Love in Dark Settings

My inbox is so much of a mess that I haven't even filed away a lot of the comments I already replied to, so forgive me if I respond twice to anyone's comments. Forgive me even more if I contradict myself in my second response. :)

I'm working my way chronologically backwards. If you're one of the people whose 2007 comment I haven't responded to yet, I'll get to you eventually (*cough, cough*).

Reply to this comment by janecarnall:

"Not that I actually want to destroy M*A*S*H for anyone!"

My apprentice's follow-up remark, after reading my earlier comment, was, "You do realize, don't you, that I was talking about what the purpose is of the M*A*S*H unit in that universe? I mean, the sex in the story doesn't bother me."

That's my boy. :)

Reply to this comment by janecarnall:

"I don't think this is a situation where 'the fanfic community' could help, because, IMO, most people do write bad blurbs."

Well, yes, and most people write bad stories. But you know what? A wonderfully large percentage of people learn to write good stories in the fanfic community. Because they receive beta reports, they receive reader feedback, they're given writing exercises (challenges, etc.), they take part in comms that teach them how to write better, and they're encouraged to pay attention to what other authors have written and to learn from it.

Ditto with fan art and fan videos. And those of us who do beta reports learn from each other's techniques. I came into the fanfic community as a professional editor, but I'm a much better editor after seven years of having other people beta my work.

Blurbs, on the other hand, are treated by most fanficcers as trivial and unimportant. There aren't any Blurb Fests. There aren't any squees over favorite blurbs. Authors don't ask other authors to beta their blurbs. Nobody exchanges tips on their favorite techniques for writing blurbs. That's the reason why bad blurbs abound in the fanfic community - not because they're inherently harder to write than stories.

Okay, to reply to your earlier question: "Do you know of any online tutorial in How To Write Blurbs?"

(*Googles*.)

Here you go. Advice from professional blurb writers. Hope it helps.

I write blurbs the same way that I write stories: instinctively. So I'm not the best source of advice on blurb-writing. But I can say that a lot depends on identifying one's core audience. A romance reader once read my blurb for "Rebirth" and suggested I should cut to the chase and talk immediately about the characters. My reaction was, "Boy, there's the divide between the romance world and the fantasy world." With SF/F books, world-building is nearly always front-and-center in blurbs. In fact, I often have to plow through the blurbs to find any actual mention of people.

On the other hand, a lot of my readers are darkfic readers, so I tend to emphasize the darkfic elements in my stories. I could have written the blurb for Pleasure any number of ways, but I chose to focus on the angtiness.

I'm trying to reach mainstream readers a lot of the time, so I don't tend to emphasize the erotic aspects of my stories in my blurbs . . . but I did with Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers, because those stories were aimed mainly at erotica readers. Those blurbs were very easy to write; I just summarized the action in a single sentence, without spoilers.

I think the best types of blurbs are the ones that leave the reader asking, "What happens next?" Like this.

And humor - especially dark humor - is always fun to write.

Or you can ask a question. I use that device a lot.

Does any of that help? I don't know how it works for other writers, but if I were trying to learn to write blurbs, I'd simply read a lot of blurbs and pay careful attention to what was written. That's how I learned how to write stories.

Reply to this comment by yonmei:

Good, I'm glad my new reply-to-comments system works for you.

Reply to this comment by maculategiraffe:

Gosh, thanks. I appreciate your taking the trouble to dig up that old post for me.

Reply to this comment by spiralred:

"I have the hots for Hoefler"

I like how you put that. :)