Blurbs

[Disjecta Membra]

It goes without saying that blurbs (or descriptions, summaries, or whatever your preferred term is) are extremely essential to garnering readership.  You have a limited amount of space to intrigue readers to warrant your story worthwhile of a read.  You don't want to be too vague because it doesn't give enough to excite anyone.  What sets this one apart?  You also don't want to be too detailed, because then you run the risk of giving too much away.  If you spoil too many things that will occur, it diminishes some of the reason for reading the story.  So there's that sweet spot somewhere in the middle that will reel in the audience you're looking for.

 

My question is: how do you do your blurbs?  What have you found to be successful in your blurbs that have attracted a dedicated audience, and conversely, have you noticed any trends from a story that had sufficiently less traffic than expected (as a possible result of your brief description)?  What tips and tricks can you share from your own experiences with blurb-writing?

[Myr]

40 minutes ago, Disjecta Membra said:

My question is: how do you do your blurbs?  What have you found to be successful in your blurbs that have attracted a dedicated audience, and conversely, have you noticed any trends from a story that had sufficiently less traffic than expected (as a possible result of your brief description)?  What tips and tricks can you share from your own experiences with blurb-writing?

This is an area I have long struggled with.  I have a terrible tendency to give them short shrift despite knowing how important they are.  Marketing is a full time job for many people.  In this case, you're just marketing your story instead of something else.  With that in mind, you have to put enough there to make a hook that will interest readers but not so much that it also gives away the answer so they don't have to read.  And whatever you put there needs to fit the story you've written.  

You can check your own work here... If you story has a lot of views and then you look at chapter 1 and there is a sharp drop off... that means people were interested enough to read the description, but didn't go on to read the story...

 

[Disjecta Membra]

18 minutes ago, Myr said:

This is an area I have long struggled with.  I have a terrible tendency to give them short shrift despite knowing how important they are.

That's the same issue I have, on occasion.  It typically has occurred (on this site and others) with chaptered stories.  I'm usually okay with short stories, because by nature there's less to describe to give the reader an idea of what they're in for.  It's longer pieces, I think, that provide the bigger struggle.

[Talo Segura]

Before you get to the blurb you first need a good title. Neither the title nor the synopsis should be taken lightly as an after thought. Look at the latest story, Boys Next Door, straight away people are going to be interested. The title says a lot, @Myr book is going to instantly get a look from Sci-fi fans, but if the summary doesn't grab and hook the reader, they'll pass it by. It's something I learnt at school, how to write a summary, you have to do it all the time, so it shouldn't be too difficult if you just give it the time it merits, which is at least equal to the time it took you to write the first chapter, and not five minutes as an after thought to publishing.

[Fae Briona]

As a reader I have to agree w. Talo Segura -- the title is the initial hook, and with a bad title I won't even get to the blurb. Almost as important as the blurb are the tags associated with the story.  The tags are one of the things I love about this site that are lacking on others.

[Disjecta Membra]

1 hour ago, Talo Segura said:

Before you get to the blurb you first need a good title. Neither the title nor the synopsis should be taken lightly as an after thought.

I 100% agree on the importance of titles.  It needs to be something that is memorable, catches the eye, and at least gives a general idea of what the whole story entails.  I feel that titles do come to me easier than blurbs, however.

[Disjecta Membra]

1 hour ago, Fae Briona said:

As a reader I have to agree w. Talo Segura -- the title is the initial hook, and with a bad title I won't even get to the blurb. Almost as important as the blurb are the tags associated with the story.  The tags are one of the things I love about this site that are lacking on others.

I’m the same way with titles.  If the title doesn’t intrigue me, I’m also not as likely to read on.  It’s a little bit of the “don’t judge a book by its cover” adage, but it’s hard to avoid.

[Talo Segura]

So how do you write your story summary? You've got six lines, use them, describe the book.

• What is going to happen? Hint at it.
• Who are the main characters? Give an insight.
• Where are things taking place?
• Is there a gripping starting point? Talk about it.
• You have an element of discovery, mystery. It deserves a mention.

For my first story @Thorn Wilde helped with my blurb. She told me to change it, lol! But she was absolutely right, I listened, I changed it, I got a few readers. I wrote who the main characters were, what they were doing, and mentioned other key characters. I told the readers what the story was about and attempted to invoke interest in how these characters would interact, discover themselves, and face life's challenges.

 

Tags as @Fae Briona said are a great aid. I used them all, I tagged the minor bits, example, lesbian, bisexual. My story is essentially gay male, but it's got bi and lesbian relationships, it's even got hetero, straight, relations (guess I ran out of tags, haha!).

 

You do have to sell your story, publicise it, talk about it, but starting with title, summary, tags. The title is always difficult, I'm not at all sure I got my title right. I took it from the Urban Dictionary, and added a prelude to set it in context, but I think I was too ambitious, put that down to inexperience. The good thing with this site, you can go back and change, update, the story summary, try it, and see what happens.

[Thorn Wilde]

I'm glad I could help, @Talo Segura. My pronoun is 'he', though...

[Lugh]

the easiest way I found to write the story blurb was to write the story out in 100 words or less.  Stop at or just before the climax, and ask a question.  This lets you get right to the heart of the story.

[Thorn Wilde]

For short stories, I’ve come to often use a quote from the story in the blurb, followed by just a few words regarding the plot. For novels, I tend to write a longer blurb with more detail about characters or plot. 

[Disjecta Membra]

10 hours ago, Lugh said:

the easiest way I found to write the story blurb was to write the story out in 100 words or less.  Stop at or just before the climax, and ask a question.  This lets you get right to the heart of the story.

 

Do you ever run into instances where you’re afraid you’ll spoil too much of the plot this way?  If so, how do you “dumb it down” so to speak, in order to prevent that?

 

9 hours ago, Thorn Wilde said:

For short stories, I’ve come to often use a quote from the story in the blurb, followed by just a few words regarding the plot. For novels, I tend to write a longer blurb with more detail about characters or plot. 

 

For novels, do you ever find your story evolving to the point where the blurb isn’t as accurate anymore?  Do you ever need to edit it, or do your stories generally stay on the same track the whole time?  Or do you already have all of your novel-length pieces fully written before you post them?

[Thorn Wilde]

57 minutes ago, Disjecta Membra said:

 

Do you ever run into instances where you’re afraid you’ll spoil too much of the plot this way?  If so, how do you “dumb it down” so to speak, in order to prevent that?

 

 

For novels, do you ever find your story evolving to the point where the blurb isn’t as accurate anymore?  Do you ever need to edit it, or do your stories generally stay on the same track the whole time?  Or do you already have all of your novel-length pieces fully written before you post them?

Not really. I tend to have the novel outlined at least, and I don't post anything until I have several chapters written (and by now I've decided not to do that even and always wait until at least the first draft is finished, cause I've been burned enough times leaving my readers hanging for far too long). While a few things may change before I finish posting, they don't tend to be things covered in the blurb. I'm not giving away the whole plot or anything.

[Timothy M.]

On 3/4/2019 at 12:13 AM, Disjecta Membra said:

 It's longer pieces, I think, that provide the bigger struggle.

 

This is especially true when, like me, you start posting before you have the whole story written. I end up describing the starting point for the story and leave it at that.

[Talo Segura]

@Timothy M. I do the same thing, start posting before it's finished (well I only have the one story and it's not finished), but to write the summary of what it's about only requires to tell the reader a bit about who the characters are and what the theme is. Afterall, you know what you're writing your story about even if you don't know how it progresses or ends. So you just say it's about main character and other character and they are finding themselves, dealing with something, coming out, growing up, whatever the theme is.