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Oct 2021

Oh, sure! I know I can be a little long-winded, maybe you can see if my blurb needs a little help.

-Description-
Synthetic Human and Private Detective DN-144, Diana, investigates a high-profile case of murder that thrusts her into the upper echelon of society.
With an innocent man about to be punished, the down-to-earth detective must navigate the life of high society, and avoid getting offed herself as she tries to solve the death of the wealthy and influential Atticus Chambers.

-Link-

The value in our encounters, the ones around us and the foundation for our dreams.

"They say humans change as they meet new people. Isn't that almost like resonance?"

Matsumoto Isamu, a high school junior, is obsessed with his ambition to be remembered. To become someone great or doing something of significant impact. With strengths that he can't use properly and weaknesses that bind him, he lives his life constantly in doubt. He has also been troubled due to a mysterious silhouette appearing in the park near his home at times.

What will happen when he unravels the silhouette's identity?

Told mostly through dialogue and comedy, this is a story of a group of individuals, each on their own journey, and how much they influence each other without realizing it.

Do humans really resonate? Or is it just fiction?

Link:

Sure why not?

Blurb:

After many years of serving duty, the legendary mercenary Daemon LaCondore gave in to his inner fury. He rampaged, leaving only his sons Andrew and Jason behind to survive.

Now determined to save their father from his own darkness, Andrew LaCondore splits up from his brother in a epic quest to find Daemon. But will Andrew succeed before the darkness takes control of him as well?

Hmm yeah an issue here with your blurb is it's word choice. There's a bit too many complex descriptive words, making it a little tough to understand on the first read. Let's fix that up:

Synthetic human and private detective DN-144, also known as Diana, investigates a high-profile murder case that thrusts her into the upper classes of society.

With an innocent man about to be punished, the down-to-earth detective must navigate high life and even avoid getting herself killed as she tries to solve the death of the wealthy and influential Atticus Chambers

I changed "high society" in the second paragraph to "high life" just to avoid saying "society" twice, but you can use any other synonyms. Just try to keep your words easy to understand so that the typical reader isn't scared away.

Thank you! I do tend to use a lot of complex words and I talk a little too much, I thought I had cut it down, apparently not enough.

An issue I see among a handful of blurbs on Tapas is adding sentences that don't exactly tell the story but rather try to make a "vibe," if that makes sense. It may seem cool at first (and trust me your sentences do sound really lovely), but that means more work for readers to find out what your story is actually about. You don't wanna do that cuz you risk losing their interest in actually reading the story. Go straight to the point and remove all the extra sentences.

Additionally, it doesn't hurt to keep the actual description pretty short too:

Matsumoto Isamu is obsessed with being remembered; to become someone great or do something significant. He is also troubled by a mysterious silhouette appearing in the park near his home. What will happen when he unravels its identity?

You essentially get the same idea, just less sentences. Feel free ofc to add or remove stuff if you feel like anything super important is missing in the edit.

This is pretty short already, but I think some things can be trimmed to make it clearer. Combining sentences also helps to condense the ideas.

Additionally, I got a grammar question about this sentence:

Now determined to save their father from his own darkness, Andrew LaCondore splits up from his brother in a epic quest to find Daemon.

The subject (the person doing the thing) in this sentence is Andrew LaCondore, but at the start of the sentence you say "their father." This leaves the confusion about whether or not both Andrew and Jason are going on the quest or just Andrew. Assuming it's just Andrew, you can simply say "his father" since that's his pronoun.

After giving into his inner fury, the legendary mercenary Daemon LaCondore goes on a rampage and leaves behind his only sons, Andrew and Jason. Now determined to save his father, Andrew LaCondore splits from his brother in an epic quest to find Daemon. Will Andrew succeed before the darkness controls him as well?

Been working on my blurb, but it's always good to get more feedback :grin:
tried to keep it short and sweet.

"A comedy about an inanimate rock being the most epic hero in existence!"

Okay now you have the complete opposite of the length issue :sweat_02:

Alright alright here me out, it's better to have a shorter blurb than a longer blurb, but considering that I've been reading your comic for quite a while, I know there is really a lot more to your comic than the blurb lets on, and I think other people should know that.

The plot of your story is essentially about a rock who's "the chosen one," and while the audience (and Kimura) can clearly tell he's just a regular rock, everything still seems to work out for him, which makes it funny. You can play off that humor by saying something like:

Rocky is the hero of legend: capable of doing the impossible, not afraid of anything, faster than the human eye, and also a rock. But even with the strength of his friends pushing him, will he have what it takes to save the world?

Or well something along the lines of that. Basically, hype up Rocky a ton in that first sentence and then top it off with the fact that he's a rock. I based it on the first page of your comic, where Rocky is essentially hyped up that much and then he falls over cuz...well he's a rock lol (https://tapas.io/episode/803424)

PS: I hope you appreciate that pun I made about his friends pushing him lol. You can take it out if you want tho. I just felt like doing a silly thing there :blep:

Thanks a lot for the feedback! :grin: will think about how to balance the hype and length.

Appreciate the pun :relieved:

Ah thank you for looking into it. Yeah, that's a good question. In chapter 5 (next chapter to publish) the story actually introduces Andrew's brother Jason since the focus is shifted away from Andrew for now. Hence why I put both of them in the title, but I can see the confusion that it brings with it.

The 'actual description' is not for the whole story... That's why I kept those extra sentences. That para is for the subversion of the trope of 'boy meets girl and the story begins'. I dislike that with a passion in most cases cuz how cliche it gets but I do want to tell a general story which is why the 2nd para is there.

I might cut this part out tho. It does look kinda unnecessary to me now.

I hadn't considered this! Thanks so much for the help! I'll try to get it in shape! :muscle:

that don't exactly tell the story but rather try to make a "vibe," if that makes sense. It may seem cool at first (and trust me your sentences do sound really lovely), but that means more work for readers to find out what your story is actually about. You don't wanna do that cuz you risk losing their interest in actually reading the story. Go straight to the point and remove all the extra sentences.

thanks for making this topic! I definitely need help with blurbs and it's hard to find opportunities to get criticism for them.

Shiro is an energetic martial artist with a big heart whose friend was corrupted by power. He'll do whatever it takes to show him the light, but can you change someone that doesn't want to change?


mind if I throw in a few blurbs for short stories I haven't posted yet? you don't gotta do all of them if you don't want.
Timmy's Angel:

Timmy is a sweet, shy kid forced to endure harsh bullying. Little does he know, an Angel is looking out for him.

Celestial Terrestrial:

Caleb Connors is dragged into a fight for his life when an unstable man with unholy powers tries to kill his Guardian Angel. Can the unlikely duo find the strength to defeat him?

Xenoscape:

When the lively and hopeful Tara finds herself stranded in a mind-bending alien realm, she must conquer its unknown dangers to survive - Until she asks herself if surviving is a replacement for being happy.

Larger Than Death:

When a mysterious, happy-go-lucky man descends into Hell in search of immortality, he invokes the murderous wrath of Hell's King. Will he reach eternal life or be killed on the spot? only his true identity holds the answer.

Haha yes, that's Bomeo's cousin~

Awesome to know there was no confusion for you, hehe.
So far, lots of comments or feedback we got (from outside Tapas) is that the reader was confused/ surprised/ shocked that Bomeo isn't a real cat as they read on, so we can't help but think maybe something was not portrayed clearly somewhere in the 1st ep or the blurb. Since you're able to tell that from the blurb alone, maybe it's how Bomeo was portrayed in Ep 1, idk xD Will have to spend some more time to analyze.

Thanks so much for the help though~

Ok, let's do this, I'm really thrilled, and see if it's the case to change it or not!
Here is the link to my series:

Aight
Description

Some call it fate, some call it the universe working its magic, call it what you want, when two strangers with intertwined destinies meet...

But what if you are the stranger himself?

Link

Alright you kept it nice and short. I do wanna make some fixes to that first sentence tho:

Shiro is a martial artist with a big heart and a friend who was corrupted by power. He'll do whatever it takes to show him the light, but can you change someone who doesn't want to change?

Since it's a one-shot comic, there's not many details to it that need to be covered in the blurb, so I guess this is good for now.

Looking at your other blurbs, you seem to have this recurring thing where you totally understand the idea of keeping it short but you still have a lot of adjectives that can make it a bit hard to understand. People move fast on the internet, so you gotta catch up with them:

Timmy's Angel
Timmy is a shy kid forced to endure bullying. Little does he know an angel is looking out for him.

Celestial Terrestrial
Caleb Connors is dragged into the fight of his life when a man with unholy powers tries to kill his guardian angel. Can the unlikely duo find the strength to defeat him?
(for this one, I just think "the fight of his life" would be better than "a fight for his life" since it's a more common phrase and more intense sounding)

Xenoscape
When Tara finds herself stranded in a mind-bending alien realm, she must conquer its dangers to survive. But can surviving ever be a replacement for being happy?

Larger Than Death
When a mysterious man descends into Hell in search of immortality, he invokes the wrath of its King. Will he reach eternal life or be killed on the spot? Only his true identity holds the answer.

You don't really need to explain the personalities of the characters unless it's like a super important thing to the plot (for example, I didn't think it was that important to know that Shiro from Goodbye, Rival is energetic). Your readers will understand their personalities when they read the story.

thanks for your review! from what I've heard, character is very important for hooking people, so I tried to make sure their personalities are in the blurb and I guess adjectives ended up being my way of doing it. I'll keep in mind not to use them that much if they confuse people.
also,

But can surviving ever be a replacement for being happy?

I was really struggling to phrase that sentence well, but I think you nailed it. thanks!

Your blurb has a nice length, but I feel like there's a bunch of unique terms to your story that kinda make it confusing to read (like the Dreamers, Echo, and Gaia). A thing us fantasy writers gotta deal with is how to explain unique terms in our stories, and I feel like it might be best to leave that to the story itself, unless we can quickly define them in the blurb.

Alfredo Ventura is a young boy who always wanted to be a Dreamer, the powerful heroes of his favorite storybook. Yet he is unaware of the power that already resides in him, which can bring peace to the World of Gaia once and for all.

I think the blurb could also use some more information from the comic's plot too. I'm a bit confused where Alfredo is actually. When I read the prologue, I thought he was a kid in our world just reading a regular fantasy book, and then I expected that he would somehow get "isekaied" into the book. But then I go through "Starchild" and apparently he's always lived in Gaia? I will say I don't really have a lot of time to look through these stories I'm reviewing, so I mostly skim and might miss some information. So I'd like to know what actually happened to him, and maybe we can add that to the blurb.