Mini Masterclass: The Blurb Formula
Every story usually has a premise. A blurb. An elevator pitch. What is that? It’s a short, straightforward description of your project. Its job should be to set up your hero, the situation they find themselves in and the conflict of the story.
The blurb is the deciding factor between whether a potential reader will buy your book or not.
When someone asks you for a premise of your story, they might mean:
-a prompt
-a one-sentence statement that hooks the reader (like the short description of films or shows you’d see in the newspaper, the cinema or on streaming services)
It’s great to have a very succinct one-line pitch of your story ready, but we’re going to create your book blurb first.
It might feel a little strange to write up your book blurb before you've written the actual book, but I actually encourage you to do this earlyon for a very specific reason. The book blurb formula actually gives you a very quick overview of an entire story structure. So, what you're doing by writing this up before you start your story is making sure that your idea already fits into a general story structure.
A blurb is essentially a condensed version of your three-act story structure. If you come up with your blurb now, expanding your idea into a full outline will become a piece of cake.
Here’s the formula I use:
WHO + WHAT IS THEIR CONSTRICTED SITUATION?
WHAT HAPPENS THAT PUSHES THEM OUT OF THEIR COMFORT ZONE? (INCITING INCIDENT)
WHAT IS THEIR EXTERNAL GOAL? (PROMPTED BY THE INCITING INCIDENT)
HOW DO THEY DECIDE TO ACHIEVE IT? (AND, optionally, WHO DO THEY TEAM UP WITH?)
WHAT SORT OF CONFLICT OR CHAOTIC SITUATION DOES THIS PUSH THEM INTO?
END WITH A HOOK, A CLIFF-HANGER, A QUESTION, A WORDPLAY (YOU WANT TO MAKE THE READER EAGER TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS)
Go over to your bookshelf and grab a couple of fiction novels, locate their blurb and try to examine how it fits or differs from the formula. Typically, you’ll have one sentence that explains your protagonist's world and hints at their current flaw or struggle. Then you’ll get a sentence that will almost always begin with “But when!” and this will introduce your inciting incident and send the protagonist scrambling for next steps. You might be told what they choose to do next and why that goal might become difficult. This is a nod to the conflict of their story. Some books will have a good hook at the end, perhaps a question that you can already assume the answer to, but it will make the story that much more irresistible.
When reading the blurbs, ask yourself:
-Does the author set up an interesting character whose journey you're interested in?
-Can you identify the inciting incident?
-Does the author tell you what sort of adventure they might take you on, what characters you might expect to meet or the world you might find yourself in?
-Do they hint at the biggest conflict their hero might stumble on?
-How do they hook you into the final decision to read the book?
Credit:
Reprinted with permission from Finish Your First Novel by Char Anna. Page Street Publishing Co. 2023.
