How to Write a Compelling Summary of Your Book
Contributor

Wondering how to write your book synopsis for the back cover and Amazon pages? Don’t worry, many aspiring authors find themselves in a near nervous breakdown when reaching this part of the writing process. Most writers agree on one point: it’s easier to write too much than it is to condense your entire masterpiece. Summarizing your book, however, is the most important sentences about you’re book you’ll ever write and is your solo opportunity to sell your book to a reader. We’ve rounded up seven quick tips

Mentally Define Your Audience Before You Start Writing

Visualize the person you see picking up the book – it could be a certain age group, gender, people with a certain hobby or it could be readers of all ages. It’s important to mentally define the readers you want to appeal to (before you start writing) so you can craft your synopsis in a way that feeds certain reading and literary cravings.  

 

Remember that It’s One Giant Tease

Writing a book synopsis is an art within itself, and the point is to use the finest of your writing abilities to hook the potential reader in only a few sentences. Before you start writing, pinpoint the what parts of the human imagination you want to tease and start jibing at their literary desires in the very first sentence.

 

Introduce Your Character

If your magnum opus is a work of fiction, introduce your hero or heroine within the first sentence and kick off that reader-character emotional connection from the start. If you are a non-fiction writer, save your personal introduction for later in the synopsis and frame the synopsis is a way appeals to the needs of the reader. People want to know whose adventures they will be following, so highlight this key hook in your synopsis in a literily dazzling way.

 

Showcase the Conflict

The meaty heart of the synopsis is the presentation of your overarching conflict. Every other synopsis point on this list should be artfully weaved into the presentation of your conflict so the book summary is dazzlingly irresistible to any potential reader who reads it.

 

Leave Readers with a Cliff Hanger

After a potential reader finishes reading a synopsis, they should be left hooked and curious to devour the rest of the plot. It should leave them emotionally unsettled and with an insatiable desire to to follow your characters on their literary journey until all conflicts are solved.

Keep it Short

One of the most common writing mistakes authors make is going into too much detail in their summaries an understandably easy mistake to make as a wordsmith. The attention span of the average consumer is shrinking by the day; readers want a quick fluff-free reason why your book is worth reading. Most potential readers won't have the patience to sift through excess sentences to pinpoint important information, so make it easy for them. 

Rewrite and Condense

If you're having trouble keeping your summary short or you don't find it catchy enough, here is the secret: rewrite it at least 20 times over the course of a few weeks. You'll find yourself recognizing the important details and axing fluff which clouded the irresistible selling hooks in previous drafts.

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