Who am I, and why am I here?

Another question about Writing a Synopsis for a First Person POV novel.

My  heroine has amnesia. How do you start off your synopsis with the heroine’s flaw when she doesn’t remember anything about herself? Or do we just tell the reader anyway? (I’ve been trying to weave in my voice via the way the heroine would view things as they happen – which doesn’t work so well at the start when you’re trying to introduce her baggage and she doesn’t remember it!)

This is only a problem if you’re trying to write your synopsis in your character’s first person POV.

Don’t forget; a synopsis is you (the writer) telling someone else  (the industry professional) what has already happened (which means you know how it ends) to someone you know really well (the characters). So it doesn’t matter that your heroine has amnesia and can’t remember who she is. Well, it does, but only to her. It’s not her responsibility to remember or to tell about it. It’s yours.

A synopsis also doesn’t have to be presented in the same order as you present the story. It’s most often presented in chronological order i.e. the order in which events actually happen. This means you don’t have to digress in the middle of your synopsis to dump a load of backstory about your characters. Actually, you shouldn’t do that in the novel either, but that’s another post. You present your heroine upfront as a flawed character with a compelling need and you feed the necessary information as to how she got that way as soon as it’s appropriate to do so.

In a novel, you show the reader what happens. In a synopsis you tell the agent/publisher what has happened.

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