Dissecting the Romance Blurb (Rev.)
After playing with Nita’s blurb yesterday–and thank you all for your help–I wanted to see how the last pass compared to the pros, so I went back to Saturday and Sunday’s Book Bub e-mails and pulled out the blurbs that had plots that were most like Nita’s. This is not to trash Book Bub’s blurb writing; as we found out yesterday, it’s damn hard to sell a story in fifty words. I just wanted to see what happened when I slotted Nita’s characters, identities, and basic plot into existing blurbs. Here’s what I got:
“Nick’s the Devil’s fixer but he falls hard for no-nonsense Nita anyway — but will her love be enough for him?”
“Sparks fly when mysterious Nick, Satan’s fixer, helps Nita investigate her friend’s murder. But as the clues lead them into danger, will he be able to keep her safe?”
“When Nita Dodd meets a gorgeous stranger, she can’t stop thinking about him — but little does she know he’s actually Nick Giordano, the Devil’s fixer, traveling anonymously!”
“When Nita investigates a murder, she meets gorgeous Nick. There’s no place for him in her carefully ordered world — but she can’t resist their attraction…”
Here are my problems with these:
“Nick’s the Devil’s fixer but he falls hard for no-nonsense Nita anyway — but will her love be enough for him?”
Anybody think her love won’t be enough for him? Anybody? Bueller? Anybody?
I think a blurb has to have something intriguing about it, and this one says, “The central question of the plot is whether the hero will get bored with the heroine.” I think the draw in Nita’s story isn’t whether he’ll stick with her once they fall in love–of course, he will, it’s a romance–it’s how they’re going to deal with all the garbage around the attraction. The “they” is important there; the blurb has to show that Nita has agency. Also, much better to start with Nita as the subject of the sentence; it’s her book. (Of course in the book this was for originally, it’s possible the story did belong to the hero.)
“Sparks fly when mysterious Nick, Satan’s fixer, helps Nita investigate her friend’s murder. But as the clues lead them into danger, will he be able to keep her safe?”
This is another agency problem: Why does he have to keep her safe? I mean, I’m all for him looking out for her, but she should be looking out for him, too. And again this reads as though the story belongs to Nick, not Nita. (And again in the book this was for originally, it’s possible the story did belong to the hero.)
“When Nita Dodd meets a gorgeous stranger, she can’t stop thinking about him — but little does she know he’s actually Nick Giordano, the Devil’s fixer, traveling anonymously!”
Okay, Nita’s the subject of the sentence. YAY. But Nick’s interesting and Nita’s the gazer who can’t stop thinking about him, even though she doesn’t know who he is. We know all about Nick and nothing about Nita except she has good eyesight. I want my protagonist at the center of my story, not staring at somebody else.
“When Nita investigates a murder, she meets gorgeous Nick. There’s no place for him in her carefully ordered world — but she can’t resist their attraction…”
So now Nita’s the subject of the sentence AND active–PROGRESS!–but then she meets this great guy and rejects him because there’s no place for him in– Wait a minute. Is she nuts? Does anybody think she won’t make room for her him in her spic and span life? Anybody? Bueller? Anybody? The idea of a blurb, I think, is to make the reader want to find out . . . something. If you can read the blurb and know what’s going to happen in the book, I don’t see much to intrigue you into hitting that BUY button. Of course everybody knows the romance ends happily, but there should be something in the teaser that says the road they travel is going to be more interesting than “Will she decide to let love into her life?” (Yes. Yes, she will.)
Which leads me back to the last pass I made after listening to all of you (thank you again; if you don’t like it, it’s your fault), looking at it in this new light:
“When Nick Giordano shows up on Demon Island claiming to be (a) dead and (b) the Devil, Detective Nita Dodd thinks he’s a conman. But as evidence piles up that the supernatural is real, Nita reconsiders her assumptions . . . especially the ones about the Devil she knows.”
Nick’s name comes first, so that’s not good, and Nita’s the active subject of the sentence, but her action is “thinking” which is not all that active. And in the second sentence her action is “reconsidering.” Bleah. Also, I see the point about “Demon Island” being confusing. Hmmm.
How about:
NOTE: Obviously, that’s not real, but for anybody new to Argh, don’t push the button. The book isn’t finished yet, and when it is, it’s not gonna be ninety-nine cents.
Revision:
ANOTHER NOTE: So you can see that I played fair in adapting the blurbs, here are the real ones:
• Rock star Bodhi falls hard for no-nonsense Kimberly — but will her love be enough for him?
• Sparks fly when mysterious Wren, a professional fixer, helps Emery investigate her cousin’s disappearance. But as the clues lead them into danger, will he be able to keep her safe?
• When Emily Sinclair meets a gorgeous stranger, she can’t stop thinking about him — but little does she know he’s actually Vittorio Barrali, the crown prince of Sarcaccia, traveling anonymously!
• When Sydney takes over her grandfather’s business, she meets gorgeous Mikhail. There’s no place for him in her carefully ordered world — but she can’t resist their attraction…
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