Don’t be ambiguous about the genre or sub-genre of your
manuscript, be clear about the genres and sub-genres that
your manuscript falls into.

Don’t focus the description of the characters on attributes
like appearance, ages, and educations unless these aspects
have a big impact upon the story. An editor doesn’t care
if your heroine is blonde haired and blue eyed or brown
haired and green eyed. Instead describe the characteris-
tics of the hero and heroine. In romance the editor will be
looking for traits that make the characters seem both right
for each other and wrong for each other.

Don’t fill your synopsis with scenes in which not much
changes. Unless the scene is pivotal…in that it changes
the direction of the story in some way, it should not be
included in the synopsis. Instead allude to the important
parts of the story.

Don’t describe the conflict in your novel as one fight
after another. Instead show the ways that the characters
differ and show how this gives rise to conflict in their
relationship. Synopsizes which have conflict staged as
one disagreement after another often feel contrived.

Don’t leave the editor hanging about the ending. The
purpose of the synopsis is to show the person reading the
synopsis that you know how to carry off all the plot
points. The ending is an important plot point.