By Lynne Curry
It wasn’t until a development editor said, “You’ve written a reader-facing novel” that I got it. The secret sauce I’d missed for years that would make my blurbs, pitches, stories, and author newsletters sing.
If you’ve read craft articles on blurb and pitch writing, you’ve built the foundation you need. Add this sauce, and you’ll produce blurbs and pitches that engage and compel readers.
Begin with your reader and answer one question—What does your reader want in her (or his) heart of hearts? You may think “I already do this.” Except, chances are, you instead start with your theme, characters or plot and then frame your pitch and blurb in the most gripping words possible. This results in a good pitch or blurb, but not one seasoned with the secret sauce that immediately grabs readers’ hearts.
It’s the readers’ heart that drives her reading decisions. As gifted fiction writer Lisa Cron writes, “Our feelings… drive every choice we make. So it’s not surprising that when it comes to story, if we’re not feeling, we’re not reading,”. Two ingredients create the secret sauce that hooks readers: emotion and stakes.
Emotion
Readers want a reason to care about your characters. They want to feel the emotional jolts that result from living through your characters’ struggles.
Renee Carlino promises this in her blurb for This Used to Be Us: “There are two sides to every love story—and every breakup. Get ready for an emotional roller coaster of family, marriage, and divorce that will have you both laughing and crying….”
Says Danielle Steel’s blurb for Friends Forever, “Together, they will find strength, meet challenges, face life’s adventures, endure loss, face stark realities, and open their hearts.”
Stakes
Do you want to hook your reader? The stakes must be difficult, the danger real, the worst-case scenario devastating.
Hank Phillippi Ryan’s blurb for One Wrong Word proposes: “One wrong word can ruin your life….Arden’s life and dreams are about to crash and burn. Then, Arden is given an ultimatum. She has just two weeks to save her career and her reputation.”
Says Sarina Bowen’s blurb for Five Year Lie, “She thought it was love. Then he vanished….The truth has to be out there somewhere. To safeguard herself—and her son—she’ll have to find it before it finds her.”
Here’s how I used this reader-facing strategy in my first novel’s pitch: “Jess Cassidy is engaged to the perfect man—an adventurous, big-living pilot—but when his plane crashes in an Alaskan winter storm, so do her dreams.” What reader hasn’t lost at least one dream to tragedy?
And here’s how I added the secret sauce to the blurb for my second novel: “What lies twist your life? What price will you pay to uncover and live the truth?” These reader-facing sentences invite readers to feel into themselves, to the lies they’ve told or have had told about them.
How will you apply the secret sauce?
Bio: Alaska/Washington author Lynne Curry has published six short stories in The Sunlight Press; The Big Windows Review; After Dinner Conversations; three poems, and six books, including Navigating Conflict and Managing for Accountability. Beating the Workplace Bully and Solutions. She founded “Real-life Writing” and publishes a weekly “dear Abby of the workplace” newspaper column, a monthly “Writing from the Cabin” blog, and posts weekly on www.workplacecoachblog (2525 subscribers).
