Submission
Writing a covering letter and synopsis: what's actually expected
Two short documents, and both get more anxiety poured into them than the actual manuscript, in my experience. Neither needs to be clever. Both need to do a specific, unglamorous job.
The covering letter's actual job
To tell an agent, quickly, what the book is and why you're sending it to them specifically. That's the whole brief. It isn't a sales pitch, and it isn't the place to prove you can write beautifully — the manuscript does that job.
- What the book is — genre, word count, a one- or two-sentence sense of what it's about.
- Why this agent — a genuine reason, even a small one: something they represent, said in an interview, or asked for. "Dear Agent" sent to fifty inboxes is easy to spot.
- A little about you — relevant credentials if you have them, but not required. Plenty of debut novels arrive from writers with no publishing history at all.
- Nothing else. Not a plot summary in the letter itself — that's the synopsis's job — and not an explanation of why the book deserves to be published. Let it speak for itself.
The synopsis's actual job
To show the whole shape of the story, including the ending, in the space of about a page. It is not a teaser, and withholding the ending to preserve suspense is one of the most common mistakes — an agent reading a synopsis needs to see that the plot resolves and works, not be kept guessing the way a reader of the finished book would be.
Write it in the same tense and broadly the same tone as the book, in third person even if the novel is first person, and resist the urge to include every subplot. The main throughline, clearly, is worth more than comprehensive coverage.
The mistakes that show
- A synopsis that reads like back-cover copy. Mysterious and enticing is the wrong register — clear and complete is the right one.
- A covering letter that apologises. "This is my first attempt, please be gentle" undersells work that may well stand on its own.
- Ignoring the agent's own length limits. If they ask for one page, a page and a half is a page and a half too long.
- Ending the synopsis on a cliffhanger. The single most common version of withholding the ending.
One good rule of thumb
If someone who has never heard of your book could read the synopsis and correctly explain what happens in it, start to finish, it's doing its job.
Need the whole submission package set out properly?
The formatting rules in the guide to standard manuscript format apply to the covering letter and synopsis too, not just the manuscript itself.