Story Synopsis

This is a very important piece of information. When a reader is looking for new stories to read, this may convince them to either open your story, or pass it by without even taking a look. As your reputation as an author grows, this will have less significance, but it will always be important for new readers. Think of it as the display window of a store. Is it inviting? And remember, this is the first thing that readers see about your story, so make sure that you spell check it before submitting it. If it contains spelling errors, some readers won't open your story no matter how appealing the synopsis sounds.

Some authors write only a few words for the synopsis, and others write synopses that are longer than some stories. I think that somewhere in between is best, but that's just my personal opinion.

I tend to write just one synopsis for my own multi-part stories, but some authors submit one with each part, describing in detail what is going on in the story. I don't like to do that because new readers get an advance peek at the story's content, and it might ruin some of the surprises, but the choice is yours. Some authors include a 'story so far' segment at the start of a continuing story segment where there has been a time gap between postings. A synopsis is required with the first part, but you can leave the area completely blank on successive submissions. Please be consistent. If you start submitting a synopsis with each part, you should continue in that vein until the last part is submitted.

Only the first sentence is used when the story is listed on the 'What's New' page. The sentence ends when it encounters a period, question mark, or exclamation point. If you use an abbreviation such as Mr. or Dr., that ends the sentence, so leave off the period on abbreviations in the first sentence. The entire synopsis cannot be used on the 'What's New' page because many are far too long. The entire synopsis is reproduced on the Author's page.