Osu!
Good morning, class! It’s time for a lesson with your favorite teacher, shoemilk-sensei
*†!
*Who?
†no longer a real sensei, just a salaryman.
We’re going to learn how to recognize one of the hardest things to do when writing a book: Number three, The Blurb.
What is a blurb?
It’s a 100~200-word SALES PITCH for your book.
I know some of you might have missed it as I only bolded, italicised
‡, underlined, and capitalized
‡ it, so it gets lost in there, but a blurb is a sales pitch.
‡Did you just…use both a British spelling and American spelling in the same sentence?
Oh! You’re observant! I bet you noticed „sales pitch”! This is going to be easy!
A blurb is important because it gets people to read your book! Think of it this way. Your cover is the flashy lure bobbing in the sea, waiting for that big yellow tail reader to snap on. But that yellow tail is cautious. Wait for it…wait for it…Oh! We got a bite! And… damn, it got away because your blurb was a synopsis. There was no hook, and now that Yellow Tail is off reading
some story by some rando. That story’s probably not as good as yours, but I bet the author of that one likes him some nice yellow tail sashimi. Pass the shoyu. Domo!
So, you’re telling me a blurb isn’t a synopsis?
NO! It’s not a synopsis!
What’s the difference?
A synopsis synopsisizes your story. It’s what you send to publishers and the Cliff Notes
§ of your story. We want people to read your story, not cheat on their high school English paper for it.
§Are Cliff Notes still a thing? Is this something else AI is going to kill? First it comes for my writing job, then John Connor, now Cliff Notes? WHEN DOES IT END?!
So, if a synopsis synopsisizes your story, a blurb is a sales pitch for it. I know some of you reading this might say, “
Shoemilk-sensei, we know that! You already said that!” And I say, 「It bears (bares?) repeating.」
Now that we’ve covered what a blurb is and isn’t, let's get into the weeds,
find a tick, and get Lyme disease and discuss some things that should be left on the cutting room floor.
The first thing that needs to go is any world-specific terms.
DO NOT USE THEM! They belong in your synopsis. World-specific terms are as sharp as something dull. You choose the funniest dull thing for me and substitute it in your mind. Done laughing? Good. Carrying on.
Shoemilk-sensei! I’ve got this really cool thing in my story called the Microtetonic Molectacistic Ventroniator! Do I get to put that in my blurb?
Hey! I didn’t call on you! And no. You can put it in your story, but if that is anywhere near your blurb, well,
so long and thanks for all the fish.
Oi! I just clicked on that link, and you’re full of it! You’ve got a world-specific term in there!
It names an antagonist. If, instead of using a Greek-American composer and pianist known for his instrumental, contemporary new-age music, as the name and say I used a long-haired American saxophonist famous for his smooth jazz style, it’s still just a name.
But what about my Microtetonic Molectacistic Ventroniator?!
Yanni and Kenny G ate it, sorry.
So, those of you who clicked the link to
my that rando’s story, did you notice
me them going on about country this, country that? No. There’s the MC’s name, the name of the school he goes to, and the composer of Santorini (less an “n”).
How about magical system this or magical system that? Nope. (Objectively, the most famous “magic” in popular culture is the Force. Go watch the trailer for A New Hope from 1977. The only mention of the Force is: “May the Force be with you.”)
Why are world-specific terms bad?
They’re like golf courses and cemeteries, the biggest waste of real estate space. And I should know, I just bought land next to the Great Wall of China, on the GOOD side. Scroll back up to the top. A little bit more… now, find the bolded, italicised, underlined, and capitalized word and look at the compound modifier before it. What does that say? Yeah, it says 100~200 words. You don’t want to waste precious words explaining some term that nobody cares about. You may care, but let me promise you, Joe Bob don’t.
Okay, let’s recap. A blurb is a sales pitch. 100~200 words. No world-specific terms. We green?
Next, let’s look at a marketing term. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ huh? Sorry, bored myself to sleep there. Where was I? Oh, yeah. A “call-to-action”. This is an absolute MUST for your blurb. This is the barb on your fishhook. Without a call-to-action, your blurb is just a bent needle. It can be stabby, but lots of fish are going to wind up
over here, and there’s only two gender-neutral dudes who are going to be happy then (
me some rando and the dude clicking on the link, reading that great story).
What is a call-to-action?
It’s something that piques the interest of the person reading it.
It’s one of those things that make you go hmmm…Robi-Rob, break it down. Robi-Rob? Hello? Oh, guess he’s not here.
Now, the most common mistake people make in a call-to-action is the binary fallacy.
Is this the end for our intrepid hero and his plucky group of underdogs?
Yes. Alas, poor intrepid hero, for we knew you well.
Yes/no questions are NOT call-to-action!
But shoe-sensei, *ahem*, shoemilk-sensei, why not?
Because they are not engaging. The reader doesn’t have to think deeply about it. They can just poor-yorick your MC and move on. Call-to-action is open-ended! Learn these six “W” words:
Who
What
When
Why
Where
How
You might have heard of them before; they’re called “the seven holy words of getting paid. Ka-ching.” If your call-to-action doesn’t have one of those words in it, you don’t have a call-to-action, you’ve got a call-to-oh!
Look over there!
- sales pitch.
- 100~200 words.
- No world-specific terms.
- Call-to-action
Now that we’ve got the musts out of the way, let's get further into this. Let’s go looking for billionaire bits on the bottom of the ocean and the finer details of how to write a blurb.
Sales pitches are hard. There’s a reason Don Draper makes the big bucks. Lots of practice and studying can only get you so far, and when you give up, you can just go write a poorly disguised ad for
your story as an advice post on how to write a blurb.
So, what works for me is I boil my story down to its simplest element. I’m talking even simpler than that light novel title for that LN you’re reading, but too ashamed to admit.
What makes your story special?
That’s what you need to get to the heart of.
The working title for my story was “I’m a foreign exchange teacher who was sent to work at a school that routinely kills its students. What is the hell hole?” I mean, that’s what that rando told me his working title was. (or her, randos can be either. They even. Anyone can be a rando.)
Once you have the single-sentence heart of your story, you are ready to fluff some pillows and expand it out. Did anyone read The Expanse? Good stuff. Kind of indie. I think they only made a TV series based on it. Movie or nothing, am I right?
When expanding, there are three elements that you need to use. The primary colors of expanding, if you will. Since writing is an art, we’re going with the traditional three:
Red: Red is the color of love and passion. That’s your MC. You need to give details about your MC. Give the reader a reason to care about them. If it’s something that could be the answer to a 90s chatroom three-letter question: A/S/L, that’s not going to make people care. You know that whole “show don’t tell” advice for writing? Yeah, still happens here. And you get to do it in a succinct 100 words! Yay!
Blue: Like the sky. A location. You need to give some sort of idea of the world without getting overly specific. Just a bit of flavoring. You know? A setting. That way, you don’t get people asking where the horses are when your story is set in space (that’s a Notting Hill reference, y’all. Best romcom ever made. Proven facts).
Yellow (okay, fine or green): Green like the plot of land. But blue is location, so delete the land, and that leaves us with plot. You gotta tease with the plot. Strip it down and show it off. Don’t be afraid of a nip-slip. A little spoiler here or there won’t ruin it for anyone. It’s kind of hard to spoil something that never gets read.
The hardest one of these is the
red one. Sometimes, you can go infrared, and no one can see who the character is. You gotta be sure to bring them up to the visible spectrum. Spend the most time on this. The least important is
blue, and you should spend the least amount of time on it.
I think that’s about all the time we have for class today. So, to recap, here are Shoemilk’s Guidelines to Good Blurbs:
- sales pitch.
- 100~200 words.
- No world-specific terms.
- Call-to-action
- Red, Blue, Green
Shoemilk-sensei! I have a question! You don’t say anything about a tagline.
That’s not a question, and I didn’t say anything about it because, while they can be a nice addition to a sales pitch, they aren’t required for it. They’re like a nice fluffy bonus. If you do your call-to-action correctly, taglines become superfluous.
Okay, last, I’ll go into a breakdown of my favoritest blurb:
Cara doesn't care about whatever quest he has that involves her. She just wants to be left alone. So how could the personification of everything she hates in her world come to be the only shining light in it?
> It's a tale as old as time: Boy meets girl, girl meets boy. Girl kills boy. Then girl kills boy again, and again, and again.
You could call this my tag line, but it’s a blend of red and yellow. It sets the genre and plot (romance) while giving insights into the FL (she doesn’t like the ML). Female Lead and Male Lead for those of you who don’t read romantasy manhwa.
> For Ivan, the VRMMO "Alphablade" is just a game, but for the NPC Cara Vacher, it's her harsh reality.
Aaaaaand, we’re done with blue. This one line introduces the ML, the FL, and the setting location.
>
Where her mortality is absolute, Ivan's revival is relentless (just like his persistence).
This gives insight into the opening line about killing him over and over for plot reveals. It also provides an opportunity for additional characterization. (I tell you he’s persistent, but what I’m also showing you is that he annoys her, so she keeps killing him)
>
Invasive players have turned in-game characters like Cara into second-class citizens.
Again, I try to use a plot detail to show about the FML’s character. She’s a downtrodden NPC.
>
Her world is their guilt and consequence-free playground.
Expanding on that plot point
>
She would have hated Ivan even if she'd never met him.
OMG! Enemies to Lovers! My FAVORITE romance trope.
>
Cara doesn't care about whatever quest he has that involves her.
Heavy focus on Cara shows that she is the MC. This story will be told through her PoV mainly. She doesn’t care about the plot point.
>
She just wants to be left alone.
A bit more about Cara, setting up the final call-to-action
>
So how could the personification of everything she hates in her world come to be the only shining light in it?
I invite the reader of this blurb to think about the two Leads and what could happen that would cause them to go from enemies to lovers.
Each and every word of your blurb needs to count. Wishy-washy things like “however” or “on the other hand” are water in your coffee. Get them gone!
Thanks for
following and favoriting me!
As a reward, I will be testing the
first 15 people who dump their homework on me. I’ll grade you and pull out my mighty red pen and see how your blurb does!
