Many MANY thanks to @Rosacrvx for helping me fashion this blurb for my novel Brothers. I've made some changes to the one she suggested, but this is more or less the format she gave me. Can I get some feedback, please? Note :REVISED VERSION FURTHER DOWN THE PAGE— Now second revised version even FURTHER down the page - signalled in green....many thanks to my beta @Rosacrvx for this. She has finished reading the novel, by the way. And one more time ...in blue....I'm running out of colours here! Okay, final try. And I've managed to include a 'call to action' at the end. We're in purple this time.... .................... It’s late November, 1885. Braving the onset of winter along Montana Territory’s Great Divide, Józsi Tatyaghi is still searching for his estranged twin brother. Several years ago, back in Kansas, their childhood relationship strayed beyond the borders of kinship; now, all that remains are dark secrets, guilt, and regret. Józsi is attacked and wounded after fording a river, and ends up at the B-Bar-N, where Jessie Buchanan, co-owner of the ranch, tends to his injury. While stranded at the ranch for the winter, Józsi is offered a temporary job as a horse trainer by Jessie’s brother, Rob. As winter deepens, Józsi begins to feel at home with the Buchanans, tempted by his growing love for Jessie, his friendship with Rob, and the prospect of a normal life for himself. When Rob offers to make the horse training job permanent, Józsi has to make a choice. If he stays at the B-Bar-N, he can make a fresh start with Rob and Jessie. This means abandoning the frantic search for his wayward and now dangerous brother, whom he also loves. A new life is what Józsi wants, but the ties to his brother are older, more elemental and still binding. Józsi can choose to leave his past behind—but the past will come looking for him. ........................
These are just snap-reaction questions, so please don't take them as prescriptive: "Still searching" -- is this book a sequel? That's what I thought when I read that. The second and third sentences don't say why he's searching for his brother; why are those sentences there? To titillate the potential reader ? "Oh, m/m incest, cool!" ? That was my (straight-male) reaction to it. Do you really want those passive sentences? "is attacked" - by who or what? "X is what Jozsi wants -- why not "Jozsi wants X" ? What's important about "after fording a river" ? It doesn't seem to matter. The first sentence of para. 2 has your MC passive (is attacked, ends up). Something that gives him more agency and that's maybe less generic might be stronger (e.g. "Ambushed and left for dead by peyote-crazed beavers, Jozsi uses his one remaining arm to pull himself across forty miles of badlands to the B-Bar-N ranch, where ..." -- okay, so I'm exaggerating ... but say it in Movie Trailer Voice and it sounds cool. ). "Make a choice" ... "Jozsi can choose" : you're having him make the same choice twice. It might be stronger (I'm no expert) to end by stating that it's a choice. Just spitballing an example: "Love and a normal life awaits him at the B-Bar-N. But his dangerously deranged brother still needs his help. Joszie will have to choose between his future happiness, and his past loyalties." Full stop. OK, I don't like that much, but hopefully it gives you the idea. "Frantic search" seems contradicted by his taking a temporary horse training job. How crippled can he be if he's training 1000-pound animals? If the search was really frantic, wouldn't he'd be back at it as soon as he was fit enough to travel? Hope this is helpful. Good luck.
Thank you so much! It's excellent to see how others will react. I'll rework it. I'm terrible at this! I'm very much a 'show not tell' person, and telling doesn't come easy to me, which is probably why the book is so dinged long. I'll see what I can do about getting rid of some of the passives ...although some of them will stay. (Józsi doesn't attack himself, for example! And the person who attacked him isn't revealed right away.) And yeah, the 'fording the river' can go. I'm not keen to give away too much about why the brothers have become estranged, because that emerges as the story develops. But I'll work on something a little less 'mysterious' if I can.
Hey @jannert -- I have to say that I don't think this blurb does your story justice. Even the writing of this lacks the flare or your prose in the novel. Is there a reason why you don't just come out and say the dark secret since it's in the prologue anyway? It seems like you're trying to cram a lot of information into a tiny space. I know that's what we're doing here, but I think given the title and the theme of your book, you might want to touch deeper on that relationship and avoided mentioning too many characters. I've recently tried to do something similar with my novel and it's super hard. I literally can't do it. I think what you have is okay, but I think it could be stronger.
Oops.. I meant doesn't do your story justice. But I do think your making strides at condensing such a big story (still reading). I'm sure you'll get it! Does this mean you're getting close to publishing? I'll tell everyone I know to buy your book.
Revised blurb ...Take Two.... It’s late November, 1885. Braving the onset of winter along Montana Territory’s Great Divide, Józsi Tatyaghi is frantically searching for his estranged twin brother. Several years ago, back in Kansas, their childhood relationship ended when boyish sexual experimentation went too far. All that remains now are grief, regret, and Józsi’s desire to make amends. While riding alone through the mountains at the start of a blizzard, Józsi is attacked, wounded, and left for dead by one of his brother’s gang. Józsi manages to remount and stay on his horse long enough to reach the isolated B-Bar-N ranch, where Jessie and Rob Buchanan, co-owners of the ranch, take him in. Jessie tends to his injury, while her brother Rob, knowing that Józsi will need to stay with them until spring when mountain passes are open again, offers Józsi a temporary job as a horse trainer. As winter deepens and he recovers his strength, Józsi begins to feel at home with the Buchanans. He doesn’t reveal that he even has a brother, never mind what drove them apart, but he is tempted by his growing love for lively, kindhearted Jessie, his friendship with the irrepressible, but level-headed Rob, and the unexpected prospect of a normal life for himself. When Rob finally offers to make the horse training job permanent, Józsi has to make a choice. He can accept Rob’s offer and make the B-Bar-N his home, but if he does, he must abandon the search for his wayward, dangerous brother—whom he also loves. Józsi wants a new life, and wants to stay with Jessie and Rob, but the ties to his brother are older, elemental and still binding. Józsi may decide to leave his past behind—but the past won't stay hidden for long.
Wow. I'm seeing the story now. I need some immediate ZZZ's, but I'll be back with some feedback later. I think you're close.
I have a suggestions. The end of the blurb could be a little quicker like this: Also, I like your blurb. I reads professional.
For my eyes, you're giving too much plot, too little flavour. When I read the back cover blurb (most of which are shorter than what you've got, I think) I'm looking for what kind of story I'm going to be reading. I want to get an idea of the theme, the mood, the style. I'm not getting as much of that as I want. Instead, I'm bogged down with details. I think you should cut a lot of that out, and only leave the parts that will tell me what the book will make me feel. ETA: Almost forgot - I'm pretty sure your grammar is messed on "All that remains are". It could be "All that remain are" or "all that remains is", but not "remains are".
I was going to say the same thing - way too much plot.. don't tell us what happens, make us want to find out what happens
Hi @jannert Take this with a grain of salt. I don't read back covers of books, and this example shows why. Unless the book starts with Józsi already at the B-Bar-N ranch, you've just given away x pages of book that I'm going to be reading. I don't want to read the book knowing what is going to happen. I once read a book where an event on the back cover took place over 100 pages in. That was the last time I read a back cover. I agree with those who say you're giving away too much plot. I don't think you have to tell us specific things that happen, just give us a flavor and an overview of the stakes/conflict that are embodied in the work. My 2c, and just one opinion.
Less plot, more 'feeling.' Okay, back to the drawing board. And I really don't want to give the plot away anyway, if I can avoid it. (Well, I did avoid a lot of it, but the notion that I don't have to give away quite so much is a good one.) Theme, mood, style. Okay, I'll work on those things. I'm heading for bed now. I'll try again in the morning. Thanks for all the feedback. It's really appreciated.
I get what other people are saying about giving away the plot, but blurbs always give away something. But that said, what people are saying makes sense, so more mystery and less direct knowledge might be appropriate: A dark secret from his childhood alienated Józsi Tatyaghi from his twin brother BRONAME. But when word comes to him of his wayward brother’s violent crimes, he braves the harsh 1885 winter of the Montana Territory’s Great Divide to find him, desperate to make amends and save BRONAME from their past. But after a calamity leaves him unable to continue his search, a new opportunity presents itself. Soon, Józsi will have to choose between a new life with a new love, and the older and elemental ties that still bind him to BRONAME -- if his past will let him. It's "ever so mysterious." -- Mystery Men [Disclaimer: I know nothing about blurb writing.]
Okay, I like the way this is going. I'm a bit reluctant to be melodramatic, and this skirts the edge of melodrama. However, it's a good angle. What stumps me is attempting to give a flavour of my writing style. My writing style is straightforward, but things develop slowly (by intention.) I'm still in the throes of thinking this through. I know nothing about blurb writing either, but I've been reading up on the 'craft.' Very few examples are the kind I want to create for myself. Direct, unabashed sales-pitches seem tacky to me—as if I'm in a used-car lot—and too much tack puts me off wanting to read a story. (When buying on Amazon, it's the Look Inside feature that determines whether I'll buy it or not. Never the blurb.) I want my blurb to reflect what my story is actually about, not conjure up some quick-sell vision of what it's not. I do like the idea of not revealing too much of the plot, though. @BayView suggested concentrating on both feeling and theme. I think that's a great idea. Flavour is going to be a tad more difficult to create. Several people from this forum and one who is in my face-to-face writing group are presently reading the story. I'm hoping to get blurb ideas from them. @Rosacrvx is one of them, and she's been incredibly helpful thus far. But even she hasn't finished reading yet, so maybe her view of a blurb may change afterwards. I do feel that blurb writing is something the writer can struggle to do. What sells the book or makes people want to read it? No idea! A reader will have a better idea, I reckon. Still thinking.
I'm totally at sea here. What factors would you recommend as more appropriate for a back cover blurb, as opposed to a query letter blurb? I've been told the two are supposedly similar; I've also been told they are quite different. Hair coming out in little tufts here ...fortunately I have a lot of hair.
Then why can't you just straight up tell? Only the good parts. Out in the Wild West, before there was Twitter, Joszie must reconcile with the brother who humiliated him before someone gets shot.
I think in your second one, you're doing it right on a sentence level. However, you have too many sentences. Too many points. It makes the blurb less explosive. I think you want to focus only on the biggest things? Take for example this blurb describing Umberto Ecco's Focault's Pendulum. "Bored with their work, three Milanese editors cook up "the Plan," a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled―a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum. But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real, and when occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the earth. " Notice the format. These are the protagonists. They do this. Their actions result in this. But this result is actually really bad because...
That's a flawed blurb. "This produces a map ..." doesn't say who made the map, "They forge a map ..." (assuming they do create a fake antiquity) would be better. And it has lots of details that would not make me open the book. Other problems too. Famous authors are often bad examples: they don't need good blurbs, good covers, or even good stories and writing. They just need their names on the cover, and people will buy.
Could you draft a more snappy version? Left for dead on a mountain pass Jozsi Taranacky is retrieved and re-patched, reconditioned at Bob and his partner Jessie's retreat and holistic ranch in the Nevada Hills. The cowboys share stories, chilli-chow and chaps surrounding the blazing hearth of welcome in this family atmosphere. Will Joszi remain with this loving family? Or continue in his quest, ride on into sunsets, discovering his lost twin and apologise for the hand-job tug and tickle, a misunderstanding from when they were thirteen years old?
