With special focus on romance, you will learn how to simply and succinctly construct an engaging and fresh synopsis that contains all vital information while hooking the reader, maintaining tension and emotion.
The course will run over 4 weeks. Over the course of these weeks, we’ll break down the key components of the synopsis and we’ll spend each week structuring and refining each component, by working through exercises, then posting and critiquing. Feedback will be given by the group as a whole, as well as by the presenter. This way, the group will learn how to analyse a synopsis and its parts subjectively, what must be included and what can be left out. Tone, language and pacing will be studied – how to use an economy of words, whilst including all the major plot points and doing justice to both the developing romance and character arcs. Participants will be expected to dedicate a minimum of 3 hours per week.
By the end of the course, the participants will:
1. Have a completed, polished synopsis ready for submission.
2. Be able to confidently assess their own manuscripts, extract the necessary information to build and write a synopsis unaided – a synopsis that will impress any agent or editor.
3. Be able to use this strategy to assess whether all the key elements of a good, riveting story are in their manuscript. In particular:
• 3-dimensional central characters (goal, motivation, conflict) – this includes character arc and growth
• Central theme – identifying the key essence or premise of their story so it can be clearly shown in their synopsis.
• Major turning points – identifying plot points that are instrumental in the development of the central characters’ relationship.
• A distinctive, believable and satisfying resolution or wrap up – this includes a happy for now or happy ever after.
About the Presenter:
Michelle Somers is an award-winning romantic suspense author. She’s a professional killer and matchmaker, a storyteller and a romantic. Words are her power and her passion. Her heroes and heroines always get their happy ever after, but she'll put them through one hell of a journey to get there.
Michelle is treasurer of the Melbourne Romance Writers Guild, a member of Romance Writers of Australia and America, as well as Sisters in Crime and RWA America’s Kiss of Death chapter.
Her debut novel Lethal in Love won both the Valerie Parv Award and Romance Writers of America’s Indiana Golden Opportunities Award before publication and was snapped up by Penguin Random House after a pitch at Sydney's 2014 RWA conference. It hit virtual bookstores in July 2015 as a serial ebook.
In 2016, Lethal in Love was re-released as a single ebook the same weekend it won RWA’s Romantic Book of the Year Award for long romance.
Course Dates: 4 September - 1 October, 2017
Cost: RWA Member—$30. Non-RWA Member—$80.
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