Who reads a synopsis
Sooner or later, someone asks for one. Many screenwriting competitions put a synopsis box beside the logline on the entry form. Film funds often ask for a paragraph and a page with an application, alongside the script or the treatment. An agent or producer who likes your logline may want the synopsis before giving an evening to the script, and a development executive may pass yours to a boss who will never read anything else.
A synopsis tells the complete story, ending and all, in the present tense and a fraction of the length. It lets a busy reader judge a story in two minutes before deciding whether to give it two hours. Writers lean on it too, because getting a story down on one page shows quickly whether the middle holds up and whether the ending follows from what came before it. There is one at the heart of the coverage a script reader writes for a producer, too, so you will meet the form from the other side as well.
Synopsis, logline, treatment
A logline sets up the situation and stops, so that the reader wants more. A synopsis has to show that the story works all the way to the end, which means giving away the turns and the ending.
A treatment tells the film at length, ten pages or more for a feature, with its tone, its key scenes and an occasional line of dialogue. A synopsis summarises. It says what happens and why in as few words as the story allows, and leaves the texture for later. An outline sits apart from both, as the writer's scene-by-scene working map. The treatment guide has a table of all of them with their usual lengths.
The word has a second meaning. The short synopsis printed in a festival programme or on a streaming service is written for an audience, and it keeps the ending back the way a logline does. A synopsis that a producer, a fund or a competition asks for is a development document, and it tells everything.
The one-paragraph synopsis
The short version is a single paragraph. Michael Brindley's notes for Screen Australia allow it two to four sentences, enough to name the protagonist and their problem, say what they do about it, and give the outcome. Screen Australia's later guide also wants the genre and theme, the forces in opposition and the stakes. That is a lot for a paragraph, so each sentence has to carry two or three of them at once.
In Low Tide, a 12-page short drama, a sound recordist named MARA WELLES returns to her late mother's cottage to record it before the sale goes through, and runs into her father, DES, whom she has not spoken to since the funeral thirteen years ago. As they pack, the old grievance comes out, because Des told her to stay away while her mother was dying and she has never forgiven him. A locked drawer of letters and cassette tapes shows that the silence was her mother's own wish, meant to spare Mara, and that Des has carried the blame to keep a promise. Before the agent knocks for the keys, Mara records her father remembering her mother, and drives away with his voice on tape.
The ending is in the last sentence, along with what has changed in Mara. Each name arrives with a job or a relationship attached, because a reader meeting these people for the first time has nothing else to go on.
The one-page synopsis
The page-long version is the one asked for most often, and one page means one page: roughly 500 words, single-spaced, in a 12-point font with ordinary margins. Brindley warns against squeezing more in with a ten-point font and no paragraph breaks, and readers do notice. Within that page, the story usually moves through these stages:
- The opening. Who the story is about, where and when it happens, and what is wrong in their life before anything changes.
- The event that starts it. Something happens that they can't ignore.
- The choice. What they decide to do about it, and what they want from then on.
- The complications. What stands in their way, including the other main characters and what each of them wants. Pick the two or three that change the story most.
- The turn in the middle. A discovery, a reversal or a raised stake, after which the story can't go back.
- The lowest point. What the protagonist loses or learns that makes the old way of living impossible.
- The climax. The last confrontation or decision, told plainly.
- The ending. What happens, and how the protagonist has changed. Screen Australia's guide asks for both, the plot and the emotional outcome.
Give the turning points the most words and summarise the stretches between them. Keep events in screen order, and join them by cause, with words like because, so, but and until. A synopsis built from "and then" reads as a list of scenes, all the same weight, and leaves the reader to work out which ones matter.
A one-page synopsis of Low Tide
Low Tide, the sample project in Scriptopus, is a short, so its page can keep more of the detail. A feature covers far more story in the same space and has to summarise harder.
MARA WELLES (32) earns her living recording the sound of empty rooms for film crews, and she handles her own feelings much the same way, by recording them and putting them away. When her late mother's seaside cottage is sold, she drives back to record it before it changes hands. She hasn't been home in thirteen years, since a funeral she walked out of early.
The cottage is half packed. Mara has only just started recording the bare living room when her father, DES (63), comes in from the back of the house. They have not exchanged a word since the funeral. The agent will collect the keys at sundown, neither of them will be the one to leave, and so they spend the afternoon packing the kitchen together.
The packing reopens the old wound. Mara blames Des for her mother's last two years: he rang twice in all that time, and when she asked whether she should come home, he told her to let her mother rest. Des won't defend himself. When a box of Mara's school things turns up, he lets slip that her mother kept everything, then refuses to explain.
Down on the beach, with the tide out, Mara says what she has never said to his face, that he kept her from her dying mother on purpose. Des answers that it was never his decision. He won't say whose it was, and he walks back to the house.
Back at the cottage, Mara searches her mother's desk, finds the key to its locked drawer and opens it, though Des asks her not to. Inside are letters addressed to her that were never posted, and a dozen numbered cassettes. On the first tape her mother, ELENA, explains that she hid how ill she was, and that she had Des swear to stop Mara coming home. She knew her daughter would drop everything and come, and she wanted Mara to keep the life she had only just started. The tape snaps mid-sentence. Des has let Mara blame him for thirteen years to keep that promise.
On the porch, Mara admits that blaming him was easier than facing her own guilt for staying away. A laugh catches them both off guard, and out on the flats the tide begins to come back in.
As the agent's car pulls into the yard, Mara turns her microphone on her father and asks for a memory of her mother that she has never heard, and he tells it. That night, with the house sold, she drives home with the letters on the passenger seat and his story playing over the sound of the sea she recorded that afternoon. For the first time, she lets herself feel what she has kept at a distance.
Compared with the treatment of the same story, it drops the dialogue, the box marked KEEP?, the birthday tape and the child's drawing. What it keeps is cause and effect: why Mara blames her father, why he stays silent, what the tape changes and what she does about it. The last paragraph gives the ending and the change in her together.
Tense, names and layout
- Present tense, third person. "Mara opens the drawer", the same as the action lines of the script.
- Capitals for a name the first time, with an age or a role beside it: "her father, DES (63)". After that, Des is just Des.
- Only the names the story turns on. Three or four is plenty for a page. Everyone else can be the estate agent, her editor or the man next door.
- No rhetorical questions. "But will she ever learn the truth?" tells the reader you are holding something back from someone who asked to hear all of it.
- A paragraph for each stretch of the story. Short paragraphs let the shape show at a glance, with the turning points where a new paragraph begins.
- A plain page. The title, your name and contact details at the top, the logline if you like, then the story.
In ScriptopusEvery project has a Synopsis tab, next to the Beat Board and a click away from the script. It is a plain prose editor, with headings and lists if you want them, and the foot of the sidebar counts the pages and words of the synopsis as you type, so you can see when one page has turned into two. In a series, every episode has a synopsis of its own, and the series as a whole has an Overview, with a separate arc for each season.
A synopsis for a TV series
A series has no single ending to give away, so its synopsis does a different job. It describes the situation that keeps producing stories, the main characters and what pulls them apart, and where the first season is heading. Screen Australia's guide notes that a serial drama's one-pager can't hold much plot, and does better showing the characters' choices against the show's central idea. A pilot's synopsis is the exception, and tells that one episode in full, like a short film.
The Night Desk is a drama series set on a failing London newspaper. NORA QUINN (40s) runs the night shift, and every night she chases the stories the day staff have dropped, the kind that keep the paper's readers loyal and its lawyers awake. What its owner, FELIX HART (60s), doesn't know is that whenever he spikes one of her stories, she passes it to the Lantern, the paper's loudest rival, so that it still gets printed. Each episode turns on one night's story. Across the first season, a young reporter, SAM OKAFOR (25), begins to work out where the leaks come from, and Nora has to decide whether to trust him with the secret or end his career to protect it.
Mistakes readers notice
- Holding back the ending. Often a habit picked up from loglines and back-cover blurbs. A reader can't judge a story whose end they haven't been told.
- Half a page of set-up. Backstory before the story starts leaves too little room for the turns.
- Every scene at the same weight. A synopsis that gives each scene a sentence never shows which ones matter.
- Subplots that don't touch the ending. They take room the main story needs, and a one-page synopsis can do without them.
- Feelings with no action behind them. "She learns to trust again" needs the event that shows her doing it.
- Quoted dialogue. A line that works inside its scene usually falls flat on its own.
- A synopsis of an old draft. If the script has changed since you wrote it, read the two side by side before they go out together.
Download the synopsis template
Two pages. The first walks through the story in eight boxes, one for each stage above, with a line on what belongs in it and a box for the one-paragraph version. The second is a clean page with the heading in place, ready for the finished synopsis.
Fill it in on screen
Both pages as a Word file, which Pages and Google Docs open too.
Questions
How long is a film synopsis?
As long as whoever asked for it says. Without instructions, a paragraph means a few sentences and a page means one page, about 500 words. Brindley's notes allow two pages at most; write the single page first and expand it if you need the room.
Should a synopsis give away the ending?
Yes, when it is for a reader: a producer, a fund, an agent or a competition. The synopsis on a festival programme or a poster is written for an audience, and that kind keeps the ending back.
Present tense or past?
Present, and in the third person, the same as a screenplay's action lines and a treatment.
Does a short film need a synopsis?
Usually, if it is going to a festival or a fund. A paragraph or half a page is enough. With less plot to summarise, a short's synopsis has room to say a little more about how the film feels.
Single or double spacing?
Single, with a blank line between paragraphs, unless the guidelines ask for double. A page in double spacing holds only about half as many words, so check before you cut.
Sources and further reading
- Michael Brindley for Screen Australia, What Is a Synopsis? An Outline? A Treatment? (PDF), on the one-paragraph and one-page synopsis.
- Screen Australia, Story Documents: Drama (PDF), on what a one-page synopsis covers for a feature and for a series.
Write it formatted from the first line
Scriptopus sets every line as you type, keeps the beat board and the treatment beside the script, and exports the PDF and Final Draft file you will need. The editor is free on Mac and Windows.
- Every element in its place, with Tab, Enter and Ctrl+1 to 6.
- Beat Board, Treatment and Synopsis in the same project as the script.
- Six title page layouts, Industry Standard first.
- PDF, Final Draft, Fountain and Celtx exports.