Unbar's World of Books Thread (Page 2 of 2)

I routinely tell TNBW members to make the book summary here on the site as if it were the back cover of the book. It's your primary chance to nab would-be readers, whether here or when published. You can always update it anytime you want as the plot and characters evolve.

Bleh... and I was hoping to avoid it until the end. You guys are a constructive pain in the rear. I suppose I should adjust my summary after I get through my next few chapters, then.

-Elisheva

This +1000.  Many of these are good summaries but way too long.  Remember too that you are not trying to summarize your plot, you're trying to pique the interest of the listener enough they will want to know more.

MichaelBrent Collings was at the conference I just attended talking about elevator pitches.  He gave us the pitch for one of his best sellers which was, "Hooked, Peter Pan is a vampire, Wendy his intended victim and Hook is trying to save her."  That was it.  Any longer and he said you should go back to the drawing board.

I've been working on a query for my first book and thinking about the hook for the beginning.  This is what I came up with, "When your greatest wish is granted, there is always a price to pay.  Tommy has lived his dream, but in so doing has unwittingly cursed the world to certain destruction."

What do you think?

You said...I've been working on a query for my first book and thinking about the hook for the beginning.  This is what I came up with, "When your greatest wish is granted, there is always a price to pay.  Tommy has lived his dream, but in so doing has unwittingly cursed the world to certain destruction.

Unbar, I'm afraid I need a better description of what a query entails. As it is, this is a query for Tommy's initial story, isn't it? Here is my best attempt at a couple of lines to pitch your book. Tell me what you think.

Tommy's dream was to merge into his favorite books, transporting between the pages, and living within the backstory. Then a character was clever enough to escape, cursing the real world to certain destruction.

I would also try different ways of wording it. Use random characters to bring out a different spin to use as a query for your book.

Ex: Johnny Depp: Tommy had a dream until that got tossed by a character from a book. Very bad when a villain can jump off the page into the real world. Clever, though.

James Earl Jones: Tommy lived his dream. The only price he had to pay was to doom his world to certain destruction.

Here's my 2 cents. Pretty good and does what I think you intend it to do - made me wonder/curious and I'd want to read more. But I think you can make it shorter still while giving even less away without sacrificing impact and still maintaining the mystery:

"When your greatest wish is granted, there is always a price to pay. Tommy is living his dream, but at what cost?"

Or maybe if you want the reference of the world paying the price to stay in:

"When your greatest wish is granted, there is always a price to pay. Tommy is living his dream, but the world will pay."

You might use some or none of this, but who knows, maybe it gives you a few more ideas to play around with? But personally, I'll leave out the destruction bit as to up the mystery.

Hope this helps! Cheers Janet

I think the other choices were too vague and said nothing about the plot. I still think my suggestion needs more...something. Maybe you can see what I missed.