OK. Susan (continued from Bitches), here's the one I knocked off - with input from writers group - for The Eden Tree:

The Eden Tree (Synopsis)

When Dr. Lucy Berne, agricultural expert and botanist, sets out to create the ultimate garden, she has no idea what she's about to unleash.

Earth is a clean place to live. The sky sparkles, rivers run clear to the sea, automobile emissions no longer foul the air or clog the lungs. Acid rain, oil slicks, toxic waste dumps - all these things are unpleasant memories.

Man has also gone to the stars. And while they're exploring, settling, colonising, someone needs to feed them.

Dr. Berne has gathered the elite of the environmental science community to create the BioDome, a garden in space. In her vision of this new Eden, thousands of acres of carefully monitored and strictly regulated plants and trees will thrive and flourish, bringing the full beauty of Earth's bounty to the ends of the galaxy.

The Eden crew is granted full rights to an abandoned mining operation on a moon circling a world eleven light years from Earth. The dome that Lucy wants is already in place, and Harvey Stemplette, Lucy's colleague and friend, has created a device that can safely move live flora from world to world. Everything seems in place for the realisation of Lucy's dream. Even the unwelcome addition of her estranged husband, Dr. Richard Lucas, to the team, can't put a damper on her jubilation.

The Eden crew brings with them from Earth a visible symbol of their enterprise: an ancient fig tree, growing in Greece. Even before the tree is fully removed from its rich loamy soil, however, strange things begin to happen. And Lucy begins to understand that they have uprooted something greater: the powerful spirit who lives within the tree, and whose sole purpose for two thousand years has been to protect it, has been aroused from a long sleep, and is waking under an alien sun.

The Eden Tree looks at the consequences humanity must be willing to face as we confront aspects of Nature we can't fully understand.

----

A hook, a precis of the setting and why we should care, a summing up. It's not a breakdown of the plot from A - Z.

(xposted)

OK. So how do I make this synopsis thing one page and snappy, without being generic? I mean, basically, Lucy is poor, she lives with moderately rich and noble relatives, until her cousin nearly bankrupts them, and then they can't afford to help her or her brothers and sisters anymore. So she marries James, who is rich and respects and pities her, only they both think they love other people. Finding out otherwise means James has to learn he's not always right and Lucy has to let go of her stubborness and realize that love isn't what she thought it was. Cinderella story, where Cinderella and Prince Charming learn that happily ever after takes some work.

But that's boring, and leaves out half the plot.

Synopsis example #2:

THE FAMOUS FLOWER OF SERVING MEN: SYNOPSIS

When Penelope Wintercraft-Hawkes, founder and director of the Tamburlaine Players Theatre Troupe, gets a December phone call from an unknown solicitor telling her she's come into property, she thinks it's a joke. But it's no more than the truth: an elderly French aunt Penny never even met has died and bequeathed her niece not only a rundown Victorian playhouse in London's EC4 district, but enough money to bring the theatre, the Bellefield, back to its glory days.

Penny hires her longtime companion, historic property restoration expert and leading light of the British traditional music scene, Ringan Laine, to restore the Bellefield to peak form. As Ringan hires workmen and oversees the onset of the restoration project, Penny and the Tamburlaine Players begin rehearsals for the Bellefield's opening production: Euripides' Iphigenia, a play Penny has felt driven to produce since walking through the Bellefield's front doors.

But when Ringan tests the theatre's sound system with a recording of a classic folk song, "The Famous Flower of Serving Men", he's made aware of the presence of an angry, violent spirit in the Bellefield. Penny hears a voice, first whispering, then screaming, in French. The Bellefield fills with invisible smoke. And when a workman dies on the premises, it becomes clear that only by tracking down the truth about the Bellefield's ghost will the theatre ever be usable in safety.

The story that unfolds is one of murder, incest, and conscience. It takes all Ringan and Penny's experience and expertise, and the help of a few extraordinary friends, to put a name to the violent madwoman who haunts the Bellefield Theatre, and beyond, and to lay her to rest.

THE FAMOUS FLOWER OF SERVING MEN is the second novel in the Ringan Laine series.

x-post.

OK. In re leaving out half the plot? You don't want the plot in there.

This is a summary of the salient points of the story - why an agent or an editor should want to read it. "Moving left foot, moving right foot" won't do it; the idea is to hook their interest. It's a teaser effect.

Want to let me noodle with it for a minute or three?

Want to let me noodle with it for a minute or three?

Sure. I'll work on it, too, and we'll see what we can come up with between us. (It helps just having examples.)

"When Lucy Jones, well-connected daughter of an impoverished London family, is sent to live with her relatives at Swallowfield Manor, she begins a journey that will take her through her understanding of her own feelings."

Something like that (this is totally off the top of my head) to start. Hook us up with who she is, where she is, why we should care about her.

"Lucy, understanding from her first days at Swallowfield that she has a duty to her siblings and to the cousins who have taken her in, nevertheless dreams of better things. Those dreams are fanned by her attachment to her cousin Julius, a soldier with Wellington's forces in the Peninsula."

--

(again, off the headtop. But you've just summed up her expectations, hinted at her hopes, and given us a vital character).

(something in there about Portia, and Lucy being kept in her place)

"When Lucy learns that her cousin's family is now destitute and can no longer provide for her, she agrees to marry James Wright..."

(describe him as you want the agent to see him)

Here's my start....

LUCY AND MR. WRIGHT: SYNOPSIS

When poor relation Lucy Jones travels to Gloucestershire to attend her cousin Portia’s wedding, she thinks she understands the world and her place in it.

Raised to be a governess, she is ready to do her duty, but still dreams of marrying her cousin Julius, a handsome cavalry officer temporarily home from the wars. She is a dutiful niece to the aunt who raised her, and a loyal sister determined to ensure that her many younger brothers and sisters have a chance at a decent start in life.

When her aunt and cousins suffer reversals that make them nearly as poor as she is, Lucy enters a marriage of convenience with James Wright, a handsome and wealthy young man she’s know for less than a month. From what she’s seen of him, she isn’t all that impressed—James is proud and impulsive, and has been flirting outrageously with her cousin Portia practically from the moment they met.

YES.

Damned close to perfect.