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Back Cover Blurbs
or How I Used The Mindless Joys Of Computer Art To Give Myself A Kick In The Creative Keister

by Paula Graves

I have always played with what my mother calls "paper dolls." Originally, I played with the real kind, the ones you punch out of cardstock books and then dress with the clothes you also punch out from those same books. But later, in my teens and beyond, as I began to try to write fiction, I found myself cutting photos from magazines and catalogs to give faces to the characters I was writing about. I needed the visual to make the story work in my mind.

Now, with the advent of computers, I've graduated to digital paper dolls. I don't make a hobby out of manipulating photos of models and stars just for the heck of it, of course. But when I was recently looking for a motivational tool to get me back into novel writing after almost a three-year hiatus, I drew upon my day job skills as a graphic designer to create book covers for my story ideas.

My reasoning was, if I could see what the cover of my book might look like, it would make the whole project seem more real and achievable. And since I'd just purchased a new computer with mega-RAM and lots of hard drive space, it seemed the perfect time to take PhotoShop for a little workout. Two birds, one stone and all that. It was good fun. But it didn't seem to be getting me any closer to putting fingers on the keyboard and words on the page.

This weekend, I took it a step further. You see, I may be a graphic designer now, but I started my advertising career as a copywriter. This weekend, I designed the back covers for those books. And you know what? It actually helped.

It wasn't the graphic design that did it---the backs of romance books (or most books, really) aren't that graphically challenging. I just downloaded a template from the book imprint I was targeting and used it to do all my back covers. No big strain.

The strain was writing the back cover blurb.

You've seen them:

Two years ago, Chance Masterson had seen his fiancee's car go over the cliff and crash into the raging river below. Her car showed up two days later downriver, but they never found her body. Chance's head told him she was gone and that it was time to move on. But his heart wouldn't let go. He's spent every day of the last year looking for Laura.

Then yesterday, he saw her. Tall, willowy, with hair the color of aspen leaves in autumn and eyes the color of the wide Montana sky. She said her name was Dana, but every part of Chance knew better.

Had Laura survived the crash after all? Or was something more sinister at work?

What's great about writing back cover blurbs is that it forces you to tell your story in a minimum of words. And you are telling your story. Take the example above. Your basic story is there all there. Who (Chance Masterson) wants what (to see his fiancee again) why (because he loves her and wants to be with her) and what's standing in the way (she apparently perished in a car crash). What is the change that propels us into the story (he sees a woman who looks just like Laura but claims to be someone else). There's the main seed of your story. Who wants what, why, what's standing in the way, and what change in circumstances propels your characters into this story.

Now, not every book blurb works out well. Sometimes the "why" isn't strong enough motivation to compel the character. Sometimes the "what he wants" doesn't seem right for the character. And quite often, the "what changes" isn't a big enough change to capture the attention of the reader (or the writer). But sometimes, just by taking that germ of an idea in your head and putting it to paper (or computer screen), you can figure out what's working and what's not before you've committed 70,000 words of rambling prose to the project.

I played the back cover blurb game with every halfway decent story idea I have in my arsenal. I even applied it to novels I'd already written and had rejected because of story problems. And as I said before, it worked. Two of my finished novels got really good rejection letters. Not the form letter type but complimentary, detailed letters that outlined the story problems and asked for revisions. Unfortunately, I never could really figure out how to fix the main problems in the novels, and so both were rejected on second submission. But over this weekend, I think I figured out a way past the primary story problems that were bogging those novels down. And I may be able to get back to them again as soon as I finish the one novel I'm currently trying to focus on.

I also fixed some problems with a few ideas that are little more than basic premises. By writing the back cover blurb, I was forced to "sell" the story, not just tell it. And to sell the story, you have to have a really good grasp on the basics I listed above: who wants what, why, what's standing in the way, and what change propels the characters into the story.

Of course, this is not an original idea. The "who wants what why" idea is very much a product of seminars with Debra Dixon and, of course, reading her fabulous book GMC (which stands for goal, motivation and conflict. Buy this book. Go to her seminars. You won't be sorry).

And as anyone who's ever tried to write a synopsis or a query knows, it's vital to be able to tell your story in a handful of sentences. Unfortunately, most of us think that can't be done until you actually write your novel. I know I did.

This weekend, I realized that was backwards. Write the blurb first. Then you'll have a much better feel for whether or not you have a story worth writing BEFORE you commit hours and pages to a fatally flawed idea.