The Art of Writing: How to Write Bestselling Novels

The Dreaded Back Cover Blurb

For some reason, most writers hate writing back cover blurbs.

Personally, I think there are a couple of reasons. First, it forces an author to write extremely tightly while still making it interesting. That's not easy at all.

The second reason is probably because the author is aware of all the awesome aspects of their book but knows he or she can't give away all of it in the blurb. So what's left to write about and how can it lure the readers in?

The back cover blurb is a tricky endeavor. While in reality, there is no real method for writing a blurb, there is a pattern to how blurbs are written, and so that, in and of itself, is a method. And publishers look for that formula because it works. If you follow the method and you already have a good premise, you'll attract readers with it. If you don't, you won't...most of the time.

In some rare cases, an author will write a blurb in a completely different way from the norm and it'll work. So be creative to see if you can come up with some diverse, crazy ways to do your blurb. If anything, it's a fun exercise that really helps develop your creativity. Never forget that the brain has plasticity, which means it changes--so the more you practice creativity, the better your brain gets at it, and that means good ideas come to you more easily and more frequently.

Since you're the one who has to come up with something new and creative for the previously-mentioned crazy book blurb, I can't help you much with that. All I can say is that you need to grab the reader right away using the most intriguing aspect(s) of your story so that it's a natural, logical action for them to keep reading by opening to the first page of the book.

So let's move on to the method.

Tense

First, we have to deal with tense. Blurbs should almost always be in third-person, present-tense POV. This creates a sense of immediacy and unresolved feelings due to unresolved actions. If your blurb is in past-tense, all of the actions end. Actions ending means the situation in that sentence came to a close. But if the situation is written in present-tense, it's still ongoing, so the situation hasn't terminated yet, it hasn't ended. That's the difference between past-tense and present tense.

You'd think that would mean that present-tense is a better tense to write in than past tense. However, studies show that most readers prefer past-tense for the book, but present tense for the blurb.

The blurb is supposed to create a sense of unfinished business in order to get you to keep reading, so present-tense makes sense. The story itself is different, though. It can be present or past-tense. It's not that one is better than the other. It's that most people prefer past tense, so you have a potential for a larger audience if you go with past tense for the book itself. But that's really a personal preference type thing. Some people like past, some like present. That doesn't really matter for the blurb, though, because the blurb will likely always be present-tense to create that sense of unfinished business and need to keep reading. Publishers have spent millions on research to figure out what the best methods are for advertising books, and third-person, present-tense POV is what they've found works best.

I won't really go further into this because it's a simple concept. Now let's move on to the overall objective your blurb is trying to accomplish.

Natural Momentum

A blurb should be designed to whet the appetite, to make someone want to continue reading as if it's a completely natural thing to do. This gets them to turn to the opening chapter. So always keep it in the forefront of your mind that you need to give the character's emotional motivations, but don't give too much away. Give just enough to cause the reader to want to keep reading.