How to Blurb: Writing a book description that sells

A blurb can sometimes mean a short review quoted on a book cover, but in this post we’re going to look at the other kind of blurb: the book description. The blurb is your sales pitch, printed on the back of your book or quoted on its sales page online. It’s the second most important thing, after the cover, when it comes to selling your book. 

How to Write Point of View

Before you begin to write a story there’s one crucial choice to make: who is the narrator? The narrator is the character(s) telling the story, whether that’s the protagonist, multiple characters, or an observer.

The point of view (POV) taken by the narrator is the reader’s way in to the story – it’s how they connect with the characters. Get the POV right and the reader will forget they’re even reading. The characters and the world of the story will come to life and the words on the page become invisible.

How to Write Description

Description is the bedrock of storytelling. Good description brings a scene to life and makes it vivid in the reader’s imagination. This is achieved by following one of writing’s sacred rules:

How to Write Dialogue

Creating dialogue is one of the most enjoyable and the most challenging parts of writing. Dialogue isn’t like real speech. If you write dialogue to resemble real speech you’ll end up with something unreadable.

How to Write Characters

At the heart of every successful novel are good characters. And by ‘good’ I don’t mean a character who never does anything bad, is kind to small animals and children, and never swears. Well written characters bring a story to life and give the reader someone to care about, root for, or even love to hate.

Characters aren’t like real people.

How to Write Opening Lines

The hardest part of writing a novel is the opening. As attention spans shrink and a million distractions pull at our minds, it’s harder than ever to get people to sit still long enough to read to the end of the first page, let alone the first paragraph. An average novel is between 80,000 to 100,000 words, so reading a novel will take some time. (Writing one takes even longer!) Many would rather watch the movie version of a story instead – two hours and you’re done.

If you want readers to stick with your novel and read to the end, you must grab their attention right from the start. Opening lines, and the first page, are crucial.

How to Write a Synopsis

Writing a synopsis is one of my least favourite activities and I’ll do almost anything to avoid it. But a well written synopsis is essential if you want to sell the book you’ve been working on for months/years.

A synopsis is the sales pitch for your novel and it’s designed to entice an agent or publisher into reading your complete manuscript. It’s usually sent out with three sample chapters, but if the reader doesn’t like your synopsis, they won’t even look at your beautifully crafted chapters. So it pays to spend some time honing your synopsis, no matter how excruciating that may be.