Synopsis Spotlight - The Girl on Winter's Hill

Introducing the second brave synopsis-spotlight-provider, Margaret Kirk. If you don't know how these spotlights work, please read the previous one here, and the post here in which I introduced both the task and my forthcoming book on how to write a synopsis. Which is what all this is leading up to. (And, by the way, I have - I think - chosen my title for the book. To be revealed soon!)

In your comments, you aren't necessarily meant to be saying whether you like the sound of the book, but whether the synopsis does a good job of making it clear and coherent and whether it follows the general guidelines of synopsis-writing.

The Girl on Winter's Hill - by Margaret Morton Kirk

Everybody’s got a past.  Just not one like Chrissie Fraser’s…

Chrissie can’t remember much about that summer afternoon in the hills above Rossan.  She knows what started as a lazy day with her boyfriend Rob and his fledgling rock group, ended [clunky phrasing there, Margaret, and the comma is wrong] in a car crash which left her fighting for her life.  She knows Rob, the driver, escaped unhurt, while her cousin died and her friend Liam was badly injured — Rob’s fault, according to the village rumour-mill.  What she doesn’t know is why Rob disappeared, leaving her to face the aftermath alone.  And scared.  And pregnant. [Nice effect.]

Sixteen years later and six hundred miles away, Chrissie’s made a new life for herself and her daughter [add Eve].  But when her mother’s serious illness forces a return to Rossan, she discovers the past isn’t so easily buried [perhaps be more specific? This is slightly vague. Needs better link to the “not coming to terms bit” in next para. Also burying the past is a bit of a cliché?]. 

When Chrissie’s mother dies, fragile fifteen year-old Eve, bullied at school, begs her to let them stay in the village she’s fallen in love with.  Realising she needs to come to terms with the events of sixteen years ago, [Better to hint earlier that she hasn’t come to terms with them, I think] Chrissie agrees. A tentative romance develops with Liam, and Chrissie hopes she’s finally laid the past to rest [Again, this is a somewhat vague phrase, not to mention being a cliché!]. She couldn’t be more wrong. [But]While she struggles with her re-emerging feelings [You are the mistress of the vague statement, tinged with cliché!]  for Rob, newly returned to Rossan, an older, darker past is reaching out to her.[Ahem.]

Fascinated by the photograph of an unknown woman she finds amongst her mother’s things, Chrissie determines to discover her identity.  But her search creates a rift with Liam, whose increasingly controlling behaviour masks a disturbing family secret. [You are actually about to say this anyway.] Unknown to Chrissie, Liam recognises the woman from the locket she’s wearing; she’s his great-grandfather Callum’s first wife, rumoured to have deserted him for her musician lover, leaving Callum vowing revenge.  Only Liam knows she never left the village.  [As an aside about the plot, I feel that this seems unlikely. How many of us know what our great-grandfather’s first wife looked like? I hope you make this credible in the actual book?]

On the day of the crash he’d stumbled on a woman’s skeletal remains hidden near his family’s farm, a locket round her neck and a knife between her ribs. Sickened [again, suspension of disbelief issue: would he really be that traumatised? This is some generations ago - I'd actually be somewhat fascinated, or at the most disturbed. Or is that just me?!] by the thought that Callum could have been the murderer, he’d panicked and covered all traces of his find.  But after the crash, his traumatised mind [For this to feel believable, we need much earlier hints in the synopsis of Liam’s a) instability and b) involvement in the crash] had started to merge past and present.  At the height of a devastating mental breakdown, Liam had believed he was Callum—when Chrissie returns to Rossan after sixteen years’ absence, she has no idea of the danger his reawakening delusions will pose. [I’m a bit confused as to when Liam’s delusion started – at the time of the crash or later? I could probably work it out but your synopsis needs to be clear on first reading.]

As Liam’s possessiveness worsens, Chrissie grows closer to Rob as he and Eve forge a strong bond.  As the bells chime for a New Year, he asks her to give their relationship another chance, and Chrissie admits she’s never stopped loving him.  [Too much detail – sometimes too much detail makes it *less* believable, not more.]

When Chrissie tells Liam she and Rob are back together, he becomes increasingly unstable.  He blames Eve’s growing bond with Rob for Chrissie’s decision to end things with him.  With ‘Callum’ more and more in control, he mounts a campaign of terror, staging a break-in at Chrissie’s house and terrorising her friends.  In a final desperate act, he abducts Eve, hoping to rewrite history[Eh?]— with Eve out of the way, he believes Chrissie will realise she belongs with him.  But Chrissie’s learned enough of what happened that day to work out where he’s taken Eve.  Back where it all began, on the Winter’s Hill above Rossan, Chrissie and Rob confront Liam.  As the police close in, Liam’s mind disintegrates and he undergoes a complete mental and physical collapse.  Eve is found, suffering from hypothermia and badly traumatised, but alive.

As Eve recovers, Chrissie’s life is at a crossroads. [Make stronger – crisis, dilemma etc] She must decide whether to give her relationship with Rob another chance, or stay in Ceann Aird, the house she’s grown to love again.  At first she tells Rob their lives are too different for things ever to work out between them.  But with time comes a measure of healing for them all, and [cliché and feels far too vague] when Rob returns to Rossan in the spring, Chrissie’s ready to give him a different answer. [Need to find a way to make that ending feel stronger and more specific.]

 ______________

In my opinion this is a well written synopsis, which flows well and ticks most boxes Margaret said: “It's succinct, but at the moment that's pretty much all that's in its favour. Women's fiction, non-linear plot, interwoven time periods. Synopsis feels flat and one-dimensional, but I think the novel is a better and more sophisticated mystery than this makes it sound.” I disagree – I think it feels pretty rounded and multi-dimensional. I think it nicely weaves the strands and time-scales together in a way that gives me a good sense of the book. (Well, I assume so, as I haven’t read the book, but that’s the point, as the agent hasn’t either.)

My only criticisms, as you’ll see from my comments within the synopsis, are as follows:
1. You have a strong tendency to use clichéd and rather “wet” (sorry!) phrases to explain a situation.
2. We need more hint of Liam’s problems earlier.
3. You’ve made a couple of aspects seems unbelievable – even if they are not so in the book itself. It’s a good example of how sometimes giving too much detail makes a synopsis seem less believable – counter-intuitive, I know, but the inevitable loss of context causes problems. The knack is to find the phrase that conveys authority, without detail.

Nice work, Margaret. What do you think of my suggestions? Anyone else got any comments?