Have You Seen This Blurb? On Crafting Blurbs

You might be familiar with this situation: A book has a cool cover, so you pick it up and turn it over to find out what it's about. Instead, all you find are quotes from other authors, some of whom you've never heard of or read, and which don't actually tell you anything at all about the book. Even worse: the book is wrapped in plastic, so you can't crack it open and give it another chance.

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Let's start with the easy question, to make sure we're all on the same page, because we all seem to define the word "blurb" differently:

What is a book blurb?

Blurbs are little descriptions of your book's plot that whet the reader's appetite and pique their curiosity without giving too much away. The blurb is a promotional tool - a short passage which aims to get readers interested enough in your story that they want to pick it up.

That's generally where most definitions of the word stop.

But if you look at other sources, like Wikipedia (queue the collective gasp of educators everywhere, myself included), you learn that there are those who believe that a blurb "may be written by the author or publisher or quote praise from others". 

But we all hate finding nothing but quotes on the back of a book. If a set of quotes from other authors is all that a story has in its blurb, like in the situation above - frankly, I'm moving on. I'm not interested in whether or not other writers have enjoyed it, though it's nice to know that people did enjoy the book. I'm more interested in what the book is about. And if you're a fellow bookworm like myself, it's probably the same for you, too.

Especially in a time where Bookstagram, BookTok, BookTube, and other online book reviewing communities so easy promote "trending" books that might not actually be any good. It lessens the power of good praise for a book, and creates a situation where a book is sold not on its merits but on its promotability - it's social trendiness and its tropish attractions.

None of this helps readers. If you're a writer working on a blurb, keep it simple and give readers what they want before giving them the add-ons like praise!

How do you do that? I'm glad you asked!

What does a good blurb look like?

I'm going to be honest with you: I think authors' quotes and praise for the book are nice additions to a blurb, but like I said above, they're only icing. The real cake is the description. That's what you need to focus on. So, from now on, when I use the word "blurb", that's what I mean: the description.

Writing a blurb is an exercise in suspenseful writing. It's actually really fun, and there are a lot of formulae that you can use to help you put a good blurb together.

A really famous formula, for example, is:

When [character] [inciting event], they must [main goal] before [main obstacle/event happens].

Here's an example of how that might look for my wip Neon Vape:

When Ramona Marx is imprisoned in a VR game she helped create, she must beat the game without dying to avoid brain death in the real world. 

I've just whipped that up for this blog post. It took me a few minutes, but it wasn't so hard. Give it a go with your own story and see if it works. This is a pretty short blurb, and could even be called a logline.

This kind of formula works especially well when you have one main protagonist or POV character, but I have seen books with multiple POV/protagonists which make one of these for each of the characters and list them on the back of the blurb, clearly outlining each character's stakes and motive for getting involved in the plot.

Another way to approach blurbs is by considering the Who, What, When, and Where or your story. Maybe - if it doesn't give too much away - you can even add a glimpse into the Why and the How. Here's another example using Neon Vape again:

VeAre's Neon Vape is the most highly-anticipated game of 2477. Days before its launch, Ramona Marx gets the chance to be the first person to play the game - only to find herself a prisoner in its virtual world. A victim of a nefarious corporate espionage plot, Ramona must beat the game if she wants to escape.

She's only got one chance, though - because dying in the sabotaged Neon Vape will mean certain brain death. Can she beat these terrifying, dangerous stages, or will Ramona succumb to this poisoned game?

This one took me a bit longer to draft - about 10 minutes - and it's definitely not perfect, but you get the gist, right?

To break it down even more, the Who should refer to your protagonist(s), the What should refer to what the story is actually about - their main goal in the book, and the When/Where are setting the scene. In the example above: 

• I've introduced my main character, Ramona, and the main issue at hand: the fact that she's stuck in a video game and needs to get out. 
• There are a couple of main obstacles introduced, too: the fact that she needs to beat the game in order to get out, and the fact that she needs to stay live because otherwise it's literally game over forever. 
• I've also introduced VeAre, the company in whose building Ramona will be physically undergoing this journey, and Neon Vape, the game where she will be virtually undergoing this journey. The name VeAre sounds like VR, which should give readers an idea that Neon Vape is a virtual reality game, but Neon Vape is described as a 'virtual world', too. 
• I've dropped a year - so we know the story is very futuristic in its setting. 
• And, even though I haven't introduced a specific villain, we know there is someone behind all of this because I've mentioned corporate espionage and the "poisoning" of Neon Vape. 

All of this paints a picture in the mind of the reader.

Notice how the blurb is supposed to give readers a sense of suspense - something that makes them want to flip it open and start reading to find out what happens. Try to keep things short and punchy, and maybe end the blurb with a question like in the example above. 

Here's another one of my examples - my working blurb for Murder in Heliopolis:

The year is 2504, and sprawling eco-cities built over the ruins of fallen metropolises have created a haven for the people. In the most prosperous areas of the world, skyscrapers bursting at the seams with vibrant green life and towering turbines litter the cityscapes. Heliopolis is one such supercity, renowned for its spectacular architecture, sun-drenched weather, and numerous natural reserves.

But there are darker sides still to this futuristic utopia: cities, long abandoned, crumbling and wild, where the forsaken survive on the waste of the flowering megalopolises beyond. These people, who have turned their back on society, use any means to get by in a lawless place where the only rule is to stay alive – and to survive those who hunt in the Ruins.

When a businesswoman Cassia Grove is found murdered in her home, even PATET can't help the police solve this mystery. It isn't long before the investigation reveals a sinister link between PATET and the devils which dwell in the Ruins. But is it too late to stop them? 

Notice that this one is a little on the longer side. Generally speaking, you want to keep your blurbs as short as possible. Ideally, I'd want to remove one of these three paragraphs, if possible. So this blurb still has a little work to be done.

Published Book Blurb Examples

When in doubt, take a look at all of the books you own, if you own any fiction novels. Find their blurbs, and read them. Dissect them and consider what they have in common. You'll find that all of them generally follow that same kind of skeleton framework.

For example, my copy of Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun has this blurb:

It was August and the holiday mood ran high at the Jolly Roger Hotel. The rich and the famous were gathered together on the picturesque Smuggler's Island.

The sun shone from a blue sky...sunbathers sprawled on golden beaches...floats bobbed on the bay...and beautiful Arlena Stuart Marshall was strangled to death.

Her holiday was over, but then so too was Hercule Poirot's...

Short, sweet, and to the point, right? We've got the Who, What, When, and the Where. As, as with any good murder mystery, it's up to us and the detective to wrangle out the How and the Why!

This copy of Evil Under the Sun doesn't have any praise for the book - no quotes from anyone on the back or the front. But I also have a copy of Christie's And Then There Were None, and that one does have a quote:

"Ten..."

Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen."

"Nine..."

At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead.

"Eight..."

Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one... one by one they begin to die.

"Seven..."

Who among them is the killer and will any of them survive?

"One of the most ingenious thrillers in many a day." - Time

Notice here how the praise - the quote from Time - is really only the icing on the cake. The meat of the blurb is the blurb itself - the wonderfully suspenseful description which gets us hooked and intrigued.

Alright, now let's look at something totally different. Here's the blurb of my copy of the historical fiction novel Leo the African by Amin Maalouf:

Leo the African is based on the true life-story of Hasan al-Wazzan, the sixteenth-century traveller and writer who came to be known as Leo Africanus, or Leo the African.

From his childhood in Fez, having fled the Christian Inquisition, through his many journeys to the East as an itinerant merchant, Hasan's story is a quixotic catalogue of pirates, slave-girls and princesses, encompassing the complexities of a world in a state of religious flux. Hasan too is touched by the instability of the era, performing his hadj to Mecca, then converting to Christianity, only to revert to the Muslim faith later in life. 

In re-creating his extraordinary experience, Amin Maalouf sketches an irresistively portrait of the Mediterranean world as it was nearly five centuries ago - the fall of Granada, the Ottoman conquest of Egypt, Renaissance Rome under the Medicis: all contribute to a background of spectacular colour, matched only by the picaresque adventures of Hasan's life.

Vivid, gripping, and remarkable in its scope, Leo the African is a masterpiece of the imagination from this award-winning author.

This blurb is then followed by two quotes, one form the Guardian and another from the Daily Telegraph, praising the story. You can tell, of course, that this blurb is less about the plot and more about the writing itself. The descriptive technique, the settings, the historical exploration, the broad-spanning range of the story both geographically and in terms of individual transformation of the main character. 

Instead of trying to create suspense or a sense of urgency, this blurb focuses on the literary merits of the book. This is particularly good for literary fiction, and you'll find lots of these kinds of blurbs on the backs of classics that we study now in school and university. These are usually the books that can be analyzed in-depth, and which criticize different elements of the human condition.

I thought I'd throw in this example because I think by now we're very familiar with the kind of formula and framework used in lots of YA and other kinds of fiction novels, but it's important to remember that you can step outside of the frameworks and create a blurb that works for your particular story. The formulae I gave above are helpful, but remember that you can check out the blurbs for other books similar to yours and decide what kind of approach you want in your blurb.

You can even get creative! Maybe your blurb is a recipe. Maybe your blurb is a hand-written note attached to the back of your book. Maybe your blurb is only an image. Or - in keeping with the title of this article - a missing poster. Get creative, because there are a lot of different ways to fulfill the expectations of a blurb without having to lean back on more traditional blurb-writing frameworks and approaches.

I hope this helps you in your blurb crafting!