You need all of these in your tool kit as an author.
I love writing. One of my favorite parts of being a storyteller is getting the words from my head to the screen and page. I love being able to look at what I’ve done and then share it with the world.
Part of the sharing process, however, requires more writing. This is challenging because now it’s not just storytelling. This is how you market, pitch, and explain your book to the world.
Maybe for some, this is easy. I suspect if I wrote my books with a more singular character perspective and focus, this would be. Yet that’s not how I work. I write from multiple character perspectives, and I like to blur where the lines are between good and evil, and other complexities like that.
Thus, explaining the book – especially when it’s a third of the overall series and that’s one big arc – is challenging.
For some time now, I’ve been working on the blurb for the first book of my new Savagespace sci-fi trilogy. Alliances and Consequences gets the show started and the series off the ground.
As I’ve worked on my blurb, I’ve presented it to a couple of groups I’m part of on Facebook, and one I’ve recently had the privilege to join on Discord. There have been a lot of critical reviews of my attempts, and while to some degree that’s been disheartening, it’s also been deeply enlightening.
What’s more, this has shown me the importance of the distinction between a synopsis, blurb, and elevator pitch.
The synopsis of your book
A synopsis is a brief summary of your book or series. Possibly of both. It can have some detail, but you need to walk the fine line between sharing and oversharing.
You don’t want to reveal key points or give away things that are best discovered in the reading. Yet you need to make it interesting enough to hook the reader.
It was pointed out to me that my first attempt at my blurb for Savagespace book 1, Alliances and Consequences, was more synopsis than blurb. Too much background and overarching series plot and not enough hook to draw a reader to book one.
There’s another matter I need to consider that’s tied to this. What kind of sci-fi is Savagespace? This is important because it will impact the approach I take to marketing it.
This can get into the elevator pitch – which I’ll explain more ahead – but sci-fi is a broad genre. Savagespace falls under sci-fantasy, especially as a key element of the universe I’m playing in involves various Dungeons and Dragons (D&D)/fantasy sentients as my aliens. It also uses the tropes of many of the related character classes. What’s more, part of the story is a D&D-style quest.
How do I explain Book 1 while including that information but not oversharing it? I started to see how my initial blurb was far more a synopsis of the series and book one’s introduction of the reader to it.
This will be good for the website. It’s not, however, right for the blurb attached to Alliances and Consequences. However, it gave me a place to start, and I received lots of suggestions and ideas for where to go as I edited and reduced it to the blurb.
Blurb challenges
People see blurbs on Amazon or the back of a book in a bookstore. It’s the hook in addition to the cover that convinces/influences/persuades a reader who’s unfamiliar with you or your work to make the purchase.
Here’s an important truth to acknowledge: People DO just a book by its cover. If your cover is garbage, you’ve lost an element of enticement to draw your readers in.
The blurb is a major hook. If it’s overly informative, you’ll bore your potential readers. Too little, they’ll scratch their heads wondering what they’re missing.
Finding the sweet spot for a blurb is not easy. I know that I’ve overdone it for my other, previous books more than underdone it. Also, no matter how many seasoned writers examine and opine on your blurb work, they’re not in your head nor seeing your total vision.
Savagespace is a trilogy. To all intents and purposes, Book 1 introduces you to the problems and challenges. Book 2 is where the problems rears their ugly head and the challenges demand action. Finally, book 3 resolves the overarching problems and challenges and brings the story to its conclusion.
The universe I’ve created has room for more stories in it. Whether I ever tell them remains to be seen. As I close in on the final blurb, I think once I’ve completed the blurb for book 1, the blurbs for 2 and 3 will be easier to work on.
This brings us to an important – and easily ignored – element for your book.
An elevator pitch for your book
The idea of the elevator pitch is simple. If you were on an elevator with a possible buyer, agent, or studio bigwig, and had only that long to pitch your idea to them, what would that look like?
This is a no-more-than 15-second quick explanation to draw them into wanting more. Also, you can have more than one depending on who the audience is.
Overall, the elevator pitch for my Savagespace series is something like this:
Savagespace is a roleplaying fantasy novel series set in space.
That’s a super-basic, view-from-orbit explanation of the series. Of course, that barely scratches the surface. But that’s the idea of an elevator pitch. The desired response is, “Really? Please tell me more.”
Again, there can be more than 1 elevator pitch. For a sci-fi aficionado not into gaming, the pitch might be,
Savagespace is an extra-dimensional invasion sci-fi series.
The story is multifaceted enough that I have lots of elevator pitch options, adjustable to my audience. Yet this short explanation can open doors and take your work to the next level.
I hope that this has helped to explain the importance of the distinction between a synopsis, blurb, and elevator pitch, and why it matters. Thanks for reading.
As I share my creative journey with you, I conclude with this: How are you inspired to be your own creator – whatever form that takes?
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