What are your tips on writing a synopsis for your comic/novel?

[smokesalty]

Heyo, I've been thinking about what other people's advice is on writing their descriptions for their work, and I also have some of my own!

DISCLAIMER- this is straight up just my personal opinion, it doesn't work for everyone. But if you find it useful, awesome!

1. Make sure your first sentence is intriguing- keep in mind that a lot of sites (especially webtoon) only show a bit of the description before a reader has to click to expand. Use that first sentence to hook in the reader!

2. Short but punchy- Let's be real, a lot of people don't want to be reading through a block of text. If you can, try to keep it short! If you are going for a longer synopsis, just make sure the beginning part of it gives the reader enough of a hook!

3. Try and make the tone of the synopsis match with your story! If you're writing a comedy you may want to make the more light hearted voice, while something that is dark will have much more serious tone. It can really help establish your genre.

What are your guys' tips? I'd love to hear them.

[darthmongoose]

Be humble. The selling point of your novel or comic should be that just describing the premise makes it sound good. If you try to hype yourself up as the creator or to tell people it's good, you'll come off sounding a bit immature and like you're trying too hard to sell it.

So AVOID:

• "Errant is a Webcomic by Kate Holden." - Yes...we can see that it's a webcomic, and my name would only be relevant information in the blurb if I was so famous that it probably wouldn't need saying. It being by me isn't a big draw. Stuff like this just makes you sound like you think you're a big deal, which is embarrassing if nobody has a clue who you are.
• "Errant is a fantastic, heartwarming adventure that'll astonish you with amazing art!" - Look, if you put your comic online and promote it, I assume that you think it's good work that people should read by default. Endorsements of the quality of the work are only relevant when they're from famous creators or critics. Also let the art speak for itself. If it looks good, it looks good, telling people it's good probably won't change their opinion, especially coming from the person who drew it.

But also.... don't throw yourself a pity party in the blurb. Literally nothing will put me off a blurb faster than:

"Just a badly drawn little comic by a random loser. Tune in for random adventures every thursday... or don't."

(I see this so much and I really hate it. Like if you don't think your comic is entertaining, why put it online and promote it? Why would I want to read something even the creator thinks isn't worth my time???)

Drop a brief description of what the comic is about without trying to tell the reader how they should feel about it and let them decide for themselves!

[LouisWinter]

A strategy I see on Netflix is that movie's story synopsis are written in a cheeky manner or as if a character is talking about the movie instead of just an informative description.
for example:

"What's more stressful than being a spy in a criminal organization? Hiring convicted criminals to be the spy in a said organization. If they want a second chance at life, they'd better keep it professional.

"A group of convicts are hired to take down a crime syndicate for a chance at new start."

[TheLemmaLlama]

This is also my opinion basically; I'd say our perspectives overlap a bit but are also quite different:

1. Have focus. If you rely on your description to attract general readers who aren't looking for anything in particular, you don't want your description to say 'this story has X, Y, Z, W and G'. To a reader skimming over your description, that many things just aren't going to stick; it'll all blend together and they'll walk away confused about what the premise of your comic even is. Instead, you want your description to say 'this story does X. It does so much X that it's the most X comic you'll ever read'.

(Though I think you might want to do the opposite if you're banking on 'searchers' who are actively looking for specific things in comics, in which case it might help to have a variety of keywords in your descriptions and let it function like a set of hashtags :P)

2. Prioritize punchy over short. If you try too hard to cram your description into a tiny amount of space, it often ends up sounding dry (or at least that's what tends to happen for me :'D). At least if I'm on someone's page already, I'm generally willing to skim a description about the length of this paragraph x2 :]

3. If you're stuck, a verbatim description of your intent/vision for your story is surprisingly effective. Even if it breaks the 4th wall. I have taken an interest in a number of comics just from listening to creators talking about them on these forums, but when I read the descriptions for those same comics, the vast majority of them are ones I would've skipped over. Just copy-pasting their comment into their description would be better than a description that makes their story sound like yet another typical story of their genre :]

[smokesalty]

I agree! Honestly, it's fine for synopsis' to go through a bunch of revisions. And yeah, if a story needs longer to explain it's plot then it should absolutely do that- just as long as the description is interesting and clearly gives the reader a reason to read it!

[powerplantanimations]

For That Stick Figure Isekai, I have two (or more) synopsis in store as the story moves on.

As you reach a certain point in the story to where things become completely different, I update the synopsis about what's REALLY going on, but I still leave the readers in the dark about certain details just to lure them in.

I figure maybe if someone has a story that shifts, they could do that.

[bronte448]

How about a blurb that mentions important aspects about the characters to make them relatable, and then PAM - throws the biggest danger in the whole story right in your face to make you go, "Wait, WHAT?! I need to know more!" My blurb as an example:

He's a skeleton with way too much power and way too little responsibility.
She's a human who has never experienced magic ever in her life.
Odds are they would never meet, but the Underverse works in mysterious ways.
Can they save her world and the Underverse in general, or will their inner demons destroy them?

Here's the link if the blurb did its job right!

[system]

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