Please
don’t sue us Build-A-Bear…
Blurbs—that
is, back-cover description of a book—are an essential tool in a writer’s
arsenal because it allows us to gauge interest in a story. Starting with a
blurb before writing allows you to make sure that your idea is worth pursuing. If
it isn’t, well, don’t delete it. Instead, put it in a bad idea folder. We have
one and use it. More than once, we’ve combined a bad book idea with a good book
idea to make an even better book.
When
it comes to knowledge, hoard it. When it comes to anything else? Don’t.
Just saying.
The
first sentence of writing a blurb is generally the hardest, especially because
you might feel like you need to tell the entire story on the back cover. You
shouldn’t, and you don’t. The entire point of the blurb is to get the readers
attention. For the case of using a blurb for the sake of outlining, we are
using a blurb to get our own attention. That’s right. We, the authors,
are making a blurb to get our own attention.
How
do we do that? By explaining the initial conflict—the ball that gets the entire
story rolling. We’re going to use the idea what if the sun disappeared? idea,
which was detailed in The
Idea Machine to create our blurb. This idea will also be used in
subsequent articles on outlining, so we’ll title it, Into the Dark.
Normally, we wouldn’t title a book this early, but for ease of reading, we’re
doing so here.
To
make Into the Dark into a cool blurb, we are first going to create a pitch,
which is a one-sentence summary of our book—also referred to as a logline. At
its core, what is the story? The template is pretty simple:
Protagonist tries to
accomplish goal while facing adversity.
While
this is a pretty simple, there are some additional ideas you need to know.
Pitch
#1: A father tries to feed his family in a world without light, plants, or
prey—where the predators are hunting him, too.
While
that sounds cool, let’s really think about this idea objectively. Is the
audience really interested in reading 300-pages about how a man hunts
down other people to feed his family? No, while it’s a good hook, it’s not a
story in itself—in other words, just a scene. We need more adversity—higher
stakes. How do we figure that out? Easy, we return to the genre and the target
audience.
For
Into the Dark, we want an adult target audience with a
survival-horror/thriller genre. Why? Because the idea sounds super cool to us
and its something we haven’t written before—something we’re passionate about.
So for this genre and audience, the antagonist is going to be something occult
or supernatural, which makes sense considering our visual for a hand grabbing
the sun. We want something occult, some supernatural force that the protagonist
needs to fight—or at least encounter and escape from—to raise the stakes of the
story. Then the question becomes, how did this supernatural force come to be?
For us, the answer is a cult—it might be the whole
cult-releases-an-unstoppable-demon-and-immediately-regrets-it trope, but it
works for the story we are envisioning. But more importantly, this idea gets us
excited to write.
Pitch
#2: A desperate father providing for his family tries to survive in a world
without light while investigating an ancient cult that unleashed a creature who
ate the sun.
Better,
but still a bit wordy. Do we need to survive in a world without light when
we already talk about a creature who ate the sun? The pitch itself needs
to feel like a call to action—the action being to read the book. We do this by
using future tense: must provide, not providing.
Pitch
#3: A desperate father must provide for his starving family while fighting an
ancient cult that unleashed a creature who ate the sun.
Not
going to lie, we really like this pitch. We could spend the next ten to twenty
hours trying to tweak this pitch, but honestly? It doesn’t need it. Any
additional changes that need to be made will be done after writing the outline
and the manuscript. When we’re preparing to publish, then we’ll review the
pitch again and update as necessary.
With
the pitch done, now we need to create the blurb. Admittedly, there’s no magic
formula, however, the tried-and-true method is to introduce the character and
their problem in as few words as possible.
·
J.K.
Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: “Harry Potter
has never played a sport while flying on a broomstick.”
·
Rick
Riordan’s The Lightning Thief: “Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out
of boarding school… again.
·
Garth
Nix’s Mister Monday: “Arthur Penhaligon is not supposed to be a hero. He
is supposed to die.”
Beyond
this first sentence, the goal of the blurb is to get the reader to buy the
book. So, keep it simple and short so that you don’t lose their
interest—between 50 and 100 words. Obviously, not everybody uses this method,
but we like it, and if nothing else, it’s a great starting point. After all,
it’s far easier to make the second blurb than it is the first.
Blurb
#1: Kraig Jones is running out of meat. Deer meat. Horse meat. Even human meat.
It doesn’t matter at this point. Not when his family’s starving. Each hunt into
the darkness takes him further from home, further from his wife and daughter.
Kraig doesn’t even have a lantern to guide his path—even the light is gone. All
that’s left is darkness, predators, and cultists, who unleashed the monster
that ate the sun.
Right
now, the name Kraig Jones means nothing to us. It’s simply a placeholder
that we may or may not keep. We may as well have put Larry Periwinkle for all
it matters—except we wouldn’t use Larry Periwinkle, if only because six
syllables for a name is atrocious and the word Periwinkle is too happy
for a book that we imagine will be gritty. Two syllables are much better.
However,
what does matter is the way in which we’re talking about human meat.
Without knowing the context of the story, this will dissuade a lot of readers,
and for the back cover content, it simply isn’t necessary. So, we’ll rewrite it:
Blurb
#2: Kraig Jones is running out of meat to feed his starving family. Each hunt
into the darkness takes him further from his home, wife, and daughter. Worse, Kraig
doesn’t even have a lantern to guide the way back. The light is gone. All that
remains is darkness, predators, and cultists who unleashed the monster that ate
the sun.
Yep,
we’re good with this. It sounds pretty epic, doesn’t it? That’s great… as long
as we follow through on what’s written. What do we mean by that? Whatever you
promise to the audience in your blurb needs to be fulfilled within the story.
Otherwise, you’ll lose the trust of your audience, who will become resentful
for being tricked and/or lied to. Let’s take a notable example of this from
Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind:
My
name is Kvothe.
I
have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town
of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity
and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most
people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of
during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the
minstrels weep.
You
may have heard of me.
This
sounds awesome! Except… most of these events don’t even occur in the first
book, let alone the second. And the third still hasn’t been published despite
the decades-long break since the release of the second book. Furthermore, the
protagonist is supposed to be a king killer—hence the series name, The
Kingkiller Chronicles—but this isn’t even mentioned in the first two books.
For
now, you have little to worry about. Focus on writing the outline and the book.
If, after writing the story and get it ready for publishing, the blurb no
longer matches the storyline? Then simply rework it. For now, just use your
blurb as a guide while you craft your main characters.
