There hasn’t been one of those yet, so here goes: a thread for all the Spring Thing authors looking for advice and feedback on their blurbs.
I’ll start with mine
I find writing blurbs very difficult. This is the one I currently have for The Trials of Rosalinda:
The necromancer may have been defeated, but Rosalinda’s troubles are far from over. With the Light’s Chosen on her trail, lost in the cursed Archwood forest, it will take all of her wits – and more than a little help from her friends – to make it out undead.
I’m looking forward to comments and improvement suggestions!
As a fledgeling vampire, you’ve been tasked with investigating a murder and cleaning up any loose ends—only to discover that you might be one yourself.
I’m currently trying to go as short and sweet as possible with it, but I’m not actually sure if Spring Thing blurbs are supposed to be closer to a sentence or a paragraph.
The necromancer may have been defeated, but Rosalinda’s troubles are far from over. With the Light’s Chosen on her trail, lost in the cursed Archwood forest, it will take all of her wits – and more than a little help from her friends – to make it out un dead.
One of the best, most consistent pieces of advice I saw when talking about querying novels was to limit the Proper Noun Soup.
For instance, what is the Light’s Chosen? Do I need to know the name of the forest? IMO if you were to change just those two things it goes from a bit confusing to very compelling!
For someone who hasn’t played The Bones of Rosalinda, they’re going to be very confused. I haven’t gotten past the goulash room yet, and this feels like the final paragraph from Bones instead.
Yours is indeed short and sweet, and I think fits the CoG standard.
Thanks for the feedback!
I can easily leave out the name of the forest, but I’m not sure what to do with the Light’s Chosen. They’re an order of knights - a cross between police, army, and monks, of sorts. I guess I could just go with “a group of knights” instead of “Light’s Chosen”.
I would add a little more detail, like is the doctor back in their hometown after a long absence? And what’s the implication of the stranger’s arrival? How does the stranger connect to the doctor?
I always want to add an E too, but I think it’s actually spelled “fledgling”?
Typo: “A stack of letterS” (plural). This has me asking all kinds of questions. Who’s reading the letters? It sounds like the stranger is arriving where the letter-reader is: why is the doctor relevant? Or is the stranger arriving where the doctor is? Are the reader and the doctor separated in space? In time? What do the two halves of this sentence even have to do with each other?
So uh… good job on the mystery. But I think for me it needs a little more to convince me to play the game? Because, OK. There’s a person. And then another person. And they have… something to do with each other? But I still have no idea if that’s an interesting thing or a boring one: for all I know it could just be “hey, the usual delivery guy is out sick; here’s your dry-cleaning.”
Take out some of the proper nouns (like Archwood). I don’t see a good alternative for Light’s Chosen, and “a group of knights” seems generic, when the Light’s Chosen seem to be a special group.
From this blurb, I don’t really know what to expect from the game. It seems to be high fantasy, but it’s vague enough that it could be…anything remotely necromancy-related really. Am I (Rosalinda) trying to avoid guards, etc.? Puzzling my way out of a tower? Going on a long and arduous quest while running away on the side?
Is the game explicitly set after your previous Rosalinda game(s)? If not, the “necromancer” phrase may not be necessary.
“fledgling”
Why am I a vampire? What does being a vampire have to do with being able to solve a murder? The way it’s worded makes it sound like they implicitly connect.
Minor, minor grammatical error, but the “you might be one yourself” has an unclear subject. Maybe something about finding yourself deeper/more involved in the murder than you thought?
“letters” (otherwise it wouldn’t be a stack)
Does the stranger arrive while reading the letters (present) or when the doctor arrives (past)?
How is the player involved in this? “You read a stack of letters…”? Is the player just reading the letters, or is there something more? Again, make the gameplay a little clearer.
Now that I’m reading the rest of the thread, some of this feedback is now obsolete/redundant. Hopefully it helps anyways.
Yeah, I was pretty much the same as @groggydog , especially for Light’s Chosen. That name caused me a grammatical trip-over on my first read. It’s just in the nature of it being a possessive.
Maybe just rephrasing so it doesn’t have a preposition ‘with’ in front of it to further confuse brains. Also, if we put it at the start of the sentence, I think the brain can more easily parse three capitalised words in a row as a single proper entity.
e.g. “The Light’s Chosen are on her trail and she’s lost in a/the cursed forest. It will take all of her wits – and more than a little help from her friends – to make it out un dead.”
It finally occurs to me, shorter sentences often help blurbs, too.
I agree with Hidnook’s points on this one, but what he described as a minor grammatical error is to me just unacceptable Since “one” in “you might be one yourself” is ambiguous, that line or idea definitely needs a rewrite.
*she (no worries though). And yes, it bugged me too, but countless people getting overwhelmed/frustrated by my grammatical edits have caused me to downplay anything drastic that I propose unless I get express permission to be as harsh as I want :).
Since “one” in “you might be one yourself” is ambiguous, that line or idea definitely needs a rewrite.