Essential Writing Techniques for Novelists Writing Novels, Scripts and Story Outlines

A story outline (also called a story synopsis or content summary) is the advertising copy for the tens of thousands of words of your novel that you worked so hard to create. So after writing it, please check it carefully and revise it again and again. Those famous publishers will use these few hundred words to get a preliminary understanding of the uniqueness and excellence of your work, generating their initial urge to publish.

You’re very lucky — you got a publishing opportunity. When the book is finally made, part of what you wrote may be printed on the cover or back cover, letting the readers you have in mind see it and stirring their urge to read.

After some readers finish it, unable to contain their excitement, they recommend the book to their best friend. A few sentences from the several hundred words you wrote may become the core content of what they tell their friend.

In my view, as long as you fully recognize the importance of the story outline, any author capable of commanding words and gifted at telling a good story can write an excellent story outline.

Never expect an editor to read the entire manuscript without first understanding the story synopsis.

If there’s no story synopsis, I would ask the submitter to provide one. If the submitter can provide a “highlights introduction” for the novel, even better.

A Story Synopsis Should Achieve the Following Goals (5W1H1R)

1. Explain the main characters’ names, gender, identity, age, appearance, personality and temperament — that is, WHO, WHERE and WHEN (adjustable according to actual needs).
2. Clearly state what the protagonist wants to do — that is, WHAT and HOW (get rich, get promoted, take revenge, contend for supremacy, get married, etc.).
3. Clearly state the meaning of what the protagonist does and where the difficulty lies — that is, WHY. Example: the male lead wants to win the “Campus Singer Contest” championship to win the campus beauty’s love. The difficulty is that the campus beauty herself is also competing, and not only is she extremely strong, her will to win is super-strong, and she is hostile to anyone who beats her.
4. Explain the outcome of the events — that is, RESULT. The result is one of the points readers care about most. There’s the idiom “start strong, end weak” — presumably such things exist in the world. Based on reading experience, many novels’ endings are deeply disappointing.

A novel conveys a certain emotion through a story. There are only so many types of emotion, while stories are ever-changing. An experienced editor can naturally see from the story what emotion it conveys to readers. Of course, if you truly have a fresh and profound insight, writing a few lines here that could become aphorisms is also very good. But that’s the “flower” added to the brocade; what the editor wants to see is still the “brocade.”

An Example of a Fairly Plain Story Synopsis

• Title: The Godfather
• Author: Mario Puzo
• Outline: After World War II ends, several major American Mafia families begin a new round of competition. Vito Corleone, known as “the Godfather,” is one of the biggest Mafia bosses. His youngest son Michael is an outstanding Ivy League graduate and a war hero, who has always been unwilling to participate in family affairs. After his father is ambushed and seriously wounded, his eldest brother Sonny takes over family affairs. Out of enmity, during negotiations, Michael assassinates the rival family’s boss as well as a police officer colluding with the underworld. He flees to Sicily, Italy, where his enemies track him down and kill his wife in a bombing. Sonny, who was handling family affairs, is also killed by an enemy’s scheme. After the old Godfather recovers, he negotiates peace with his rivals, and a year after fleeing, Michael returns to America. After the old Godfather dies, Michael eliminates the traitor and launches his revenge plan; upon success, he is honored as the new “Godfather.”
• Time: Just after World War II, 1946.
• Place: America, Italy.
• Characters: The old Godfather, Michael.
• Traits: The old Godfather, deeply calculating; Michael, from white-collar elite candidate to underworld boss.
• Main events: Revenge, contention for supremacy.
• Difficulty: The enemies’ ruthless methods.
• Meaning: Preserve oneself, eliminate rivals.
• Result: Michael becomes the new Godfather.
• First highlight: The Mafia’s inner workings revealed in a novel for the first time.
• Second highlight: The so-called “wisdom of life” expounded by the old Godfather in the novel.
• Commentary: This synopsis is written very simply, with clear threads and definite highlights.

An Example of a Fairly Ornate Story Synopsis

• Title: Xiang Han
• Author: Fei Wo Si Cun
• Outline: A seal as crystalline as a teardrop, a sheet of gold-flecked paper from a distant age, telling of two tales of undying sorrow and joy. The man she deeply loves holds the hand of a beautiful bride — who is her own sister. She thought her heart was dead ashes, but a sea of blood-feud with kin forces her to become her lover’s enemy. Yet the man who suddenly bursts in, as handsome as a demon — is he the antidote that redeems her, or the poison of love? When she returns again, she actually makes a pact with him, transforming into a beautiful goddess of vengeance, slaying their common enemy with her own hand. But after all, she is merely an ordinary person in the ten-zhang red dust, forgetting past events yet unable to escape love, hate, greed and anger. And he — will Satan’s love receive a blessing? The flower-lover gone, the flower has no master; that dazzling, incomparable Xiang Han, that sorrowful, despairing karma of a past life — a hundred years later, will it still shine with radiant brilliance?
• Commentary: This synopsis is written rather ornately, with both brocade and flower — flower first, brocade after.

An Example of a Fairly Detailed Story

• Title: Falling in Love with a Single-Eyelid Boy
• Author: Yanzhi
• Outline: Han Zitong and Jiang Yi are two successful men; they were college classmates and are also rivals. Han Zitong is naturally free-spirited and goes his own way, while Jiang Yi is gentle and refined, outwardly honest and loyal. For years, Jiang Yi has been looking for a chance to take revenge on Han Zitong. When he learns that Han Zitong has fallen in love with a girl, he decides to snatch her away and use that girl to take revenge on Han Zitong. The youthful and lovely Song Shiyi studies marketing management in college and wants to work at Jiang Yi’s company after graduation, but by a twist of fate ends up at Han Zitong’s company. Yet she never expected that Han Zitong is the third brother who grew up with her in the orphanage. Years of separation have brought huge changes to both Song Shiyi and Han Zitong, but…