Summarizing who’s in your story, plus a single sentence that guides the story, and writing a synopsis, are golden nuggets to mine. When you share your work for editorial evaluation, these are the mile markers.

The synopsis is the hardest. I had to do one for Sins of Freedom back when it was called Monsignor Dad. I entered the first 10 pages in the Writers’ League of Texas manuscript contest and earned a spot as one of four finalists.

They only gave us 275 words for our synopsis.

Years later, the synopsis sentence for my book that's now become Sins of Freedom is

Faith can be a weapon to protect hope and dreams, or kill freedom and justice with no remorse.

That’s my latest theme sentence. The story is driven by faith, shows us the promises fulfilled for Anna, plus the damages that faith brings her.

In the pages of Robert McKee’s masterwork of narrative craft, Story, he says that once you get a sentence like mine above that you can live with, everything in your story must serve that sentence.