Cutting it short - the 150 word synopsis

I've been wrestling with the dreaded synopsis again this week.  I'm getting close to the end of 

Genehunter, and when I've done the edits I'll be sending this book out on its rounds of agents.  Which means it'll need a synopsis to go with it.

I've been submitting stuff for over twenty years now, and I've noticed a general trend towards shorter and shorter synopses in the last decade.  Go back ten years, and you could find agents who would look at a four or five page synopsis.  Five years ago, that went down to two pages maximum.  These days, you're more likely to be asked to shrink your book's action down into one page of description.

I can usually manage to shoehorn my story, despite its four viewpoints and plot and two sub-plots, into one page and 500 words.  I can always get in the main plot, and sometimes one of the sub-plots too.  But this week I came across the ultimate demand for a short synopses.  I saw a first page of a novel competition which wanted a 150 word synopsis.  

Yes. You read that right.  150 words, less than half a page of text.  Seriously, guys?  A synopsis is supposed to outline the whole story. And there isn't a hope in hell of putting all of it into 150 words.  I had a go at it, but the result sounds like a book for four year olds.  "They go on a long journey. Ahri is killed."  I wonder what help such a truncated document can be to the judges.   Oh, and I'm supposed to put my writing style into the synopsis too.  I'm not a lyrical writer, and my prose is pretty bare, but even I couldn't get any sense of personality into 150 words

The 150 word synopsis has got me tossing up whether to enter the competition or not.  I'm thinking that, if the judges can't make the effort to read 500 words of synopsis, whether these are people I want to entrust my precious writing to.  The jury's out at present, but I have to make a decision within the next few days.  Wish me luck in getting personality into my 150 words.

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral, Panthera : Death Song and the short story collection Otherlives.  Find out more at www.wendymetcalfe.com