Writing a book is an exciting way to share your stories with the world. From vast fictional worlds to memoirs full of wisdom, there are many ways to connect with your audience. With tons of books out there from a wide variety of skilled and interesting authors, one of the best ways to stand out in a crowded market is to entice readers with a compelling summary. A simple but captivating book blurb is meant to snag the attention of publishers, readers, and even agents. How can you condense such a detailed book into a summary? Check these tips for writing a book summary below.
Identify the Central Theme
What details would you include if you had to slim your book’s plot or theme down to a single sentence? One of the most important tricks to learning how to write a book blurb is to identify your story’s main theme or what your book is truly about. Your book will contain a lot of details and scenes, but how do they connect? What do all the details add up to? Many books detail a journey through hardship or self-discovery. Others have classic tropes, such as good vs. evil or coming of age. No two books are the same, but knowing your story’s central theme will help you condense and market it to a wide variety of audiences.
Create an Exciting Starter Hook
One of the most vital parts of a book summary is the very first sentence. You’ll want to start with an interesting hook to grab the audience’s attention. You can capture attention with a thought-provoking and relevant question, teasing a twist in your story, or introducing the most exciting moment. You don’t want to spoil the entire book, but you’ll want to keep them on the edge of their seat to read more. Instead of an opening sentence like, “This is the story of my rough childhood,” you could write, “What if the darkest chapter of your childhood became the story that inspired thousands?” There are tons of ways to write a starting hook, so you can play around with a few questions or teasing sentences to see what fits your story best.
Connect With Universal Audiences
Your story may not directly relate to everyone, but it likely highlights certain struggles or achievements that will resonate with a broad audience. A book is most appealing when there is an underlying lesson, emotion, or achievement that connects beyond the plot or story. Readers will want to read a book that relates to their own experiences or teaches them something valuable that they don’t understand. Many novels or memoirs can be broken down into simpler genres or themes, like love, loss, addiction, transformation, success, or triumph. Make sure you highlight whatever theme your book explores in your summary so audiences can know what they’ll connect to or learn about.
Introduce Yourself
Why should someone read a story you’ve written? You may be a skilled or creative author, but potential readers have no way of knowing this when picking up your book. How can others relate to you? Who are you, really? What cultural or social demographics do you belong to, and is it relevant to your story? Focus on your identity and how it relates to the overall story to allow readers to get to know and humanize you. You don’t need to dwell on many details to make the summary too wordy, but readers should catch a glimpse of why they should read your stories.
Highlight the Key Conflict
What point or aspect of your book is the most exciting? You’ll want to hint at this moment in your summary to draw readers in. Popular conflicts in books include struggling with societal oppression, fighting fate, or losing a loved one. For happier plots, exciting climaxes can involve moments like falling in love. Books span a variety of topics, conflicts, and worlds, so you’ll need to find your unique climax to create intrigue without spoiling. You can use terms such as “breaking point” to garner vague interest without spoiling.
Less Is More
Summaries need to be short; readers aren’t reading another version of your book! You don’t want to make a summary too lengthy, or you may lose interest. You’ll want to include the most exciting details upfront and quickly. You don’t want a summary to be over a few short sentences. Some summaries may require just a quick tagline, which may require you to condense down to only one sentence! You’ll want multiple versions of varying lengths, but at the longest, your summary should not extend past a few hundred words.
Call Readers to Action
What will your reader get from reading your book? In your summary, explain why your story matters to the average reader. “This story offers a roadmap to discovering light in the darkest moments” is an excellent example of a brief call to action, as it lets the reader know they may be able to learn how to discover light in their darkest life moments, too.
Conclusion
Writing a book summary can be difficult, especially when you have a lot to say about your story. You can draft several summaries with different hooks or calls to action to get a feel for how you want your summary to come across. Test out different versions with friends, agents, or editors to see which summaries resonate the best. Don’t forget to include shorter taglines for multiple formats. Crafting a summary can be a delicate balancing act between creativity and marketing. Writing the perfect heartfelt but concise summary can allow your book to stand out in many crowds.
