It can also be called a back cover blurb or a book description. It’s a short description of the book’s main character and conflict and is usually between 100 and 200 words long. It’s usually found on the back of a book or the inside cover.

The blurb is the second thing, the first being the front cover, that a reader will look at before deciding whether or not to buy your book. The cover catches the reader’s attention, the blurb is what sells the book.

If you’re a self-published author, you’ll most probably write your own blurb, and I know a lot of smaller publishers in particular will ask for the author’s input when they’re putting together the blurb, or might even request they write it themselves.

Here’s an example of one of my own blurbs. It’s from my contemporary romance, Starstruck:

‘When newly divorced Kate finds school friend, now super famous rock star Joseph Wild, on her doorstep, her whole quiet, ordinary life is thrown into disarray.

Joseph has broken up with glamorous actress Genevieve Moore, and needs somewhere to retreat to until the paparazzi interest in his marriage calms down. Kate agrees to help him out and drawn to his simple, self-effacing charm, soon finds herself falling in love.

But can she cope with the problems a relationship with such a high profile celebrity brings? What happens when he jets back to his regular life of stardom in L.A.?

And how will Genevieve react when she finds out Joseph has moved on? She can’t possibly allow anything to sully her ever-so-carefully crafted public image.

Falling in love with a rock star is tougher than you’d think…’

I think it gives a really clear idea of the story’s genre and what it’s about, and the use of questions draws the reader in and makes them feel involved.

Remember, the blurb should intrigue readers into wanting to read your book, it should leave them wanting more, and it should fit with the story’s genre. A good blurb provides a short summary, but it doesn’t give anything away. 

My video on this topic can be found on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKJKt8kmDXrWQAGkTV1VHMQ

If you’ve never heard of a synopsis, it’s a brief summary or general survey of something. As a writer talking about writing, the type of synopsis I’m referencing here is a synopsis of a book manuscript, which is basically an outline of what happens in your book. 

Publishers and agents may ask you to send them a synopsis, often along with the first chapter or first 3 chapters of your manuscript, so that they can get a feel for your work and quickly decide if they’d like to read your whole manuscript. It can also be requested before you’ve actually written the manuscript by an agent or publisher you’re working with so they can tell if your story’s on the right track before you go ahead and write 40,000 words of a book which doesn’t fit what they’re looking for.

Authors, including myself, can spend hours, even days, tearing their hair out about writing a synopsis, but hopefully these tips will make the whole process at least a little bit easier.

1: Your synopsis should not only tell the reader what happens in your book, but also make them want to read it, for this reason it must be well-written and not just a list of bullet points. It must showcase your ‘author voice’ meaning it must read like your writing. It must show the story’s full progression or ‘narrative arc’ and it must include the ending. 

2: Keep your synopsis to the correct length. This is usually 1-2 single spaced pages, or 2-5 double-spaced pages. Some authors recommend keeping it to about 500 words. Individual publishers and agents may specify how long they want a synopsis to be, make sure you send them what they want.

3: Your synopsis should be written in third person, present tense, regardless of the tense or point of view of your actual book. This helps the story to be told smoothly. 

Right now, it’s time to actually write the stupid thing…

4: Start at the beginning and when you get to the end stop. Start typing what happens in your manuscript from beginning to end. This does not have to be beautiful prose, just spew it out and make sure you keep events in chronological order.

5: Now, go back through what you’ve written and emphasise the important plot points, such as the inciting incident which sparks the conflict in your story, the climax and the resolution. Emphasise any plot twists – readers love a good plot twist.

6: Next, add character motivations at the beginning and end of the synopsis. Why did the character decide to do what they did at the inciting incident? Maybe your heroine has been looking for her long lost brother for years and the reason she gets on a plane to Venice is because she sees a man she believes to be him boarding it. That’s her motivation. The end of your manuscript should resolve this motivation: maybe the man boarding the plane wasn’t her brother but he helps her find him and they fall in love along the way. (That’s not actually a terrible story idea, I should be making notes on this).

7: If your book is told in the first person, say at the beginning of the synopsis who this is, e.g: The book is told from the point of view of a… whoever it is.

8: Make sure your storyline is clear and to the point – now is not the time to be vague and intriguing.

9: Edit out any excess words to get it down to the right length – take out any information and details that aren’t necessary. Check for word repetition! Look and just are my two overused words, I bet you’ve got a few.

10: Read your synopsis out loud to yourself. This is the best way to be able to see if your writing flows. It should read like a good book review – one of a book you’d really want to read.

Ta-da, that’s it! With any luck you now have a fantastic synopsis to send off to interested publishers and agents. I’d love to know of any which result in a contract!

x

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1: Make as detailed a plan of your storyline as you possibly can before you actually start ‘writing’. The plan can always be changed and updated, but it will give you a guide.

2: Set yourself a REALISTIC daily word target, and really, really try to stick to it. 500-2000 words is generally sensible.

3: Turn off the internet – Facebook and Twitter are very, very useful when it comes to marketing your book and making contacts BUT they do not help write your book! Unplug that internet and only plug it back in again when you’ve reached your word target!

4: Set aside proper time for your writing, even if that can only be a few minutes some days! Many of my best scenes were sketched out whilst waiting for my son to finish Judo.

5: Before you end your writing session, make a plan for what you’re going to tackle in the next one, that way you won’t sit down with no idea what to write! (Hopefully!)

6: I find it useful to write a first draft as quickly as possible, getting all key events in, so I have a really good idea of chronology in the story.

7: Read everything you can, but especially books from your chosen genre. This will give you a great idea of all manner of helpful things like how quickly the stories in this type of book progress and how long each chapter should be.

8: Try not to leave your manuscript for long periods, if you really want to finish it it’s important to be immersed in your work. If you go on holiday, you can always scribble down a few scenes by the pool!

9: Get feedback from someone you trust and respect, ideally another writer in your genre. If you’re heading in the wrong direction hopefully their advice will get you back on track.

10: And finally, there’s nothing wrong with a little reward for some good work. It’s amazing how quickly my daily word target is completed if I’m promised a KitKat at the end of it!

Right, I’m off to take some of my own advice now! 1000 words here I come!

For someone who’s already a professional author, and is hopefully being paid good money to write, it’s their job, they can write 9 til 5, or whatever hours they choose. But it’s not so easy for those unpublished, or not-quite-making-enough-to-give-up-their-day-jobs writers. Even the most dedicated writer will have times when they get in from a long day at work, or they’ve finally got the kids into bed, and the very last thing they feel like doing is turning on the computer and fiddling around with a tricky scene. The thing is though, no one else is going to finish that novel for you, so if you really want it, you have to find the time to write it! And often this is a case of changing priorities. Yes, it would be nice to settle down in front of your favourite soap with a glass of wine, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s a prime example of a time when you could be writing!

Here are a few tips on carving out some writing time that I picked up whilst writing my romances, I hope they help!

1: If you’re a morning person, maybe you could get up a little bit earlier and fit some writing in before the day starts? If you’re more of a night owl, get something down before you head to bed!

2: At the end of your writing session, plan what you’re going to write next, not only will you look forward to getting back to it, but you won’t waste time by wondering where to start when you next settle down to work, and you may have been able to do some planning in your head in the interim.

3: Try to make the most of every writing opportunity you have, however short, and always carry a notepad and pen around with you. It’s amazing how much you can scribble down in ten minutes waiting for someone to meet you for coffee.

4: Similarly, keep writing materials next to your bed so that if you have an amazingly, fantabulous idea during the night, you’re able to jot it down quickly before you forget it.

5: Be very time aware, if you have an hour to write in, make the most of it. Don’t faff around checking Facebook and Twitter for the first twenty minutes, get down to work!

6: And finally, make sure everyone around you knows that, short of an emergency, your writing time is sacred, YOU ARE NOT TO BE DISTURBED! If you prioritise your writing, others will too!

Best of luck!

Inspired and carefree, I rattled off thousands of glorious words of prose as they came to me. I was delighted at how organised I was being, making use of tiny snippets of time to write little scenes or, more often, parts of scenes. Typing up my handwritten notes, I’d slot them into ‘approximately’ the right place in my master document, and eventually I had a romance novel length piece of writing.

Thrilled, I printed out my draft and began my first proper read-through. Just a couple of pages in and I was close to tears: my story made no sense! It was full of inconsistencies and had ended up just a series of pretty disconnected, random scenes. Important issues begun in chapter 1 had been disregarded in chapter 2. Characters eyes changed colour, sometimes within a single page. In short, my manuscript was a bit of a mess. It took months of hard work to beat the story into submission.

I was very pleased with the end result, but I couldn’t help but think the whole experience would have been a whole lot less stressful, not to mention shorter, if I’d just planned effectively.

With my second novel, ‘His Secret Daughter’, I’ve been much more organised. I now use my small snatches of time to work on smaller jobs (guest posts, interviews, book reviews…). I only ‘properly’ write when I have a decent chunk of time at my disposal, usually at least an hour. I also really tried to write the book in order, from start to finish (although I’ll admit I wasn’t ALWAYS completely successful in this aim!).

The best piece of writing advice I’ve ever been given is simply don’t jump straight in! Authors use various methods to plot their storyline BEFORE they start writing. I like to make a fairly basic sketch of the novel over a couple of pages of A4 paper – I then fill in extra details as they come to me. I divide the pages into ten areas, as that’s the number of chapters my books typically have. When I have each of those ten chapters sketched out I produce a page of notes on my hero and heroine: I’ll comment on their ages, hair colour, family members… I also find it handy to create a Pinterest board full of photos of places my characters might live or visit, as well as photos of people who look like I imagine my characters do. Only when I’ve got everything straight in my head do I actually start writing.

At the end of the day, every writer works slightly differently. I’ve found that proper planning really helps me, but it may be that what I do would make another writer feel stifled. It’s all a question of knowing how you work best, so you can decide how to plan effectively for you!

Happy writing!