The official magazine of the Team of Dreams
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How to Write a Blurb
In this October edition of Aspire, we are focusing on getting ready, as our tagline says. What better way to show you're ready than with a hooking blurb, one that will get your readers excited about your story with just a few paragraphs? This is why we will be learning about writing a blurb this month.
After the cover and the title, the blurb (known in Wattpad as the summary) is the next thing potential readers will look at. Based on your blurb, they will decide whether to open your book, or find another one. Your blurb has the important task of hooking those readers in, getting them excited about the concept or premise of the story, and getting them to open the book.
What does a blurb need to do? Firstly, a blurb needs to catch the reader's attention. People nowadays have a very short attention span and very little time. If they don't think the story will be worth it, they won't invest their precious time in it. They'll just find another book.
After grabbing the attention, it also needs to hold the reader's attention. This may sound simple, but it's quite difficult to accomplish. It's not easy making a 150-word piece of writing sound intriguing.
And then, of course, it needs to encourage the reader to actually open the book. Let's have a look at how to accomplish all of this.
Here are our top tips for writing a blurb:
1. Start your blurb with a hooking first sentence. You have to immediately grab the potential reader's attention. So don't start with "Elsa is a normal teenager, trying to live up to her parents' expectations", instead go with something more spicy: "Elsa finds out she has magical powers when she accidentally almost kills her younger sister."
2. After that first sentence, you'll have to explain the premise of your story in about 150 words. *gasp* My whole story in only 150 words?! Yes! Well... No, not your whole story. Obviously the blurb shouldn't give any spoilers or talk about the ending. It should only be about the beginning (the inciting incident – the event that gets your story started), and a small part of the middle. Normally, the blurb will include the following parts (not necessarily in this order):
· An introduction to your main character;
· An introduction to the setting (this is especially prominent in fantasy or historical stories, for example);
· And most importantly: the conflict. What is it that stops the MC from reaching their goals? Who (or what!) is the antagonist? What is our MC fighting against? What are the stakes?
3. Always, always make sure that you use those 150 words to show off your creativity, your originality. If you spend 150 words talking about how the good girl falls in love with the bad boy, nobody is going to be interested, because they've seen it all before. However, if you add the fact that this good girl is actually from another planet (for the Sci-Fi fans among us) and that this bad boy had a little brother who was killed by an alien, then their relationship suddenly becomes interesting. Who doesn't like a ticking time-bomb - will he find out what she really is? Use those couple of paragraphs to show us what makes your story different from all the other millions of stories on Wattpad.
