The official blog of Writer Beware® shines a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls. Also providing advice for writers, industry news, and commentary. Writer Beware® is sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.
I was out most of yesterday, driving my husband to get tests and assessments for surgery he’s having this coming Monday (nothing serious, just mechanical problems with a knee injury). When I got home, an e-mail from SFWA’s legal counsel was waiting for me. A literary agent–let’s call her Agent B–had contacted him with aRead More
Hey, Victoria, welcome! You really spiffed up the site, it looks very nice. Okay, we’ve discussed writing the synopsis. Anything else in the writing area we can help y’all with? Anyone need to check out any agents or publishers before sending a manuscript off? You all DO know to check out an agent or aRead More
Hi, all! I’m Victoria Strauss, the other half of Writer Beware. I maintain the Writer Beware website, and am the Keeper of the Database. I’m feeling very virtuous at the moment because I spent the afternoon doing Writer Beware’s filing (a task I tend to avoid, because it gives me flashbacks to the horrid clericalRead More
Last night I typed in a very long post that was an example of a synopsis from a book of mine, as I had promised Bonnie I would do. It hasn’t appeared. Gone into the ether? I’ll give it till tomorrow to appear, then do it all over again, I guess. I find this MOSTRead More
Hi, Bonnie. Sorry this post took so long, but I was down and out with a cold last week. No pep at all. Okay, here’s how I did the short synopsis (not the one I worked from, that was a chapter by chapter one that was very detailed, this was the one I had toRead More
Hi Bonnie! Glad to help out. A synopsis for a novel (some people refer to it as an outline) is written in present tense. I usually type mine single-spaced, so when it’s submitted by my agent, it is readily distinguishable from the chapters that she submits. Synopses that are written for submission should be asRead More
