How to shine in the dark (II)

In the first post of this series I talked about the evaluation phase, in which the potential reader has seen something in your novel that has caught her attention. Just enough to click and to want to know a little more about it.

All her attention will be focused on the description of the book. And any comments/reviews you may have. But since we can't control this (at least not legally), let's focus on the description or synopsis. It has to be engaging. In a few sentences.

And that's it, if you're able to do that, you won't need anything else.

But what usually happens, is that we tend to make synopsis longer than it should be. It looks more like a summary of the story rather than a tool to capture readers.

There is, in my opinion, the key. It's about engaging, not telling the story. I know it sounds easier than it really is, I'm still learning to write better synopsis.

But the goal is clear, they should look more like a slogan than a summary.