it is my impression that even mid-list writers with book deals are expected to do the overwhelming majority of their own promotion in this Social Networking age and that therefore there is little difference, other than maybe some point of sale material and a few publisher's contacts.

  • garysmailes

    Agree, I would say that very few publishers put aside budget for social media marketing. If a writer is to survive then they simply must market themselves. I feel this is a positive with writers having the chance to build platforms that don't need big publishers.

  • http://twitter.com/crows Marie Raven

    To butt in, here… I'm not published, yet, so this does come from a perspective of not having a very heavy onus of selling my own work on my back yet, and I think I naturally look at this kind of thing through the lens of having an entire family of self-employed people in one industry or another. Either way, I've managed to disentangle a little bit from the distastefulness of 'selling' my work as a 'product'. The business of being a writer – the business of any creative profession – is not, in my eye, very different than operating any other kind of small business. The word 'product' seems to take on this connotation of something that is mass produced and probably low quality; something that has no art or personality because it is replicated over and over, and is not original in and of itself. If product is only used as a functional term, like inventory or anything else, then I believe there's more room for the business of being a writer not to intrude as much psychologically on the creativity of it. If you want to have a small shop in a community because you feel that kind of business needs to exist (specialty toys is my pet for this – my mother owns a specialty toy store), and it provides positive things to the community through its inventory and you carry good quality products (access to wholesome playthings is extremely important for the children in a community!), then that's all positive. But it takes a lot more to be successful in even a relatively small business venture with one storefront and a few employees in a small town than just a good solid product and honest intentions. You have to be disciplined about your budget and your credit, be constantly analytical of the million zillion factors that go into your inventory balance and merchandising and your particular customer base…

    I like thinking about the work of being a writer like this, because it's easier for me to grasp than the somewhat more amorphous 'writing for your audience' and 'social networking' thing. Sure, the other businesses that will be involved in my eventual (wildly, wildly successful + big movie deals + whatever the writer equivalent of roadies is… we get those, right? Someone to carry my pens?) publishing endeavor need to have my back. I expect that in order to be successful I will need to have some kind of good relationship with editors/an agent/a publisher/whatever. But that's like having manufacturers who have your back as a small business, don't put their product in WalMart at your cost, pay more attention to your actual actions than your credit sheet especially before Christmas, and ship when they say they're going to :) It's not a 'power of positive thinking!' solution to grappling with the balance between pragmatic business-doing and creative writing-awesome-stuff-doing, but framing my own perspective that way at least makes it not terrifying to think about trying to get my novel out there, which in turn allows me to do charming things like actually edit it.

    Cheers!

  • garysmailes

    thanks for a great insight…it is refreshing to hear such a pragmatic view.

    I use the word product to be purposefully provocative. However, as a professional writer, I see my work very much as a product. A product that I can sell to my agent, that he can sell to a publisher and that a publisher can sell to readers.

    I suspect it is all too easy for writers to hide behind the idea that their work is art and therefore can't be published without compromise. This may be true, but I suspect the reason many writers struggle to get published is that they fail to convince agents/publishers that their writing has commercial merit.

    Now don't get me wrong, I am as high brow as the next man. In fact Caroline Smailes (co-founder of BubbleCow) writes literary fiction. However, if a writer is looking to have their work read on a wide scale they have two choices. The first is to play the game and go down the traditional publishing route with a 'product'. The second is to be proactive, build their own platform and then sell their work off their own bat.