(a)  Introduce yourself and say you’d like to meet for coffee
      (b)  Propose marriage

It sounds like a silly question, but file it away. We’ll come back to it.

Not long ago on a LinkedIn discussion group, a bunch of writers were talking about how to obtain a professional-looking book cover on a budget. One participant—we’ll call him Lloyd—said his strategy was to figure out exactly what he wanted his cover to look like before he hired a designer. The more specific he was, the easier and cheaper it would be for the designer to do the work.

Jim Hayes of Ha! Yes! Graphic Design had this to say about Lloyd’s approach:

Lloyd mentions that he got a good deal by having already mentally designed the cover. In my 30 years designing, I’ve found this to be a dangerous talent in a client. I love to hear and utilize their ideas and integrate their desires when possible, but designers come up with several ideas, some of which will not work out. Non-designers typically come up with one idea. When I used to accept that type of job, I often found myself trying to make a dead-end idea work. Designers come up with dead-end ideas, too, but they get thrown away.

Yes!

Jim nailed it.

I’ve produced many design drafts that, despite my best efforts, were never going to look as cool in print or onscreen as they did in my head. Those drafts got tossed onto the scrap heap.^* Frustrating, but no biggie. Ideas that don’t work are part of the creative process.

When a non-designer only has one idea and it doesn’t work, that’s okay. The problem arises when the non-designer refuses to consider any other possibilities. When the cover needs to look just like they mocked it up in MS Word, sometimes right down to the fonts, and they will not budge from their vision regardless of how many other ideas you pitch.

Let’s replay that initial scenario in a publishing context. You rack your brain for cover ideas until you hit upon one you like. In your head it looks professional, accurately represents your book, compels readers to pick it up, the works. Do you:

      a)  Have a designer mock up your idea so you can see what it really looks like
      b)  Decide this will be your cover no matter what

By no means are all amateur cover ideas destined to fail. If you have a concept in mind, you should absolutely share it with your designer and see how it goes.

Just don’t be married to it, is all I’m saying.

^{* This works in reverse, too. I’ve had clients pitch ideas that sounded awful at first, but kicked serious butt when I played around with them in Photoshop.↩}

“My book is about … um … these guys!”

But what do you do if you’ve written one of those slice-of-life books—the kind where the characters and setting are the main focus, and there is no overarching plot? Conflicts exist, but they aren’t the story, and most of them get resolved long before the final page. If you try basing your description on the plot, you’re left with, “There are a bunch of people. Stuff happens to them.”

Don’t worry. You can do better than that. The thing to remember is that your book is about something, even if you can’t easily sum it up. Here are a couple of strategies.

Describe the characters

You’ve let your characters drive your novel, so they’re probably pretty interesting. Tell us about them. What are their personality quirks? How do they deal with the world around them?

This book description for Fannie Flagg’s bestseller Standing in the Rainbow is a nice example of a character blurb:

Along with Neighbor Dorothy, the lady with the smile in her voice, whose daily radio broadcasts keep us delightfully informed on all the local news, we also meet Bobby, her ten-year-old son, destined to live a thousand lives, most of them in his imagination; Norma and Macky Warren and their ninety-eight-year-old Aunt Elner; the oddly sexy and charismatic Hamm Sparks, who starts off in life as a tractor salesman and ends up selling himself to the whole state and almost the entire country; and the two women who love him as differently as night and day. Then there is Tot Whooten, the beautician whose luck is as bad as her hairdressing skills; Beatrice Woods, the Little Blind Songbird; Cecil Figgs, the Funeral King; and the fabulous Minnie Oatman, lead vocalist of the Oatman Family Gospel Singers.

Readers who like character-driven novels will want to get to know these people.

Describe the action

But wait, you cry. Didn’t we agree that it’s pointless to summarize the plot? Yep. That’s why you don’t describe “the plot.” You pick a few subplots and run with them.

Not long ago I wrote a blurb for The Longest Year by Stan Crader. If I had focused on the book’s central conflict, it would have gone something like, “There’s this kid who really, really wants to drive, but he can’t yet because he’s fifteen, so he has to wait.”

That makes the story sound boring. It isn’t.

Here’s the actual blurb:

Like all of his friends, Tommy Thompson dreams of obtaining the ultimate ticket to freedom: a driver’s license.

Unlike all of his friends, Tommy has just turned fifteen. He’ll have to watch everybody else pass their tests before he’s old enough to take his.

But life goes on for the band of boys despite Tommy’s consuming obsession. His best friend, Booger, takes up the guitar. His buddy Everett dates a girl from a rival school and discovers that her classmates aren’t altogether happy about it. Longtime romantic interest Melody tests her newly minted driving skills on the railroad tracks. And Tommy receives an unexpected gift—one that just might make the longest year of his life go by a little quicker.

The third in Stan Crader’s Colby series, THE LONGEST YEAR will bring a smile to your face as you remember the trials and tribulations of your own youth.

The book isn’t about any of these subplots. But when you see them recounted together in this way, a picture forms in your mind. It’s about growing up. It’s about the the challenges you face as you navigate the journey from childhood to adulthood.

(Also notice that when you describe subplots, you can sneak in techniques for plot-driven blurbs. What gift did Tommy receive and why did it have such a big impact? You have to read the book to find out!)

In the end, all back cover copy serves the same purpose: to tell potential readers how the book will benefit them. If you can convey why they’ll enjoy getting to know the people who populate your story, your job is done.

“Oh, sorry!” she says. “I’ve been completely engrossed in this novel. It’s really good!”

“Cool. What’s it about?” you ask.

“It starts out in Baltimore, when Lisel—that’s the main character—is fourteen. Her parents pretty much ignore her because they’re so focused on her older brother. The brother’s name is Carl, and he’s really smart. All he’s ever wanted to do when he grows up is become a doctor. The parents are immigrants, and they’ve done okay given that their English isn’t great, but they really want Carl to achieve the American dream.

“Okay …”

“Lisel resents this a little, but it’s the way it’s always been, right? So she doesn’t think about it much. But then the whole family takes a trip to Boston so Carl can do a college interview, and while they’re driving there they get blindsided by an out-of-control driver. Carl ends up with permanent brain damage. He has to relearn how to tie his shoes.”

You nod, grateful that Julie has gotten to the point. “So it’s about how the family copes with this.”

“Well, not exactly. The book skips ahead to when Lisel is in medical school. See, her parents transfer all their ambitions for Carl onto her, and she doesn’t want to disappoint them. She gets into Harvard, and she meets this guy who seems perfect …”

Your friend tells of Lisel’s struggles to get through medical school, her painful breakup with the aforementioned guy after she discovers he’s been cheating, and the challenges of building a practice. Your mind begins to wander as she describes, in intricate detail, Lisel’s attempts at a love life.

“So she agrees to a blind date set up by her mom, and she totally doesn’t want to go,” says Julie. “But he actually turns out to be really cool, maybe someone she can trust. She tells him she used to like acting in high school, before the thing with her brother, and he convinces her to audition for this theater group really close to where she lives—”

“Okay, okay,” you say, waving your hands desperately. “But what is the book ABOUT?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you for the last seven minutes.” She blinks a few times, clearly mystified. “Hey, I’ve gotta use the restroom. Could you watch my stuff?”

As Julie cheerfully makes her way to the other side of the coffeehouse, you pick up the book, flip to the back cover, and read this:

Most of Lisel’s childhood was spent in the shadow of her brilliant and ambitious older brother, Carl. When a car accident left Carl severely brain damaged at the age of seventeen, she quietly took on the dreams he would never fulfill in an attempt to ease her parents’ grief. She went to medical school, graduated with honors, and now maintains a thriving practice.

But cracks appear in Lisel’s seemingly perfect life. The only human beings she interacts with on a regular basis are her patients and the men she meets on disastrous Match.com dates. When she joins a community theater group, she finds that rekindling her interest in acting only magnifies her dissatisfaction with everything else.

Should the choices we make in high school determine the course of our entire life? Are parental approval and the trappings of success enough to sustain us? In turns heartbreaking and hilarious, A HAND-ME-DOWN LIFE is a deeply satisfying story about one woman’s quest to find her own path.

Here’s the million dollar question. Assuming this is the kind of book you might enjoy, which description is more likely to make you want to read it: the blurb on the back cover, or the blurb as Julie might have written it?

I’ve encountered many authors who are capable of penning interesting books, but become absolutely lost when it comes time to create the promotional copy for those books. Too close to their own work to know how to sell it, they often fall back on Julie’s rambling monologue approach to plot summary.

If you’ve run into the same problem, take a few deep breaths and relax. I’m here to help.

The key thing is to keep it simple. Pare it down. Don’t tell the entire story in your blurb.

That’s great, you say, but how do I know what to leave out?

Good question. There are actually many ways to summarize any given plot, and the one you choose should depend on who you think will read it.

For instance, the Hand-Me-Down Life blurb is geared toward readers who like stories about quarter-life or mid-life crises. If we wanted to hook people who are into family dramas, we could play up the pressure Lisel’s parents put on her to fill her brother’s shoes. If the overall tone of the book is light and humorous despite the serious subject matter, we might emphasize the romantic interests—neither of whom even get a mention in the current blurb.

Obviously, you shouldn’t make your book out to be something it’s not. You just need to focus on certain elements of what it is so you can present a coherent narrative.

Still don’t know which plot points to highlight? Try writing different versions of the blurb. Put the samples up on your blog (if you don’t have one, you should) and show them to friends. Which version makes people want to flip open to the first page?

If you’ve done your job, then readers will want to know the whole story. And to find out, they’ll read the whole story!

An earlier version of this article originally appeared on the Wheatmark blog.