How to Write a Blurb

How to Write a Blurb

How to Write a Blurb for your Fiction Book in Five Steps

Write a 100,000 word book? Sure, no problem, says the author.

Write a 400 word blurb to sell that book on your Amazon page? The same author ducks his head beneath his desk, filled with self-doubt.

The problem, most writers say, is that they are artists, not salespeople. But guess what? If you want anyone to discover your art, you’ll have to sell it. And the best way to sell a book? Is a great blurb.

Sure, you can pay someone (including us!) to write your blurb for you. And that’s a viable option, especially if you’re making enough on your work to outsource the things you don’t enjoy or aren’t good at. But even if that’s the case, it’s a valuable exercise to figure out HOW to sell your book in a few sentences. And that’s what your blurb should do.

Here are the five basic pieces you need to put your blurb together:

1. Your main character. Who is she? What does she want? What will happen if she can’t have it?
2. Your antagonist or repellant force. Why is he/she/it standing in the way of your main character?
3. The action or trope. What happens in your story (this can get lengthy, so keep it basic).
4. What will your main character have to overcome in order to succeed?
5. The resolution. (Don’t worry, we’re not going to give this away. But you need to know it in order to move forward).

These are the five basic things we ask for when we agree to write a blurb for an author, along with a couple more that include:

1. What genre is your book?
2. List 3 books you consider to be comparable or competitive with yours.
3. List 3 books in your genre with blurbs you love.

Those last ones are especially important, since readers tend to look for books like the ones they already love. (If you argue that your book is unlike any other book ever written … well, that’s a whole other post. But let’s just say this: being too original is not a good thing.) But know your genre — if all the most popular blurbs use first-person POV, guess what? Yours should too. If they’re all written in tension-filled short sentences? Write yours that way. Match your competition, especially the books that are selling well.

Now what are we going to do with these pieces? The key is not to summarize your plot — it’s to know your story so well that you can hook your readers with the most compelling parts.

1. Hook your readers with a question or statement that grabs their interest.
2. Offer one or two sentences that give an idea of the story readers will get. If you’re writing romance, make sure your tropes are front and center here.
3. Define the conflict and the stakes — what will your characters be facing? What is the story problem?
4. Leave off with a question that makes readers want to know more.

Let’s look at some great examples of each of these things.

For a great hook, take a look at Love According to Science by Claire Kingsley. Her blurb begins: What happens when frenemies take the experiment out of the lab and into the bedroom?

In that single hook, we know this is a romance, that it’s going to be an enemies-to-lovers story, and that there’s some kind of science experiment at the heart of the story. Perfect!

To see a fantastic example of the “meat” of the blurb — the thing that sets up the story and gives us just enough to know if we might like to read it, check out Trust No One by Debra Webb.

It’s the worst possible time for Detective Kerri Devlin to be involved in an all-consuming double-homicide case. She’s locked in a bitter struggle with her ex-husband and teenage daughter, and her reckless new partner is anything but trustworthy.

Still, she has a job to do: there’s a killer at large, and a pregnant woman has gone missing.

This definitely sets up the story world and gives us insight into our character’s job and her values.

And as far as laying out the problem in the story, check out these lines from S. D. Robertson’s My Sister’s Lies:

The only sadness in her life is a fall-out with her sister Diane, who hasn’t spoken to her in over ten years. But now Diane is on her doorstep – and this time, she’s got her teenage daughter Mia in tow.

When Diane asks if Mia can stay with Hannah and Mark for a few days, Hannah is glad of the chance to get to know her niece. But as the days turn into weeks and Diane doesn’t return, Hannah begins to worry. Why hasn’t her sister been in touch?

That’s a great example of a hanging question, too. Or look here for something a little more light-hearted that still works. From Iced by Jacob Chance:

One weekend was all it was meant to be.
How do I protect my fragile heart when the lines between fantasy and reality blur with our first kiss?

These examples show just a few ways blurbs can work — read extensively through the blurbs in your genre, and then write several versions. If you’re the trial-and-error type, put each up for a two-week trial, run a Facebook ad to the book, and see which version converts best!

Dawn and Nancy are discussing blurbs on Story Strategy Live July 16 here.