How to effortlessly define your Plot in a single sentence

 (Originally taken from Caroline Norrington’s Scrivener Template)

The one sentence summary is your novel’s dramatic question in a nutshell. If you develop your story through the 'snowflake method’ it is the starting point, while I’ve actually never used it, I still believe it's one of the first things you should do as soon as you've gotten together your key concepts. It is also a useful tool for writing your synopsis, query letters, and pitching to agents. It gives you something to focus your plot development around and simply crystallizes it in a way that throwing some key concepts together does not.

There are four key ingredients your sentence summary should contain (to which I have added on):

- Your main character(s) [C]

- In a particular setting [S]

- Inciting incident/catalyst (Optional) [I]

- Has a problem / challenge (Conflict/Antagonist) [P], [A]

- And commits to an action as a result. (Visible Goals & Visceral Stakes) [Ac], [G], [Stk]

- Driving Question [DQ] (Optional)

Putting these elements together should hint at the scope of your story. The action your main character takes does not have to explain how the story resolves, but should rather focus on the kind of activity that will form the bulk of your story.  Also note that your main character is not described by name or physical appearance, but rather in terms of key characteristics. (Coming Soon! Building Better Characters: Attributes, Flaws, The Wound, and The Lie).

Examples:

• As revolution unfolds in a Dickensian city [S], a young woman with extraordinary mathematical abilities [C] must protect those she loves [P] and so becomes a spy, then a double agent [Ac].
• A philandering geologist and his wife [C] struggle to survive [Ac]  a Siberian winter night [S] when their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere [P].
• A group of teenage nerds [C] challenge themselves to lose their virginity [P] before the end of High School [S] and take awkward but hilarious steps to do so [Ac].

My One Sentence Summary: 

In the post-apocalyptic Wasteland of the Commonwealth [S], a disgraced Knight of the Brotherhood [C] discovers the daughter of a Pre-War scientist [I] who tells him of a secret vault project [P] sought after by the evil Order of the Algorithm [A], and so they must follow the clues her father left behind [Ac, G] and discover the truth behind Project Omega and the Apocalypse [G, DQ] before the Order destroys everything [Stk].

Expand into a Plot Summary 

Write Two Versions: One for your readers & One for Yourself

When writing your Plot summary, you’ll be making two versions, and you’ll likely be refining it as your story becomes more developed. 

The first will be the basic book jacket version for your readers. This is based directly off of the One Sentence Summary and doesn’t require you to have all the steps of your plot figured out, or the answers to your questions. Save that for later. 

 Remember, in this version, you are persuading the reader to buy your book. This is a sales pitch and the first thing a potential reader does is turn to the Book Jacket Blurb. If they like what they read, they will then turn to the first couple of paragraphs after that. You only have about 10 seconds to grab the reader’s attention here, just the first paragraph so you have to Hook them right away. This is why your Opening Line is the most important as it sets the entire tone of your work. Just a note, some people will actually skip past the prologue assuming they will be a boring info dump and will go straight to Chapter 1, to see if it’s worth just in case. So just make sure to sell your novel here as well if you utilize a prologue. (Coming Soon! How to effectively use a prologue: Only 10 seconds to Hook, Line, and Sinker.)

Here are a couple tips for your synopsis:

• Frame it from an emotional and thematic perspective. 
• Hit all the major points set out in your One Sentence summary. 
• Briefly describe protagonists Original World/State (Coming Soon! The Great Monomyth: The Hero’s Journey).
• Set up the Conflict, the Catalyst, Discovery of main Plot, Establish Reward & Stakes, Antagonist & Threats.

My Book Jacket Synopsis:

War.

War never changes.

More than two hundred years after the end of the world, and Jacob Burns knows this better than anyone. Once a decorated Knight of the Brotherhood, he now lives in disgrace among the scavengers of Goodneighbor. Ever since the Brotherhood had fallen, he’d been a wanted man. Wanted by Diamond City, by the Minutemen, and most of all… by his own kin who called him traitor.

But Jacob’s luck is about to turn when he unearths a young woman named Ilya Astor, frozen in time since before the Great War. He discovers her father was a high ranking scientist who had worked on a top secret project known as “Project Omega”, said to be humanity's last great hope.

But they are not the only ones searching for this great treasure. A shadow hangs over the Commonwealth as an ancient and mysterious society known only as the “Order of the Algorithm” returns. Jacob and Ilya must follow the clues left by her father and uncover the truth behind Project Omega before the insidious Order destroys all that is left in this world.

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In the full version, you would include as much as you know about your various plots at the beginning, middle, and end stages. This version I will go into in full at a later date. In it, you will describe all the answers to the major questions you pose, and end with the ending line, which I based on my moral premise (Coming Soon: The Morally Imperative Premise: More Than a Theme, Cut to the Very Heart of your Story with this One Easy Trick).

So, what does your One Sentence Summary look like? How about your Plot Summary? Leave yours in the comments below!