So you’ve written a novel! Congratulations!
That’s a bloody hard thing to do, and if you’ve written a choose-your-own (CYO) style nonlinear narrative, there is an extra layer of complication which accompanies that task! So pat yourself on the back before anything else.

You rock! (Seriously.)

But what is the next step? Well, in true CYO style, you have to make a decision.

What are you going to do with this glorious manuscript? Will you:
a) Keep it locked in a draw forever more, until eventually a relative finds it post mortem, decides that you’re a genius and profits from your posthumous work… Leave this random blog. Reading about publishing might not be a worthy investment of your time right now.
b) Self publish your book baby … Turn to page ‘indie’ (the steps are basically outlined in my previous post here)
c) Seek traditional publishing … Read on.

If you seek to venture down the traditional publishing path, you’ll need to to not only write your story, but also prepare a submission package. This includes three documents:
1) a query letter (800ish words)
2) a short biography (300ish words)
s) a synopsis (500ish words)

This post will focus on the synopsis for your nonlinear CYO narrative.

Now, by no means am I an all-knowing guru on this topic, but I will share my experiences with you, as I feel that it’s important to help the writing community (or maybe it’s just the Teacher in me!)

Either way, hi! Welcome! And hopefully you learn something.

The first thing that I learnt when researching how to write a synopsis is this:

There is no specific template (especially for a CYO)… but there is a formula.

I spent hours giving Google a decent workout. I even left the results page 3 plus! I found SO much advice, guidance and templates available online BUT none of them lead me down the choose-your-own path. The best I found were some articles about writing a synopsis for dual timeline style non-linear fictions, but that is still a very different beast to a CYO narrative.

I saved a few scaffolds and read up on the rules for synopsis writing. A revelation that arose from all that lost research time: You will HAVE to break some of the ‘rules’ if you’ve written a first person choose-your-own novel. This idea of rebellion is new to me and kind of confronting. I am not a rule breaker. If there’s a template or scaffold or set of rules, I’ll follow those bad boys to the moon and back. Yet in this case, I just HAD to throw some of it out the window.

Let’s start with the elements you will need in your synopsis. These are the rules you’ll want to follow. So grab your pen (or laptop) and get ready to make a few notes.

Start by outlining the plot basics you’ll need to include:

• Main character/s.
  Let’s meet your protagonist. Capitalise their name and provide a very brief description of them in brackets. E.g. HARRY POTTER (unwitting child wizard and orphan) or BILBO BAGGINS (a 200 year old insular Hobbit who dreams of writing an adventure novel) or THYME RYDER (kid detective extraordinaire).
  
• Inciting incident/ the call to arms.
  Tell (don’t show) what happens to shake up the life of your protagonist. How, when and why does the metaphorical shit hit the fan and change your character’s life? Set the stakes. Keep it simple and get to the point, fast.
  
  Too wordy: At the local high school, Rachel searches for Johnny all over the campus and when finally finds him in the science lab, she initiates a fight during which she declares that their one-year-long secret relationship was a big mistake, breaking his heart.
  
  Concise: At school, Rachel confronts Johnny about their relationship.
  
  If you’re like me, you’ll probably roll with the lengthy version in the first draft then edit it down into the more concise version once you realise you’re over the suggested word limit.
  
• Climax.
  The peak of action is where your character’s true self will emerge. Define the emotional change/reaction/action. How is the character struggling, succeeding, regressing on their journey?
  
• Resolution.
  How does your protagonist return to a new normal? Yes, you WILL have to reveal the ending in a synopsis. A synopsis is the document that outlines the narrative and character arcs, so you have to give away the ending. It feels wrong, but do it.
  Now, even if you’ve written a nonlinear choose-your-own-narrative, the character and plot arc elements should be present throughout your story. Your character should have an emotional arc and at least one main issue to resolve by the end of the book.

Now, here’s the synopsis advice I found myself ignoring (and I’m not really sorry for it, either.)

• “Don’t talk about the story’s construction.”
  It’s a choose-your-own-adventure narrative. I HAVE to talk about the structure and construction of it, as that is a huge part of the novel itself. Now, I didn’t go into epic detail, but I sure as heck mentioned it. If my novel was told through a series of letters, I’d sure as heck be mentioning that element of construction. I think what literary agencies are saying with this one is the WHY you wrote the story. For example: “This story was inspired by my twenty-first wedding anniversary, when Bob and I were abducted by aliens and probed before waking in a field outside of Canberra” etc is NOT relevant information for an agent. That isn’t the kind of ‘construction’ sentences you should slide into your query
  
• “Don’t ask rhetorical questions.”
  OK, questions are a HUGE part of a CYO novel. “What will you do next? Turn to page XX”. The entire premise of a CYO novel is built on asking the reader questions. Due to this, there are many hypotheticals or potential paths in a CYO novel. “Will you take a wrong path and wind up being eaten by the soul-sucking Goddess Ammut? Might you be squashed into the desert sands by the Sphinx? Or does your fate rest in the already unravelling hands of a mummified mate?” Depending on the path you choose, any of these are a possibility of these options, and they are all hypotheticals that speak to the structure of the novel. To properly outline the novel, I felt that these had to be included.

Time will tell if this synopsis is effective, but I hope that if you happen across this blog post, you might feel comforted by this info!

Good luck! Until next time!