Synopsis examples anyone?

[Cyrusc]

So my novel is finally ready to start submitting to agents (victory dance!) I'm currently trying to polish my synopsis but I'm struggling. There is plenty of advice online but I really want to see successful examples to make sure I'm on the right track.

Would any of you lovely people be able to point me in the right direction? Or if any published writers would be so generous as to share their own synopsis I would be eternally grateful. TIA

I should probably mention it's a crime/thriller but a synopsis in any genre would be helpful.

I've recently found there's some good examples online. They talk about how dry and dull a synopsis seems, compared to the novel itself.

I would never post a synopsis of an unpublished novel on here or anywhere else online!

There are tons of examples online. Make sure you tell the whole story, even the ending, with any cliffhangers. Capitalise names the first time they appear. Mention the setting and the time period and the genre.

From what I remember, if you go on to Lucy Cavendish Prize website, they have in the past included the synopsis as well as the first few chapters of shortlisted entries? Personally, I find the quality variable, but these are novels that have caught a judge's eye enough to be shortlisted.

I think some kinds of synopsis are hard to do well -- if your novel is plotty, I think that's probably easier in that you just tell the main events in quick sucession, but mine that's out to editors at the moment is only minimally plotty and is as much about how the story is told as it is about what happens, which was hard to get right.

That's my only tip -- that you should try to give some flavour of how you write/the chief voice of the novel, as well as what happens, in the synopsis.

Oh, and I practised by synopsising novels I knew well in my head, especially anything I thought bore any kind of resemblance to mine.

Thank you Abhann that's incredibly helpful.