Writing Your Book Description: How to Turn Your Plot into a Blurb That Readers Love
Many authors treat their blurb like a condensed version of their story.
But there’s a big problem with this approach: it’s simply not possible to cram an entire novel’s worth of plot and character into your book description.
You’ll quickly discover that the more you try, the longer (and more confusing) your blurb becomes.
So how can you write a blurb that accurately reflects your book, without overwhelming readers with every little detail?
After writing over 4,000 blurbs, I’ll be sharing practical tips to help you craft a blurb that leaves readers eager to read your story.
Your Blurb Isn’t Really About Your Plot
It’s easy to assume that a blurb is simply a description of what happens in your story. But treating it this way results in something more akin to a plot summary or synopsis.
A synopsis and a blurb have very different jobs, and mixing them up can leave you with something that fails to appeal to readers.
Broadly speaking, a synopsis explains your plot. It covers your story’s major beats, characters, and subplots. It also typically resolves tension by revealing the ending and detailing every step in your protagonist’s journey.
Conversely, a blurb is a sales tool. It filters your plot, giving readers just enough details to hook them. It creates unresolved tension, and often uses open-ended questions to make people feel like they need to know what happens next.
When authors write a synopsis instead of a blurb, they create a peculiar problem: readers have plenty of information but no reason to become emotionally invested. Worse still, in attempting to cover their entire plot, authors end up with a long-winded blurb that spoils all of their story’s surprises.
Key takeaway: A synopsis explains everything that happens in your story, while a blurb makes readers want to find out for themselves.
Your Blurb Sets Reader Expectations
There’s another essential difference between a synopsis and a blurb. While a synopsis focuses solely on your story, a good blurb also gives readers clues about your genre, subgenre, tropes, and the kind of reading experience they can expect.
Before someone ever reaches the first page of your book, they’ve already formed expectations based on your blurb. It works a little like a teaser, giving readers a glimpse into what kind of story they’re in for. This is important because readers often have their preferred genres and tropes.
One reader may be looking for epic fantasy set in a medieval world, while another may only read urban fantasy based in the modern day. One reader might enjoy romance with the enemies-to-lovers trope, whereas another might actively avoid it.
You can use your blurb to communicate your genre and tropes so that only the right readers buy your book.
Key takeaway: A good blurb doesn’t just cover your story. It also helps readers figure out the kind of book they’re looking at.
The Blurb Filter: Deciding What Belongs in Your Book Description
We’ve already established that a blurb should use selective details to hook readers without giving away your entire story like a synopsis. But how do you figure out what you should include?
As authors, we’re often too close to our stories to tell which details are important and which to leave out. The result is one of two problems: authors include too much, weighing their blurb down with unnecessary details, or they over-simplify and resort to vague language like “our hero must struggle against many difficult challenges.”
It’s tempting to think that more plot details will help readers better understand your story. The reality is that rather than making it easier for them, a long-winded blurb will confuse and overwhelm.
Key takeaway: More information doesn’t always make a better blurb. Beyond a certain point, it makes readers struggle to know what really matters.
3 Questions to Turn Your Story Into a Blurb
These three simple questions will help you figure out how to write your blurb:
- Who is your protagonist?
- What does your protagonist want?
- And what primary obstacle prevents them from achieving this desire?
Your protagonist gives us someone to follow, their desire gives us a reason to care, and the obstacle gives us reason to wonder if they’ll succeed.
Different stories will use this formula in varying ways. Your primary obstacle might be a world-ending cataclysm, a powerful antagonist, a past wound or trauma, or a personal conflict. In each case, these questions help you identify the heart of your story and present it in a way that readers will immediately understand.
Here are a few examples:
- A young sailor (protagonist) wants to unearth a long-lost treasure (objective), but he’ll have to outwit the bloodthirsty pirate crew that buried it (obstacle).
- A widower (protagonist) wants to restore her late grandmother’s Bed & Breakfast (objective), but she needs help from the grumpy local handyman (obstacle), whom she ends up falling in love with.
As a quick tip, if you have multiple protagonists with differing desires, try looking for ways their stories converge around a central want or objective. Readers need to understand why these characters belong in the same book and how they relate to one another.
Key takeaway: Use the protagonist > objective > obstacle formula to filter your plot and identify what to include in your blurb.
2 Ways to Make Your Blurb Feel More Exciting
An effective blurb creates momentum. Many authors struggle at this point, as once they’ve introduced their protagonist and central obstacle, they aren’t sure how to make tension build without simply listing more things that could go wrong.
Authors may try to make their blurb sound more exciting by piling on many different obstacles. The issue is that this actually diffuses tension by scattering reader interest. When unrelated obstacles are “fighting” for our attention, the result is a blurb that feels oddly flat, despite containing high stakes.
The solution is to make sure that every source of tension follows from something previously established. Instead of piling on unrelated problems, let each new complication grow out of what came before.
Your protagonist makes a choice, their choice creates a consequence, and that consequence creates the next problem. Alternatively, a situation worsens as new aspects are gradually revealed.
Example: “A scientist struggles to cure a world-ending virus. She steals the only sample of the virus to study it, but that makes her the target of the shadowy organization trying to recover it.”
Here, it’s our protagonist’s choice that adds a new obstacle—and a new source of tension.
We might also have a story where the situation is far worse than the protagonist originally believed, which would give us something like:
“A scientist struggles to cure a world-ending virus, but she discovers that she’s also infected and will die in thirty days if she can’t create an antidote.”
Key takeaway: A blurb isn’t made exciting by adding more problems. Instead, tension should grow as character choices introduce new complications or a situation is gradually revealed.
How This Applies to Nonfiction
For nonfiction, you can use a similar formula, but in a slightly different way.
Like fictional protagonists, readers have desires—whether that’s losing weight, earning money, or being a better partner. They also have obstacles that they’re struggling against. For example, a lack of knowledge or time.
When writing your nonfiction blurb, place your reader in the shoes of the protagonist. Consider how your book will help them overcome their obstacle and achieve their desire. Readers typically want to solve a thorny problem, acquire a valuable skill, or otherwise transform their situation. You can then position your book as the solution they’ve been searching for.
Key takeaway: A nonfiction book places the reader in the protagonist’s shoes and then identifies their core desires and struggles.
Think of Your Blurb as an Intriguing Clue
Blurbs often fail because authors try to create a miniature version of their plot. Instead, your blurb is a filter that offers a window into your story’s core premise. It also gives readers important clues about what kind of book you’ve written.
Rather than trying to squeeze every character or subplot into a mere 200 words, your goal is to establish the core of your story and present it in a way that makes the right readers eager to know more.
Begin with the three questions we identified: Who is your protagonist? What do they want? And what’s standing in their way? From there, build momentum by letting each new complication grow naturally from what came before.
Then, read your blurb as if you’ve never seen your book before. Can you tell what kind of story and genre to expect?
If the answer is yes, you’re on your way to a blurb that will make your ideal audience eager to start reading.
A Final Word From Brit: If you’re looking for help with your book blurb, I’m here. Explore my editing and coaching services to learn more about how I help make your story shine.
You May Also Be Interested In These Reads
 |  |  |  |
You can find more recommended reading on our Library page.
Disclosure: Each book recommendation contains affiliate links, but these are all books I highly recommend. I won’t include anything that I haven’t verified and personally found valuable.
Guest Blogger Bio
Morgan Lee Clasper is a copywriter, book sales strategist, and author of The Blurb Puzzle. With over seven years of experience in the publishing industry, he’s worked with New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling authors, writing 4,000 blurbs and counting. To read The Blurb Puzzle, visit https://morganclasperauthor.com/the-blurb-puzzle.
Interested in writing a GUEST POST? Learn more about submitting to us: https://bewrit.com/write-for-us/.
