So, here's what we did. It was organised round various exercises, all of which I thought were useful and interesting.
1) In pairs, we were asked to pick a postcard each from a selection of photographic portraits. Clipped to the back was a piece of paper with the name of a book on it, and we had about five minutes to write a back cover blurb that would sell the book to the person in the photo.
We picked a bohemian young man in a moody b/w garret, with mussed hipster hair, looking cool and counter-cultural. We then discovered we had to sell him Wuthering Heights. They were all rather odd combinations, which was the point. It may or may not have helped that neither of us (I must confess) had read Wuthering Heights. I know, I know. I've barely read anything in the canon. I am a bad person.
This was a good exercise. Having a picture to sell to helps immeasurably, as does trying to puzzle out what the recipe of the book involves. Looking at this guy I thought he was essentially interested in sex, death and rebellion, so our copy sold Wuthering Heights that way. "LOVE KILLS!" that sort of thing. "The woman he loves - and hates." It was cheesy but effective.
2) We had to get into little groups and write a list of things we always do, or words we always use, in cover copy. For example:
Starting with place and date - "London, 1944..."
Ellipses, come to think of it.
The 'but' in the penultimate sentence.
A paragraph full of questions.
A paragraph that tells the story up to the point that a big choice needs to be made.
Protagonist's name and age. (This is mainly a YA thing I think. "Thirteen-year-old Joe Bloggs must...")
"...before it's too late."
Telling you it's thrilling, chilling, spell-binding, unputdownable, etc.
Starting off with a quote from the book.
Ending up with a quote from a newspaper.
etc... etc...
You know the sort of thing. Very interesting to see quite how formulaic we've become with copy. Lots of nods of recognition.
3) We were given a cover from a book we'd recently published, and then had 5 minutes to rewrite the copy - but we weren't allowed to use any of the words in the original copy. (Well, common words like and, but, then were fine, but you get the idea.) Nor were we allowed to do anything from the list in (2). Again: very interesting.
4) More postcards, this time non-portrait art postcards. We picked this Picasso sketch:
http://www.moma.org/modernteachers/large_image.php?id=118
We then had about 15 minutes to make up an imaginary book that might have that image as a cover, give it a title, and write some copy for it - again, avoiding any of the things in the list above as much as possible. This generated at least three books I'd pay money for right now, and some very interesting blurbs.
The generation of the book was done using improv rules - 'Yes, and'. I'd think of an idea, my partner would build on it and pass it back, etc. Blocking or wimping out wasn't allowed.
5) Oblique strategies. You may already know of these - check out the wiki page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies. So we drew a few cards from a custom deck the trainer had made and rewrote the copy from (4) accordingly. We had to do two further drafts - one without using the verb 'to be' in any form, the other only using the future tense. This again was an interesting exercise. I think our second draft was the best.
So I'd say the really useful things we learned were:
a) Don't write copy in a vacuum. Work with a partner. Often it's good to go away, do a draft each, and then compare notes.
b) Work constructively together. "Yes, and" rather than "Yes, but".
c) Pressure and constraint. A lot of this stuff was written in 5- or 10- minute bursts, and/or with constraints that made me groan when we were told them. But actually? Really helps, creatively.
d) Working out what you do habitually and banning yourself from doing those things. A lot of cover copy sounds the same. You don't necessarily need to tell the story, but we almost always do. Banning stuff helps you examine your assumptions, frees you up to try new approaches.
e) Less is more. We all know this, really, and in fact repeat it to ourselves an awful lot. But look at the back cover of most books and it's a wall of text. Straplines, excerpts, two paras of copy, a quote or two... We act as if all those things are necessary to sell the book. Are they? What is really crucial, and what is just clutter?
