It’s never too late to write the one-sentence summary for your novel. Or rewrite it.

The one-sentence summary is the first step in my wildly popular Snowflake Method of writing a novel. But even if you don’t use the Snowflake Method, you still need a one-sentence summary.

What is a One-Sentence Summary?

A one-sentence summary is a sentence of up to 25 words that sets up the Story Question in your reader’s mind. Please note that the one-sentence summary usually is not the Story Question itself. The one-sentence summary causes your reader to ask the Story Question.

And what is the Story Question? That’s easy. The lead character of novel has some goal that they want to achieve by the end of the novel. Either they want to get something, or do something, or become something. The Story Question asks whether the lead character will achieve their goal. 

An Example One-Sentence Summary 

Let’s write an example one-sentence summary for one of my favorite spy novels, The Eye of the Needle, by Ken Follett. A little background is in order. 

It’s the spring of 1944, and World War II is anyone’s war to win—or lose. The German army is defending Europe, and the Allies have captured much of Italy. Everyone knows the Allies are going to attempt an invasion of France by crossing the English Channel. But nobody knows where the attack will land. Calais is the closest point on the French coast for an attack, but Normandy is less well-defended.

The German armies must defend both Calais and Normandy against attack, but they have limited forces. Their job would be much easier if only they knew where the attack would land. 

The Allies intend to attack Normandy. To fool the Germans, they create a large fake military camp on the ground in East Anglia, making it appear that they will attack Calais. The camp can easily be seen from the air and has thousands of fake tanks, airplanes, and buildings. The Allies generate fake radio messages from the camp, and run a bombing campaign against Calais.

The ruse works, and the Germans focus their defense on Calais. The Allies attack Normandy and create a foothold in Europe that eventually leads to victory. 

All of the above is standard history. What could have gone wrong? Suppose a German spy had investigated the fake military camp and discovered the ruse? Suppose the spy notified the Nazi high command? Then the Germans might have shifted their defenses to Normandy, and the war might have ended differently. We’ll never know, because it didn’t happen. 

But Ken Follett decided this possibility would make an exciting novel. Here’s my one-sentence summary of the storyline: “Shortly before D-Day, the only German spy in England discovers that the Allied invasion force threatening Calais is a fake.” 

That’s it. Just 20 words. I’ve left out all the story background. I’ve left out the names of all the characters. I’ve left out the Story Question. The one-sentence summary leaves out almost everything. But what goes into it? 

The Ingredients of a One-Sentency Summary

  These are the usual ingredients I use for cooking up a one-sentence summary. I don’t always use all of them, but I usually use most of them:

• Time or place information to establish the setting. 
• A paradoxical description of a major character.
• A surprising event that suggests the Story Question. 
• At least one emotive “kicker” word. 

In my example one-sentence summary, the phrase “shortly before D-Day” tells us the time, and the words “in England” tells us the location. We don’t need to be more precise than that. 

The paradoxical description of a major character is “the only German spy in England.” This is paradoxical because it’s rather shocking to hear that there might be just a single spy in the entire country. The reader probably won’t know for sure if it’s true, but it’s possible. And this fact massively raises the stakes on the story. This is the only spy who can inform the German high command, so everything is riding on him! 

The Story Question is obvious: Will the spy be able to warn his superiors about the fake invasion force, or will he not? The one-sentence summary doesn’t “tell” the reader the Story Question. It “shows” the reader enough information to figure out the Story Question. And having figured it out, the reader is now engaged in the story. 

The “kicker” word is the last one in the sentence—“fake.” The first 19 words of the story appear to be about an invasion force, and everyone knows there was an invasion. So the first 19 words make it seem like this is just another war story. Then the word “fake” turns everything around. Readers who know the history of the Normandy invasion will realize that this must be FUSAG—the famous fictitious First United States Army Group, under the command of George Patton. Readers who don’t know the history of the invasion will wonder what’s going on—and if they care about World War II, they’ll want to know more. 

Why Do You Need a One-Sentency Summary?

There are many reasons you need a one-sentence summary. Here are some of the most important:

• It keeps you focused when you’re writing your first draft, potentially shaving months off the time it takes to get it written. 
• It helps you edit your manuscript, because it tells you what to leave in, and what to take out. 
• It sells your book to your agent, who now knows how to sell it to your editor.
• It sells your book to your editor, who now knows how to sell it to their publishing committee. 
• It sells your book to the publishing committee, who makes the final decision on whether your editor will be allowed to publish your book. 
• It sells your book to your marketing team, because when you hand them a great one-sentence summary, you’ve done half their job. 
• It tells your cover designer how to create the perfect cover for your book. 
• It sells your book to potential readers in your target audience. In ten seconds, they know your book is exactly what they’ve been dying to read. 
• It scares away potential readers who are not in your target audience. You absolutely don’t want them reading your book and then leaving a review explaining why it’s not the book they were expecting. 

What if You Don’t Have a One-Sentency Summary?

There’s no better time than yesterday to write one. If that didn’t work out, there’s no time like the present. If that’s not in the cards, then tomorrow still works.

Some writers know their one-sentence summary from the get-go, before they even write the first word of their novel. Other writers like to discover their one-sentence summary as the story unfolds in their mind, bit by bit. They may need to write the whole first draft before they know what their story’s about. And that’s fine. 

The truth is that even writers who planned their story in advance will find some surprises while writing the first draft. By the time the manuscript is written, the story has usually evolved. In that case, it doesn’t hurt to refine the original one-sentence summary—or scrap it altogether and write a new one, a better one. 

I like to write a one-sentence summary before I start writing. But then I refine it after I’ve written the first quarter of the first draft. Then I refine it again when the book is half done, and again when it’s three-quarters done. And (hopefully) one last time when the first draft is complete.

There’s no harm in revising your one-sentence summary several times. It’s a bit like a fine wine—it gets better with age. 

Homework

• Do you have a one-sentence summary for your novel? If not, would you like one?
• What is the time and place where your novel is set? 
• What is the most important goal of any of the characters in your story? (It doesn’t need to be your protagonist who has the goal.)
• How can you define that character in a paradoxical way? 
• What is the “kicker” you can put at the end of the sentence that makes the story special? 
• Give yourself one hour and write the best one-sentence summary you can within that time limit. It can be awful, if that’s the best you’ve got, but it needs to be 25 words or less. Less is more.

Some Example One-Sentence Summaries

What makes each of the following one-sentence summaries work? Can you do better?

• A 17-year-old girl pretends to fall in love with another contestant in the arena where she and 23 other teens must fight to the death. (The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins.)
• A young English woman with little prospect of marriage must fend off a rude young aristocrat who thinks he loves her. (Pride & Prejudice, by Jane Austen.) 
• At the height of the cold war, a Russian submarine captain decides to turn over his latest-generation nuclear sub to the Americans. (The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy.)
• A rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul. (My first published novel, Transgression.)

I read a book review once which began, “This book answers a question nobody is asking.” The reviewer thought that was a bad thing. He thought he was trashing the book. 

But in reality, that was quite an endorsement. If you want to make a difference in the world, you need to begin by asking a question nobody is asking. 

That’s not enough, of course. Questions are easy to ask. Anybody can ask a hard question. Anybody can ask an unanswerable question. Children do it all the time.

Progress happens when you ask a question nobody is asking, but which can finally be answered at this stage in human history, because we now know enough to tackle the question.

In 1903, the Wright brothers were asking how to get a machine to fly when it was heavier than air. A couple of years later, Einstein was asking what if the speed of light had the same value in all reference frames. (In both cases, I’m simplifying things a bit. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but not much more complicated.)

Every Novel Has a “What If?” Question

This matters for novelists because at the heart of every novel is a question. A “what if?” question. 

Most novels use a familiar “what if?” question that has been asked and answered many times before.

But the really ground-breaking novels ask a “what if?” question that is new. 

It’s easy to ask a familiar “what if?” question. When you do, you get a familiar novel. 

It’s also easy to ask an utterly unfamiliar “what if?” question that is too weird for words. When you do, you get a novel nobody wants to read. 

The tricky thing is to ask a “what if?” question that is just right. Not completely familiar. Not ridiculously bizarre. Just right. 

A Little Exercise For You

• Make a list of some of your favorite novels. 
• For each novel, what’s the “what if?” question the novel asked? 
• In what way is that “what if?” question familiar—just like many other novels that came before it?
• In what way is that “what if?” question unfamiliar—unlike any other novel that came before it?

I hope this is helpful to you in working on your next novel. 

This happens to almost every novelist who ever lived, and it’s probably happened to you: 

You wrote your novel the best you know how. You did everything right. The story flows. The characters rock. The setting shines. The theme pulses with life. You set the manuscript aside for a few weeks to let it cool. Then you come back to it and…

And you find that your characters sometimes do illogical things. Or they are more clever than anyone could possibly be. Or crazy coincidences ruin their plans. 

In short, you have holes in your novel.

The Two Horns of the Dilemma

At this point, you have only two choices:

1. Fix those holes by adding more stuff to your story. 
2. Ignore the holes and be true to your vision. 
3. Throw the manuscript away because it’s flawed.

I know those are three options listed, but you’re a real novelist and you would rather swallow crushed glass in a gallon of bat urine before you’d throw away a manuscript you sweat blood on. So option 3 is not an option. 

But what do you do? Fix the holes or leave them alone?

What Happens When You Fix the Holes

You can and probably should fix the holes in your story. Generally, this is not hard. 

If your characters are doing illogical things, you can make them logical by adding more information to the story that makes it clear that it’s actually the best choice in a bad situation. Or you can change their reasoning process so they use better logic to get to the right action. Or they can do something more logical.

If your characters are more clever than anyone has a right to be, then you can give more information so their cleverness is more plausible. Or you can add another character, which helps because two brains really are better than one, so their cleverness is now more plausible. Or you can just have them choose a less clever solution, which will probably add complications to the story. 

If you’ve got crazy coincidences that seem too unlikely for words, you can add some reasons to make it clear that it’s not really a coincidence after all. Or you can just add more events, so that you don’t need a coincidence to bring two people together at just the right time. 

When you’ve done all this, your novel is probably going to be longer. Because every way to fix the holes in your story requires you to add information to make the holes go away. It’s almost impossible to fix story holes by making the novel shorter. 

After You’ve Fixed the Holes

Once you’ve fixed the holes in your story, you’ll do the right thing and set it aside. You’ll wait a few weeks and come back to read your masterpiece. And now there’s a problem …

There are new holes in your story. You fixed the old ones, but the fixes created new holes. Hopefully you have fewer holes in your story. Hopefully, they are smaller. 

But you’ve still got holes in your story, and the same two horns of the dilemma. Only now, your novel is longer than before. More complicated. More pages to print. And pages cost money. 

You can repeat the process if you insist. You can fix all the new holes, exactly the way you fixed the previous batch. Go right ahead. Do it all again. 

And when you reread the manuscript after a suitable pause, you’ll find a whole new round of holes. We hope they will be fewer and smaller than before. But maybe they won’t. And for sure, your manuscript will only get longer. And meanwhile, the clock is ticking. You are getting older. Your readers are drumming their fingers waiting for your next book.

The Sweet Spot

There is a sweet spot here. You want to fix the most gaping holes, yes. But you can’t continue the process forever, no. You need to get the book out. 

Seth Godin, the legendary marketing genius, is famous for saying that you need to ship your product. Whatever it is, there comes a point when you just ship it, even if it has a few flaws. 

This means you will get reviews complaining (rightly) that your characters do illogical things—they are too stupid to live. Other reviews will complain (rightly) that your characters are incredibly clever—an unrealistic “Mary Sue” who can’t possibly exist. 

Please note that some reviewers will make both complaints, maybe even about the same character. Your way-too-smart Mary Sue is also too-stupid-to-live. Yes, really, somebody will say that. 

Other reviewers will note the implausible coincidences in your story. 

And yet other reviewers will complain that your story is too long. 

You did your best to hit the sweet spot, and you may feel like you failed. But did you?

No, you wrote a novel. All stories have holes. Yours does too. The best you can do is to shoot for some balance. If the complaints about “too stupid to live” are roughly balanced by “too smart to be plausible”, then you probably got it about right. If the complaints about “too many coincidences” are about balanced by the ones about “the story is too long” then you’re good. 

So you hit the sweet spot. Congratulations. 

Now go write another novel and do it all over again. You will never write a novel without holes. And that’s OK. Just ship. 

Writers often ask me how to plan out a series of novels. They usually phrase the question like this: “Can I use the Snowflake Method on a series, instead of just using it on a single book?”

The answer is that it depends. You can always do it, but the way you do it will depend on what kind of series you’re writing. There are three kinds of series that authors typically write:

• Every book stands alone, so a reader can read them in any order without losing anything.
• Each book works as a story, all on its own, but they combine into a larger story, so a reader would typically want to read them in order, even though it’s not absolutely necessary.
• Each book is just one chunk of a single large story, so a reader must read them all exactly in order, or the story won’t really work.

Let’s look at each of these and talk about how you can plan your series.

When Every Book Stands Completely Alone

In some series, every book stands alone. You can read the books in any order, and you won’t miss anything. You can read some books and ignore others, and you won’t feel left out. 

A classic example of this is the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child. Jack Reacher is an ex-military cop who has left the service and hitchhikes around the country. He’s not looking for trouble, but trouble keeps finding him, and he finds ways to bring the bad guys to justice. The books are not in consecutive order.

If you’re writing a series like this, then you only have to plan out each book as you write it. If you’re using the Snowflake Method, then you just write up a standard Snowflake document for the book. But you don’t have to plan the series. You can let it evolve as you write more and more books. This method works nicely for seat-of-the-pants writers. 

The books in a series like this might be out of chronological order, and there’s no harm if they are. In case they are chronological, some might refer back to earlier events that happened in another book in the series. If you do that, then give the reader any required  backstory, because you can’t expect that the reader will have read the other books. 

You do still need to keep your characters consistent, so you might want to keep a running character bible that you can use from one book to the next. That lets you keep your character consistent. You might also want to keep a running timeline, so you don’t accidentally create a backstory where one of your characters was in two different places at the same time in the past. 

Step 7 in the Snowflake Method is all about creating a character bible. Snip that out from the Snowflake document for your first book and save it in a separate file for the series as a whole. Then you can use it to get a running start on the next book in your series. And after each book, update the character bible with any new characters, or any new character traits for old characters. 

And that’s it. This is a simple way to go. The main disadvantage is that every book stands alone, so a reader will only read more books in your series if they’re invested in you, the author, rather than if they’re invested in the running story. (Because there is no running story.)

When Every Book Works Alone but is Part of a Larger Whole

In some series, each book makes a fully satisfying story in its own right. But it contributes to a larger narrative. 

A classic example is the Harry Potter series. In each book, Harry faces some new challenge and wins. But each time he wins, a new facet of his battle with Lord Voldemort emerges, opening the way for the next book in the series. 

This kind of story requires planning at two levels. You have to plan out the story of each book. But you also have to plan out the larger story for the series. 

If you’re using the Snowflake Method, then you need to write a Snowflake document for each book. And you need a separate Snowflake document for the series as a whole. 

Your character bible will probably live in the Snowflake document for the series. You probably don’t even need to revise it for each book. 

But you’ll need a synopsis and scene list for each book separately. And you’ll need a separate synopsis for the series as a whole, where each book in the series has to be summarized in one or more paragraphs in the synopsis. 

This is hard work, but it has the great advantage that once your reader buys into Book 1 in your series, they’re in for the duration. And that might mean a lot of other books.

When Every Book is Just a Chunk of the Larger Whole

Occasionally an author will create a really big story that just won’t fit into a single book. 

The classic example is The Lord of the Rings. It was divided into three books by the publisher, but the author created it as a single very long story. 

This kind of story only needs planning at one level. It’s just a very big level. No book stands alone, so you don’t need an individual Snowflake document for each book. You only need one big Snowflake documet for the series. 

This can be quite challenging, because the bigger a story, the more moving parts it has. And the harder it is to keep it all from breaking. Again, this kind of series has the advantage that once your reader starts in with Book 1, they’ll keep reading. But it has the disadvantage that some readers might not want to commit to reading a long series. And other readers may not realize that the story doesn’t resolve at the end of Book 1. Until they finish the book, and then discover that there’s no resolution—the situation merely got worse for the lead characters.

Should You Write a Series?

A series of novels can “promote itself.” It does this in several ways. 

• At the end of each book, you can write a blurb to promote the next one. In an e-book, you can add a link to the sales page for the next book in the series. 
• Readers who read one book in the series may click a link at the back of the book to go to your website, where they can sign up for your newsletter. Then each time you launch a new book, your newsletter promotes it. 
• When you have a series, Amazon will likely show the other books in the series in a carousel of images with the header, “You May Also Like…” 

So if you like the idea of having your books promote each other, and if you can handle the complexity of a series, it makes good economic sense to write one. 

Most novels have a few viewpoint characters and maybe a couple of dozen other characters, set in one or several locations. 

But what if you’re writing a novel with hundreds of characters in many dozen locations? How is your reader going to keep track of it all? 

That is what I call “Fiction on a Big Stage.” It’s not for the faint-hearted. 

Recently, I reread Tom Clancy’s epic novel of a putative World War III, Red Storm Rising. I got a cheap copy on BookBub and made the mistake of reading the first chapter. Four days later, I came up for air. The book was written about forty years ago, but it still feels oddly relevant. Ukraine is now on the opposite side, and there is no more East Germany, but a whole lot of the story feels very today.  

Red Storm Rising takes place on a really large stage—the US, the Atlantic, Europe, and the Soviet Union (the book was written when there still was a Soviet Union). Some of the viewpoint characters are: a Muslim terrorist, a US intelligence analyst, a Russian member of the Politburo, a US sub captain, a tank driver in Germany, an American meteorologist in Iceland, the captain of a US Navy boat, a Russian general, the pilot of a US stealth bomber, and more. And each of these has a network of several named characters around him, along with dozens or hundreds or thousands of folks with no names. 

And yet it’s not that hard to follow the story. How does Clancy pull this off? There are two specific techniques Clancy uses to help you remember it all:

• The lead characters are tightly connected. 
• The lead characters are highly mobile. 

A Small Network of Lead Characters

The American military officers mostly all know each other. At the beginning of the story, several of them actually get together. When WWIII kicks off, they all go their separate ways, but they stay in communication. 

How does this help? It reduces the number of characters. Instead of each lead character having a separate network of people to interact with, they have networks that overlap. So the same people keep popping up. 

On the Soviet side, the Politburo man’s son is assigned as an aide to the Russian general, and this son serves as a link to connect them. 

Highly Mobile Lead Characters

On the Allied side, the US intelligence analyst gets flown out to Europe to serve on an aircraft carrier. When that gets hammered in an early battle, he gets moved to the UK, where he jumps into action elsewhere. Wherever he goes, you can be pretty sure there’s going to be a serious naval battle that he will observe. 

In Iceland, the meteorologist escapes into the wild when the base at Keflavik is overrun by a Soviet invasion. He teams up with a few other military guys and eventually with an Icelandic woman, and the group gets around to every place there’s a battle. If there’s any military action in Iceland, they’re on site. Since the Soviet battle plan “Operation Polar Glory” uses Iceland as its key element, this puts the reader right at the strategic center of the war. 

On the Soviet side, the Russian general and the Politburo man are the two most competent men in the nation. If there’s a battle to be won, the general is there. If there’s scheming to be done against the corrupt Politburo, the relatively good-guy Politburo man is on the scene. If communication needs to happen between the Politburo and the front, the Politburo man’s son is right there on the job. 

So Clancy’s method is to choose a dozen or so viewpoint characters and work them  unnaturally hard, so that they see all the action. This is very hard to pull off, but Clancy does it about as well as anyone can. 

If you look at other novels set on a large stage, such as The Lord of the Rings, or the Harry Potter series, you’ll see these same methods being used. Because they work. 

Fiction on a Smaller Stage

What does this have to do with you? If you’re a typical novelist, you’re writing on a much smaller stage. So what can you learn from Tom Clancy?

Two things: 

• Network your lead characters
• Keep your lead characters moving

Networking your lead characters means that you make sure “everybody knows everybody”—as much as that’s feasible. Sometimes it isn’t, but if you can arrange early on for some convenient relationships between lead characters, do so. 

What does this achieve? It reduces the number of secondary characters. If your lead characters all know each other, they don’t need go-betweens. They don’t need introductions. They can interact with each other directly. 

Keeping your lead characters moving means doing all in your power to get them on stage at every opportunity. If they have to hop on a supersonic jet, or take a broom, or walk the Paths of the Dead, then make sure that’s an option in your storyworld. 

What does this achieve? It reduces the number of lead characters. If you want to show action, you need a viewpoint character on stage to see it and experience it. Having mobile lead characters means that a smaller number of them can see all the action. 

None of This Happens by Chance

Networking your characters doesn’t happen by chance. Mobility doesn’t happen by chance. These things happen because you intentionally make them happen. 

If you’re a Seat-Of-The-Pants writer, you make this happen by having great instincts or by careful rewriting after your first draft is done. Or both. 

If you plan your novels in advance, either by using the Snowflake Method or by some other planning technique, you make it happen by knowing up front that you’re going to need to make it happen. And if necessary, you may need to rewrite afterward to make it better. Because no matter how well you plan your novel, it’s going to come out on the page different than you planned.