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Oct 2021

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.

Well, the only thing that happened in the time skip was that he got separated by his mother, otherwise, He always was in Gaia, being what came after earth as the Lorebook implied.
Although, that little suggestion could be useful indeed, I really appreciated this review overal.

Edit: although I admit I did it a bit as a “Isekai-bait” since I wanted the shock factor to be that it’s not actually an Isekai (since it a a bit over-satured as a genre, I wanted to play with some bait and switch eh eh)

@Awesomeness_Studios Would this sound better?
Alfredo Ventura is a young boy who always wanted to be a Dreamer, one of 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, despite all the obstacles He will have to face following the separation from his family, and the changes He brought into the life of many, in a series of Stories that will lead to his growth.

Okay a major issue with this blurb is that it tells very little about the actual story. I decided to read the first few episodes and WOW there is so much going on that you don't even tell in your blurb. Don't sell yourself short and just say what the plot is. Let's actually list those plot points:

  • Two guys with the same appearance and the same name meet each other one day
  • They get taken by two odd strangers
  • Apparently there's different universes and they need to work together save the three Earths from destruction

I'm pretty short on personal time so I can't really afford to read the whole thing, so this is what I got from what I read. I think you can do something like:

Two strangers with the same name and face meet one day and are taken on an interdimensional quest to save the multiverse.

Definitely you can add some more sentences to hint more that happens in your story (maybe with what happens when they make contact :nervous_candy:), but I think this would be a good starting point. You have a very unique story, so definitely market that as much as possible.

Hmm, I'm a bit on the edge about it, since that last sentence then becomes a run-on sentence, making it more difficult to read. We can still keep the part about being separated from his family though:

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

Actually wait, as I'm writing this I got an idea to end this blurb in a question:

Alfredo Ventura is a young boy who always wanted to be a Dreamer, the powerful heroes of his favorite storybook. But when he must separate from his family, he discovers the power that already resides in him. Is it enough to bring peace to the World of Gaia once and for all?

I'm sorry for not thinking of this earlier, but sometimes question endings can help with getting the reader interested, since it isn't entirely specified how the story will end and now they have to read it to find out :supicious_stache:. But I'll leave it to you to pick which one you prefer.

While the separation wasn't an agreed decision, but rather an accident, I can say that this suggestion was much better, although I've decided that the final version will be something more akin to this:
"Alfredo Ventura is a young boy who always looked up to be a Dreamer, powerful heroes of his bedtime stories. But after he got separated from his family, he discovers a power that already resides in him. Will it be enough to bring change to the World of Gaia, for the better?"

Would love to hear your thoughts on mine. I've tried to make it shorter in the past since it uses almost all the characters Webtoons gives, but could never figure out what I should remove.

OH that is really helpful!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
I actually did not want to spoil much of the story so I made the blurb as small as possible, but yes I will make the changes. Thank you again.

mine is yet to be released but i'd love to hear your thoughts on my blurb as well!

description:
Across the galaxies, there is a book club hosted by four deities. From tragedies to passionate endings, Fate, Rebirth, Love, and Time are nothing more than ancient readers drunk on stories. And in order to savour such fables, they have devised a single consciousness that would act as their eyes and ears—a dimension traveller, in other words.

This traveller only has one purpose: to convey the worldly attachments of each and every storybook to these gods. So when a mysterious existence starts making their presence known and leaving their own mark within the pages, all for the traveller to find, a curiosity begins to blossom.

Perhaps there are more secrets that the universe holds, and perhaps it can be found in the Library of the Versescape.

Oof sorry i abandoned this thread for 3 days, but I'm back to do more blurbs.

So for this blurb, you got the general idea down, but it can still be shortened. A good tip to use when you don't know how to shorten it is to just list down the main ideas, and then turn that into the blurb.

  • Science company is modifying memories
  • A group of people are fighting against it
  • There's a chance they could get caught

A new science company has discovered a way to modify memories, and now the majority of the population has undergone the procedure. Believing this to be a secret scheme to take over the world, a resistance group formed to fight against it in the shadows, knowing the risk of getting caught and all their memories rewritten.

So you can do something along the lines of this, or change it if you still feel like something is missing. A couple sentences should be what you aim for however.

Thanks for your feedback! You've given me an idea on how to shorten my current summary.

Ooooh that's an awesome idea :smiley: are you still open?

If yes, I would be really happy, if you could give you oppinion on this intro. I'm not that creative, when it comes to wording, so I struggled quite alot to finally got this one down :,D

Description
In the morning Osram was just an unlucky treasure-hunter, now she plays a fake girlfriend for a strange guy. What for? Money of course. But will those two knuckle-heads realise, there are some dark foes planning something? Probably not.

Sorry for occasionally forgetting to check on this thread. I have quite a busy life so this often goes past my thoughts. Sorry about this, and unfortunately I would expect this more often in the future :sweat_01:

A common mistake I see with blurbs is that they are far too long. Aim for 1-3 sentences, because most of the time a good story can be summed up like that. Let's list the basic points of the story

  • Fate, Rebirth, Love, and Time have a book club
  • They created a being (Astra) to travel the worlds in their books for them
  • A mysterious person is messing with all the stories and Astra has to find out who this person is

Four dieties host a book club to satisfy their hunger for stories. In order to fully engage with these fables, they create a being to travel through the worlds within these pages for them. But when a mysterious person appears and the stories begin to change, the traveller grows curious: perhaps there are more secrets that the universe of the Versescape holds

Essentially something like that can be done for your blurb, of course if there are any other details missing that you feel are important too, feel free to add them.

thank you so much!!! i’ll be taking that into account. i thought it’d be easier to explain the traveller’s purpose in the blurb but it does feel like it’ll be conveyed anyway through the story. thank you again!