General blurb question (not a blurb)

Maybe you can just say something like "An incredible twist in (protagonists) life forces him to face this and that and so on and so forth..."

Maybe throw in a key word like "life-altering" or "other-worldly"

D_Shalayek said:

So, I'm close to the steps where I am making queries and forming a blurb, but I have a question. I have to spoil the catalyst to make an effective blurb, and I really, really do not want to spoil the catalyst because it is caused by the main character's unexpected death and even more unexpected revival. The heart of the novel comes from the events afterward.
So, the question is, should I suck it up and spoil it, or should I go into some deep thought about how I can achieve an effective blurb without spoiling anything?
Thanks in advance!

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Sorry -- queries and a blurb?

A query isn't a blurb, they're structurally quite different. I'd have a look at the QLH forum for writing queries.

D_Shalayek said:

I'm a newbie at this. I imagine a query from everything I've seen so far is essentially a blurb, but I'm (probably?) less concerned overall with spoiling anything there. My question mostly pertains to the blurb.

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What is your goal for what you're doing?

Are you planning on self-publishing or are you going to be looking for an agent and a trade deal? The former needs a blurb, the latter a query, hence my confusion and our general desire to understand what you want before we answer.

To answer your question I'll simply point to NathanCole's suggestion: "an incredible twist" or something like "a life-altering event." It references your catalyst (which I'd call an inciting incident or trigger incident) without revealing it.

Your original question was unclear to me, and exactly what you're trying to produce: a blurb or a query.

It's useful for us to write both blurbs and queries whether we self-publish or want to trade publish. If nothing else, they can help us view our work in a new light. At least, they've done that for me.

First, a blurb. It's short, one or a very few short sentences. It highlights important parts of the character, setting, and plot. It should do so in a way that gets a reader interested in the story. If you're lucky you can get a laudatory one from a well-known author or celeb. It's similar to a logline which might appear in a TV Guide entry.

"In magic-haunted Liverpool, vampire and poet John Lennon seeks to expand his art into the music world while fighting his worst urges."

Setting, character, and a crucial part of the plot. Each of the three elements of a story are included because each has something interesting about each. We can leave out uninteresting parts, such as the setting if it's a bland contemporary setting, or cut it to the minimum such as "Chicago suburb."

A query has several parts. One is the tease. This is one or two (or rarely three) short paragraphs that does the same thing as a blurb but with a bit more detail. The tease might be used on the back or inside front cover of a book.

Seems like "blurbs" can come in a lot of different forms.

First you've got the one-liner, as Laer described.
Second, you've got the bit you put on the back cover of your novel, and use as a product description if you self-publish on Amazon.
Third, would be a longer version used in a query letter.

I guess I'm not really sure what you're asking for.

I think they're asking about a blurb, and not a query, since they don't ever mention an agent. However, they also don't mention self-publishing. My guess is that they "think" they're supposed to be writing a blurb, when in reality they should be looking into researching queries.

Regardless, my answer doesn't really change. Both the blurb, and the query, should not do what I think you're doing: dig too far past the beginning of the novel. More importantly, if the "juicy" stuff doesn't happen until deep within your novel, where you can't write an interesting blurb that doesn't include it, then you should consider reexamining your story structure.

The strange exception to this is in queries, when you reach that last paragraph that sets up the "choice" that closes and hooks the agent into asking for fulls.

Your blurb, and even the bulk of your query, should focus largely on the beginning of your story. For instance, let's look at Hunger Games blurb:

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, "The Hunger Games," a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed.

That entire blurb is basically the first chapter of the book. (That doesn't work as a query, though, and disobeys many query rules haha.)

Antipode91 said:

Your blurb, and even the bulk of your query, should focus largely on the beginning of your story.

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Good point. And important enough to emphasize it. Basically in blurb and query you set up a problem for the MC(s) to solve. You want to grab the interest of readers, agents, publishers, make them wonder how the MC(s) will solve it. You DON'T want to give away the solution, which is in the middle and the end of your book.