Hi there,
I am new here so i am not totally sure this is the right place for this but here goes all the same. I have just finished my third draft of a YA mystery with some sci-fi and horror elements and am at a stage where I am looking to attract beta readers. I started to think about how a synopsis might look, specifically the one you might find on the back of the book, and I quickly came upon a bit of a problem. Being a mystery, my plot relies heavily in the slow drip of clues and red herrings and I don't really want to give anything away, yet, at the same time, I don't want people to pass up my book because they don't have enough of an idea of what it's about. Below is something I knocked up fairly quickly on my commute home so I am not overly concerned about word choice or small details at this point and, honestly, this is not intended to be a SYW kind of thing, I just want to get an idea of where the ideal balance lies. How many breadcrumbs is enough to entice the reader's hunger?
Timothy has a plan. Escape. From a village where everyone knows your name, but chooses not to use it. From a place where everyone knows your face, but it doesn’t fit. Not with these scars.
But something in Timothy is stirring. Something buried in the deepest recesses of his dreams. Something else with an escape plan.
Timothy is about to learn a terrifying truth. You can’t run from the world inside your head and you can’t hide from the one outside it.
As the two worlds bleed into one another, Timothy will question everything he thinks he knows about his life, his past, his village, his family and even himself. As his reality slides, he will discover our worst nightmares are the ones that refuse to stay inside our heads.
I am new here so i am not totally sure this is the right place for this but here goes all the same. I have just finished my third draft of a YA mystery with some sci-fi and horror elements and am at a stage where I am looking to attract beta readers. I started to think about how a synopsis might look, specifically the one you might find on the back of the book, and I quickly came upon a bit of a problem. Being a mystery, my plot relies heavily in the slow drip of clues and red herrings and I don't really want to give anything away, yet, at the same time, I don't want people to pass up my book because they don't have enough of an idea of what it's about. Below is something I knocked up fairly quickly on my commute home so I am not overly concerned about word choice or small details at this point and, honestly, this is not intended to be a SYW kind of thing, I just want to get an idea of where the ideal balance lies. How many breadcrumbs is enough to entice the reader's hunger?
Timothy has a plan. Escape. From a village where everyone knows your name, but chooses not to use it. From a place where everyone knows your face, but it doesn’t fit. Not with these scars.
But something in Timothy is stirring. Something buried in the deepest recesses of his dreams. Something else with an escape plan.
Timothy is about to learn a terrifying truth. You can’t run from the world inside your head and you can’t hide from the one outside it.
As the two worlds bleed into one another, Timothy will question everything he thinks he knows about his life, his past, his village, his family and even himself. As his reality slides, he will discover our worst nightmares are the ones that refuse to stay inside our heads.
