I don’t know why when I’ve merrily completed a novel or two, the idea of writing a blurb always strikes fear into my heart. Perhaps it’s the sheer impossibility of condensing all of that wonderful prose down into a few lines. I expect there’s a niggling worry that I’ll get it wrong and then no one will want to read my book. It’s a different kind of skill to writing fiction: essentially, what you’re doing when producing a blurb is writing advertising copy, designed to hook in the casual browser who may never have heard of you before. Blurbs don’t just need to convey the basic premise and tone of the book – they need to entice and seduce potential readers to part with some of their precious cash.
I hate writing my own blurbs, and am heartily glad that Samhain do such an amazing job of polishing up my efforts into something much more appealing. However, since writing blurbs is an essential part of the submission process (most publishers require them in the cover letter and/or synopsis), I’ve come up with a few ways of making them less painful.
Write them early
Preferably before finishing the novel. I always come up with a very rough blurb early on to put on my WIP page here on the website. Although these might not bear much relation to the final product, I find it really helpful to get thinking about them early. It’s much easier to tweak and build on something that already exists, than to start with a blank page. And I don’t know why, but the earlier I am in the writing process, the easier that rough blurb comes. Perhaps it’s because the novel is still mainly potential, so it’s easier to see the key things that matter.
Choose your keywords
This is a list of the kind of things you might want to tag your book with Amazon, for instance. I’m not talking about the obvious ones like the genre, but the things that make your book different from others. For instance, for The Hot Floor I came up with the following:
glassblowing, England, spanking, BDSM, threeway, ménage, plumber, geek, Asian hero, multicultural, neighbours, boy next door, kink, British
These were all aspects I wanted to make sure I touched on in the blurb, too.
Don’t give away too much
I stick to the first third of the book when giving detail in the blurb. Any further in than this feels like too much of a spoiler. After all, if the reader knows the story almost all the way to the end already, what’s the point in them reading it? Sometimes I need to hint at stuff later on, but I keep it pretty vague.
What’s my conflict?
Sometimes, by the time I’ve finished a novel I have a hard time remembering what my most central conflict was, because I layered on so many other smaller conflicts while writing. It’s essential for me to take some time out to think about what the most important one was, and stick to talking about this in the blurb.
Avoid the cheesy rhetorical question
You know the ones – the blurbs that end with a “but can Chad convince Brad he really loves him for his brains, not his brawn?” Well of course he bloody well can. Right. I don’t need to bother reading the book now, do I? I’m always tempted to write these kind of blurbs because they’re so easy, but I squash that urge whenever it comes up.
Write a tagline
Taglines can be an utter bitch to come up with, but they’re incredibly helpful when marketing your story. I’m really pleased with my final one for The Hot Floor: Two plus one equals scorching hot fun. It’s catchy and it captures the fun tone of the novel. Writing one early on is a must. In fact, coming up with a whole list of them is a great idea, and then…
Get some help
My beta readers know what my story means to them, so I ask them to critique my blurb and pick their favourite taglines. The blurb is the one place in your book where it’s definitely better to go with what readers want, rather than being too precious. Sometimes I even enlist the help of people who’ve never read my story, and ask them if my blurb sounds appealing enough.
And coming up next, with fortuitous timing, I’m going to be revealing the cover art and blurb for my next novel, The Hot Floor. Watch this space!
So, any other authors out there have some blurb writing tips to share? And readers – what kind of things do you find appealing or a right turn off in a blurb?
You know the ones – the blurbs that end with a “but can Chad convince Brad he really loves him for his brains, not his brawn?” Well of course he bloody well can.
LOL Yeah, we do write romance (unless it’s got the bittersweet tag), it’s kind of a given they’ll be at LEAST HFN, if not married off with a white picket fence by the end.
I hate blurbs, because I’m wordy. Note most of my comments.
Distilling it down to the core is really hard for me. Silver was pretty good at helping me pare it down (in part because they reduced the word limit), but she was able to see the main points and scrap the rest. But blech. Not something I enjoy. I still say someone with mad skillz could make a good living writing blurbs for all the authors who hate it (and I’ve yet to find one who doesn’t).
Sometimes I write those cheesy questions just to get them out of my system, then find a way to rephrase them without a question mark being involved.
Having a word limit is a good one too. I do my damndest to keep my blurbs under 200 words. Some get ridiculously long, don’t they? And yes, hooray for editors and those clever people in the publisher’s marketing department who are great at rewriting blurbs for the rest of us!
I haven’t got to the blurb-writing stage yet but I have to admit it strikes fear and loathing in my heart! Doing a sentence for a whole book is bitch enough; blurb sounds even worse
Thanks for the tips! Keywords, central conflict and tagline very early on sounds a good idea – possibly while I’m planning a story…
Like you, I get lost in all the layer on layer of detail.
Getting started earlier definitely makes it less of an awful, looming task. It’s odd the way all writers seem to hate writing their blurbs. I suppose it’s because there’s so much riding on it, and the sheer impossibility of trying to condense down your mammoth novel into a couple of paragraphs.
Yeah, blurbs, taglines, synopsis, anything that forces me to condense my original work into some form of summary, I find all of them really difficult to write. I’m getting better with synopsis but in the blurb you don’t want to give too much away and get still make it interesting.
I’ve just done a blurb for my Christmas story for Silver but I’m really not happy with it. I’m hoping the team there will give me a few pointers with the one I submitted. I’ve got a few months (!!) until it’s published. I’ve got time to come up with something better.
It’s really tricky, isn’t it – knowing what to include and what to leave out, yet still trying to hook in a reader’s interest.
I’ve no idea what they’re like for reworking blurbs at Silver, but good luck with it. Aren’t you organised – getting a Christmas story submitted already!
LOL, not really organised but I had to write it when the muse struck. I wrote it in February, edited it in March, submitted it in April and got a yes back in May. I must confess I was quite surprised they got back that quickly for a story that wasn’t going to come out until December. And I’ve already done my first round of edits for them!
I bet they were glad to get one that early. Saves them a last minute panic!
Yes I’m with you on all of this. The blurb, the tagline, the synopsis, UGH they are so hard for all the reasons you stated above. Condensing everything down to a few short words and making those words interesting enough that someone will hit the ‘buy now’ button.
I would definitely pay someone to do it. Thank goodness for all my prereaders and editors and everyone else that helps out.
And thank you for this post, I’m bookmarking it!
Sounds like there’s a lot of writers out there who would pay for blurbs. There must be a business in there for someone…
It’s always good to know you’re not the only one having trouble with a particular part of the process. I don’t think I’ve ever met a writer who enjoys creating their blurbs, though!
I think write them early is definitely key – unless you are a total pantster and have no clue where the story will go.
I wrote the first draft of Higher Ground during NaNoWriMo 2010. The NaNo site gives you a place on your profile to give some info about your book, so I wrote a blurb for it and put it on there. It was so useful. It helped me condense the essentials of the story, which was good. And it was good to do it at that stage when all I had was an outline, not an actual novel. That made it more like writing a description of a pencil sketch as opposed to to a description of an oil painting. It didn’t feel like it was selling the story short the way it can when you’re trying to blurb a completed novel full of themes and motifs, layers and nuances you can’t bear to leave out of any description of it.
I tweaked it later of course, for my query letter, then some more for my blurb form for the publisher, but the blurb on the actual book now is still very much based on that blurb written before the book was drafted!
I’d say if you didn’t or couldn’t get one done before drafting it, at least try to do so before editing it. It will help focus your mind on what the book is about, so you can take that focus into the editing with you and bring out those themes and ideas more strongly.
Ah, I didn’t realise this was a NaNo technique, but it makes sense. I’d say writing the synopsis before (or during) drafting is another good idea, as it can help you to spot the flabby bits in your plot.
There’s so much to learn about this writing business, isn’t there? I find it endlessly fascinating
I think writing the blurb early is a good idea. I wish I could remember to do it more often.
Blurbs that ask questions only really work when there’s a central mystery, in my opinion, or possibly a situation that’s almost certainly going to end badly.
So, for two of my WiPs, I might have:
‘Did the beautiful Lady Juila really run away ten years ago, or was there a more sinister reason for her disappearance?’
and
‘Edward, black sheep of the Peveril family, is back in London and juggling several conflicting identities. When his brother’s pregnant mistress asks him for help, marrying her may solve some of his and the family’s problems. But is his lifestyle likely to put both her and the baby in more danger?’
Not sure about the second, but a proper blurb would have to include what the various problems were and why he thought he could solve them.
Ooh yes – questions can definitely work in those sorts of situations. They just come across as cheesy and contrived when you know the answer is a resounding “YES!!!”
Those look like great starter blurbs to me. My WIP blurbs are usually along those lines – short and to the point. It really helps when writing the main blurb, as you’ve already got one with the central focus there. I just have to watch I don’t add so much else, that central conflict gets obscured!