A useful writing tip

A writer can often become so closely involved in their work that they forgot to step back and take in the bigger picture. An analogy would be a painter or artist engrossed in the details of their latest piece failing to take a few backward steps from the canvas to view the totality of their endeavour.

A writer who doesn't take those metaphorical backward steps to view the bigger picture is missing out on an element of the creative process worth its weight in gold.

I'm currently putting the finishing touches to an expanded version of Dolphin Girl, including an ending that continues beyond that of the original short novel featured in 2008's Eating Clouds.

At the same time I've come up with a blurb to feature on the back of the book. A blurb is the few paragraphs on the back cover that effectively 'sell' the story to a reader. An effective blurb entices and intrigues a potential reader, but equally importantly accurately reflects what the book, and its story, offer.

A reader will soon become disgruntled if they don't find what they expected to find as a result of the blurb. Worse case scenario, a colossal asteroid slams into the Earth. Second worse case scenario, the reader feels conned by the misleading blurb and in future avoids your books.

Dolphin Girl was included at the back of the original Lulu version of Eating Clouds and so never had it own blurb. Now that it is to be a stand-alone novel, it does. That has entailed some contemplation of what exactly the story is about. And as I have gone through this process, and it can take quite a few hours, it has brought clarity into my mind about what the story sets out to portray. In doing so, it has prompted ideas on how to streamline and better highlight the overarching themes.

As I go through the book, tweaking and reordering a few things and adding some new scenes, the process has been made easier knowing exactly what needs to be achieved through the characters and events.

A well-crafted blurb can be a hugely useful blueprint or roadmap to guide a writer through the story arc they are creating.

I've come to the blurb very close to the end of the story-writing process for Dolphin Girl, but I can certainly see the value in having such a guide earlier in the day, perhaps even at the outset.

And, if you want to supercharge the whole thing, pull yourself away from the story-writing and compose both a blurb and a half-page synopsis. A synopsis is a more structured and detailed blueprint of the story.

With a blurb and a synopsis in hand a writer can confidently set forth to tell a tale and avoid getting snagged, and perhaps even lost, in the undergrowth that hides in the woods and forest of the imagination.