I have to write the synopses for Vicesteed now, and it's terrifying me. I mean, I can get it down to three paragraphs, but anything less than that feels impossible. And I'll definitely need a one-paragraph version and (ack!) a one-sentence pitch.

This is my best attempt at a sentence pitch (logline), and it's clunky, and doesn't address everything:
Vicesteed is a steampunk locked-room murder mystery set in a
far future where a woman whose only memories are of the vices of
others must fight through an unfamiliar neo-Victorian world to find
out who she was, who took away her memories, and what she really did
in her role as a vicesteed.

And for the paragraph, I've got this, but again, leaves maybe too much out, and the last sentence I fear is cliche:
In a Victorian steampunk future, QUINCY is a private investigator ordered to find the cause of the comatose Prince Consort's affliction. Two very different women are the key to solving this locked-room mystery: VALINDA, a former vicesteed searching for her identity--and her revenge--after escaping a theme park of depravity where her experiences were broadcast to a discerning audience; and ROSEMARY, a gently bred young lady with dangerous ties to a rebel underground and an unfeminine inclination to build clockwork automata. They unravel the conspiracy, but not before they find passion, betrayal, unwanted truth, and murder.

My problem:
How do you condense it all down to a pitch when you've got three separate plotlines equally balanced with three main characters, all of which interrelate but are more than just different views of the same thing? Just pitch the opening plotline and allude to the others? I can figure out how to get it down to three paragraphs, but a one-paragraph or heaven forbid one sentence pitch is beyond me. If I focus on the thing that they start out with in common, it requires way too much explanation of how they fit together. How did you do it? Any good resources to read for key things to include or exclude or look for?


CoyoteCon ideas
[annathepiper] 4:39 pm: The novel I'm querying right now, Lament of
the Dove, has three POV characters in it, so yeah, I had to figure out
how to pitch that thing as tersely as possible. It came down to Anna
K's point of focusing on the main plotline.
[annathepiper] 4:39 pm: Which is to say, what these three characters are
doing, who's opposing them, and what's at stake.
[Anna Kashina] 4:40 pm: Right. You don't actually have to cover your
entire story in a pitch.
[annathepiper] 4:40 pm: The pitch came out to something like 'An
assassin, a healer, and a knight of a holy order must join together to
take down the corruption at the heart of the church that dominates
their land.' That's the 30-second elevator pitch. g/a

[Widdershins] My Story is about ....
(Character/s) ... that wants more
than anything .... (goal) ..., but
can’t because ... (conflict) ...

[annathepiper] 5:04 pm: You will want to be in practice writing synopses
if nothing else because if you _do_ make that first critical sale and get
yourself an agent, you might find that the synopsis will actually be
what sells future books.
[annathepiper] 5:05 pm: Because your agent will be working on selling
things for you _on proposal_, things you haven't even written yet. So
that'll be when those synopsis skills you've been working on all this
time will come in _real_ handy.