Part six: Rising tension or tropes? Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

Rising tropes is the best I can come up with to replace "rising tension".  Not every book is an action adventure or thrilling drama.  After helping several other authors with their blurbs, I would tell them that they need to raise the tension.  A lot of times they had trouble with it because their book doesn't build what most people would consider tension.  Take a comedy for example.  The rising tension would be the string of events that just get more absurd as they go on.  Like a Rube Goldberg Machine.  Or in the case of a romance, they thought I was talking about sexual tension between the characters when there really isn't any.  In other words, as you write your blurb, each step needs a rising action of some sort.  Tropes work well for this because it serves double duty in your blurb to help the customer identify what your book is about without actually telling them.  I'll go deeper into this in the Do's and Don'ts.

Tropes in many writing circles seem to have a bit of a bad rep.  I'm not saying that you need to write books with tropes in them, but tropes are universal identifiers when it comes to stories.  It's not a romance book if there isn't a happy for now/ever after ending.  And you can't call it a western if there are not six shooters and cowboy hats.

When it comes to writing your blurb one method to help with making it better is to identify not only the genera but also the themes of your book.  This can be hard to do with your own work if you just sat down and wrote your story and didn't outline or storyboard first.  Once you have the genera and themes.  Take a moment to see which of these will best lend themselves to the rising tension/tropes.

I write Steampunk Fantasy.  Both of these have identifiable tropes.  Reoccurring themes in my trilogy include: second chances, struggle of life and death, coming of age and the circular logic of time travel.  I chose to use my themes to raise the tension in my blurbs over the genera.

Here is a quick look at Book One again before I pick it apart for rising tension.

A thousand years ago, Angela was born into a race of warriors with the ability to fly. Recruited at her death to help fulfill a prophecy, she travels through the Gateway to a mechanical future dominated by airships on the edge of war. Now the last of her kind, Angela has been promised a second chance at life, if she plays her part.

Kail has a simple life, and it doesn’t include magic and forgotten prophecies. Magic ruled for centuries, but as it died out a new industry of alchemy and machines rose in its place. After Angela arrives bruised and battered the military follows bringing enemies that Kail didn’t know he had.

As the last of the vanguard mage class, General Therion can pervert magic to do unspeakable things. He wants what Kail possesses at any cost: a birthright of powerful magic that also includes the secrets of the Gateway. If Therion can seize what Kail has, he would have sweeping control over time and even death.

In the first paragraph, it clearly steps up in tension for Angela.  I introduce her, she dies, goes to the future, she is the last of her kind and her only out is if she does as she's told.  Each sentence raises the stakes.  Paragraph two and three do the same thing.  Here is ordinary Kail.  Magic and prophecy?  A beat up time traveling girl?  Now the military and bad guys want him?  It's ramping up pretty quick for our hero.  Therion's paragraph is the same,  he's bad, he does bad things, he wants what Kail has and he's going to top it off with control over time and death.

So back to your own blurb.  Does the tension level rise?  Does it ramp up and identify what the customer expects to get out of your book?  Can they quickly identify what your book is about and if it's what they are looking for to spend their money on?  Does it leave them on the edge of their chair with a desperate need to click the buy now button?

Part Two: Constructing your blurb. Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

Now that understand that the blurb's job is to convince a customer to buy our book.  We now have to construct the second most important part of your passive marketing strategy.  The book's cover is the most important part of selling your book.  If a customer doesn't click on your thumbnail sized cover, they will never see your blurb.   Your blurb won't even get a chance to do it's job.

Step one:  Identify your main character.  Identify your plot/conflict.  Identify your setting.  But SB Jones, I have more than one main character.  No you don't.  One of these characters is reacting, growing and changing as a character in reaction to the other.  That is your main character.

Many authors can't identify or describe their own books.  It's like asking a parent who has a 30 year old son/daughter to describe them in a few short sentences.  Do you talk about them in broad strokes or try and cram in all the minute details of their life?  Remember part one?  We need to get customers to click the buy now button.  If your describing your son to someone in hopes of seeing them settle down, taking about how they wet the bed isn't going to help.

If you still struggle with what the blurb is supposed to do.  Hop over to YouTube and watch the movie trailers for this year's blockbusters.  These are exactly what your blurb is trying to do.  Get people excited about your book so they have to click the buy now button.

Step two:  Outline and structure.  We need to take a few minutes and look at some technical aspects of your blurb.  Amazon and other retail websites limit the display area for blurbs.  Amazon keeps it down to 4000 characters, but what you really need to watch out for is number of lines.  If you have a large five paragraph blurb with four blank lines in-between.  Your blurb will get cut off and a customer will have to click a link to expand out the blurb.  Anytime you put a click between the customer and the buy now button.  You WILL lose sales.  Some retailers only give you a line or two before they cut it off, so you really need to remember this.

https://supervillainsomeday.wordpress.com/tag/blurbs/

This link is a collection of good blurb writing articles.  When it comes to plotting your blurb.  You need to setup your characters, your conflicts and your setting.  Like the movie trailers, often they will start with the main character talking while at the same time they are giving you the setting.  Vin Diesel's scratch voice, while you see fast cars, big explosions and crazy stunts.  Then it shifts to the conflict and you see other stars, quipy one liners, more explosions and rocking music until at the end of two and a half minutes you are standing with a fist full of dollars yelling "Take my money!"

That's what your blurb has to do.

At minimum.  You should have a character, conflict blurb structure.  Other structures include character, character, conflict.  Or Setting, character, conflict.  There are any number of workable paragraph structures for blurbs.  The genera is also important.  What works well for a Star Wars blurb isn't the best for a Rom-Com.

My personal preference is a Character Conflict structure and I weave in the setting.  I also leverage the most important marketing point of my book in my blurbs: the cover.