Trigger warning: Bodily fluids mentioned.
Yesterday, I began working on the back cover blurb for my novel-thing, although I wasn't truly expecting to. Why? Because I posted a simple sentence summarizing my novel on Threads:
And that got me thinking about the entire back cover. Because if I had a punchy blurb describing my novel, not only could I use that to market my idea and gain a fan-base, but it'll help me stay on track in terms of the plot-- because I keep dreaming up new concepts to add in instead of actually writing the damn book.
So what exactly goes into a blurb? I remember from my days of college in Creative Writing, that the back cover isn't necessarily a synopsis. It's designed to pull a potential reader into your story. And you've only got like three short paragraphs to lure yourvictim I mean, reader in. Because the goal here is to make some money, right?
You've got three paragraphs. A hook that grabs your reader's attention. A brief introduction of your main character and a statement about the basic plot. Finally a cliff-hanger that's going to make that person start reading from page one. And you've got about 200 words to make your case.
Truth be told, my first draft, I overshot, big time. I wrote like seven paragraphs, probably well over 500 words. I decided to introduce the main protagonist as herself, using her voice. Bonus, this helped me to really nail down her voice and a bit of her personality. Contained within this first draft, I described the mission of the characters, and I had a paragraph describing each character. The final paragraph was detailing the team as a collective. Yeah, it was way too long.
Then I tried a second draft. My goal was to have two sentences for each character. This draft left me with four paragraphs, the second one being massive. But hey, I'm under 500 words now. Still way too long for a blurb. I had to cut at least another 250 words. So I turned to DeepSeek for some help.
Now, the problem with AI, at least this one is, that it loves using bullet points, and smashing two different concepts into single sentences, which dramatically alters the meaning of the writing. A great example of this is when it changes "... giggles instead of drinking blood..." into "...giggles at blood...". That's a very different meaning, and it destroys the character I had created. However, after going back and forth with the AI, I was able to finally create three strong paragraphs. Now I can use the AI to find any grammatical flaws-- which it did, and I reworded some phrasing to sound more like Hikari.
So, in case you're wondering, now I have my three paragraphs that I'm pretty damn happy with, and it comes in at 287 words. Still a little long for an industry standard, but since I'm publishing this on my Patreon, I don't think that'll matter too much. I can always come back and trim out a few of the Fourth Wall breaks if I absolutely have to. Here's my current final draft:
And what I really love about this revision is that I've managed to include the title (or version of) within the Back Cover! Now I just need to find a decent artist, because, I've got plans.....
Yesterday, I began working on the back cover blurb for my novel-thing, although I wasn't truly expecting to. Why? Because I posted a simple sentence summarizing my novel on Threads:
And that got me thinking about the entire back cover. Because if I had a punchy blurb describing my novel, not only could I use that to market my idea and gain a fan-base, but it'll help me stay on track in terms of the plot-- because I keep dreaming up new concepts to add in instead of actually writing the damn book.
So what exactly goes into a blurb? I remember from my days of college in Creative Writing, that the back cover isn't necessarily a synopsis. It's designed to pull a potential reader into your story. And you've only got like three short paragraphs to lure your
You've got three paragraphs. A hook that grabs your reader's attention. A brief introduction of your main character and a statement about the basic plot. Finally a cliff-hanger that's going to make that person start reading from page one. And you've got about 200 words to make your case.
Truth be told, my first draft, I overshot, big time. I wrote like seven paragraphs, probably well over 500 words. I decided to introduce the main protagonist as herself, using her voice. Bonus, this helped me to really nail down her voice and a bit of her personality. Contained within this first draft, I described the mission of the characters, and I had a paragraph describing each character. The final paragraph was detailing the team as a collective. Yeah, it was way too long.
Then I tried a second draft. My goal was to have two sentences for each character. This draft left me with four paragraphs, the second one being massive. But hey, I'm under 500 words now. Still way too long for a blurb. I had to cut at least another 250 words. So I turned to DeepSeek for some help.
Now, the problem with AI, at least this one is, that it loves using bullet points, and smashing two different concepts into single sentences, which dramatically alters the meaning of the writing. A great example of this is when it changes "... giggles instead of drinking blood..." into "...giggles at blood...". That's a very different meaning, and it destroys the character I had created. However, after going back and forth with the AI, I was able to finally create three strong paragraphs. Now I can use the AI to find any grammatical flaws-- which it did, and I reworded some phrasing to sound more like Hikari.
So, in case you're wondering, now I have my three paragraphs that I'm pretty damn happy with, and it comes in at 287 words. Still a little long for an industry standard, but since I'm publishing this on my Patreon, I don't think that'll matter too much. I can always come back and trim out a few of the Fourth Wall breaks if I absolutely have to. Here's my current final draft:
And what I really love about this revision is that I've managed to include the title (or version of) within the Back Cover! Now I just need to find a decent artist, because, I've got plans.....
