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Aug 2021

Hey, everyone! Just wanted to let you know, since it's the Internet and we all expect instant replies haha, that I'll be making my way through all of your posts over the weekend :blush: Thank you for dropping by and please bear with me :heart:

Thanks for doing this!

Here's mine-

Fighting over the most ridiculous stuff, trying to escape punishments using all sorts of tricks, bemoaning the non-existent cafeteria or perhaps, the soaring price of the food there.

Arguing like mad with friends but then going back to them only, when loneliness sets in.

Skipping assemblies, cursing the march past, the freedom of the PE period and the 'official' bunking for school events.

The care of teachers, the craziness of friends, the feeling of first love and the endless notorious escapes...ah, those were the days, our cherished...school days!

Congratulations :slight_smile: Could you please paste the content of the blurb as a post in this topic, for easier editing?

Haha, glad you liked it! Of course, go for it :blush:

Happy to help! And yes, that's always the dilemma, heh. As authors, we feel like everything we put into the story is iMpOrTaNt lol, so it's hard to pick and choose.

Maybe you could work those specific words in - survival vs happiness. Off the top of my head, something like...

Survival vs happiness is the name of the game as lively, hopeful Tara ends up stranded in a mind-bending alien realm. She must conquer its unknown dangers to survive...but will she be happy?

Wild improvisation lol. And I just realised I'm not entirely sure what you mean by survival vs happiness :sweat_smile:

Haha, all right, then!

Ok so this whole first part reads like an exposition. It's all a very interesting set-up, but I have a feeling this is either a previous book or some sort of backstory, and I can't tell yet what it is that I will be reading about.

Here is where the story finally begins, and we only get 3 vague sentences about it. Is Fall the protagonist? What about this distant world? Ok so all the rest was his past, but if he needs to let go of it, why are we reading about it in the blurb? If the story is going to be about Fall on this new world, then I would like to know what his present/future conflict will be on there, rather than what's already happened and I won't be reading about. If that makes sense? Let me know if it doesn't :sweat_smile:

Haha, thank you! Hope I can help :slight_smile:

This is a good start! I would maybe connect the sentences with a comma, rather than a period, like this:

Chippo wakes up surrounded by an eternal mist, not knowing how he got here or why he's all alone.

This is where I get a bit confused. How do the ordered packages come into play? If he is in some place he doesn't know, how does he end up ordering packages? :thinking: Or are they packages he'd ordered before getting isekai'd? Also, the sender is unknown, which doesn't add up with ordered - if Chippo had ordered those packages, then he would know who sent them. Do you think you could clarify that point in the blurb somehow?

Here's mine

Akilah, a 17-year-old girl is broken when she finds the headless corpse of her childhood best friend Adara. Adara had been wrongfully accused of cheating on her soon-to-be husband, the King of their nation, a man who had been blinded by deceiving people. The perpetrators behind Adara’s wrongful death were many but none of them were exposed or held accountable for it.

Life is unfair - those are the first words uttered by Akilah after burying the headless corpse of her best friend, Adara. Desperate and on the brink of insanity she decides to make a deal with the devil in order to gain power and rewind back time. Will the deal workout in Akilah favor; will she be able to save Adara from the monsters that killed her or will history repeat itself?

This is overall good as a blurb, it sets up the character and the story nicely. I do have some grammar and structure adjustments, though, and I will improvise a bit on some details, feel free to correct if I'm off the mark.

After a break-up, Lia Lin Ai got into a fatal car accident. Strangely, a cupid offers her a second chance at life, putting Lia Lin Ai's soul into the body of a girl with a similar name. Without the memories of said girl, can Lin Ai live her life? What happens when her old connections come into the picture?

Ok, so, this packs a lot of info, which is great, but I'm having some trouble following the structure. I'm going to try to re-write this in a way I think would be clearer:

Li Yuan, Emperor of Tang Dynasty, Empress Fang, and Concubine Wu are in an entanglement. Two sons are born - the battle for the position of Empress begins.

Bloodshed and betrayal are the norm at the imperial court, and history tends to repeat itself. With one innocent already ruined and the land turned chaotic, the palace schemes of the three individuals will dictate the fate of the Tang Dynasty.

Will they choose right or wrong?

This sounds very interesting, but I think for the genre you're writing in, quite generic. Your last sentence could potentially apply to most VR stories out there. So I need to know what is it about your protagonist or your story's conflict that should make choose this one, over all the others. Who is your protagonist? And what is their specific story?

That's true! Hope I can help :slight_smile:

I like that you're introducing us to Asura right away, but that first sentence is a bit of a run-on. And if he's already 'infamous', then I can imagine his powers would be 'intimidating'. How about...

Asura, a demon infamous for his cruel tactics, is betrayed by his only friend on his journey to becoming the demon king.

I really like that second sentence! Hints at an intriguing exploration of human nature.

The ending here is great lol. But I would work a bit on sentence structure.

Asura struggles with his studies, despite all the hard work he's put in. So he resorts to his old demon tactics to tackle the challenges that fall upon him and his classmates.

Haha, all right! Well, if the novel is huge, then you definitely need a couple of paragraphs to give readers a taste of what they're getting into.

I don't think your big blurb is that long! It's just that it focuses too much on Suren's internal turmoil, and without knowing who she is, or what her world is, the reader is going to have a hard time relating to her or understanding what the novel's conflict is supposed to be.

Only when I re-read the blurb for a second time on your carrd, did I notice the mad prophet erased from history, which - as a reader who knows nothing about your story - is the most interesting detail at first glance. If you think about it, all protagonists and all worlds are tortured in some way, that's what generates conflict. So in your blurb you have to focus on that one spark in your story that makes it stand out from the usual fare in similar genres.

I'm going to attempt a re-write based on my understanding of your story so far, you are free to use it however you like, or ignore it completely haha:

Sorrowful princess Suren is growing fed up with seeing her people suffer under the old rule.

A dynastic thirst for power has ruined generations of royals, and the realm along with them. Before she loses herself completely, however, Suren makes a terrible discovery: a danger prophesied by a madman erased from history is now all too real.

Suren must find her strength to finish what the mad prophet had started. She must fight for the sake of her people. As she journeys through the Jade Kingdom, gathering allies, the princess realizes she is far from alone in her sorrow. The time has come for change and Suren will see to it that history remembers.

Hope that helps!

It's nice to see what Ruby wants, because that sets it up to conflict with what she actually gets, but for a blurb, I think this could start better with where she is right now. Like..what is her status quo before whatever it is that sets off her journey? Because then when David Marquis comes into the picture, the reader doesn't know which picture that is.

That's a pretty wild finish, haha, but I don't understand very well how it ties in to the rest of Ruby's struggles. So if you could maybe tell me a bit more about the status quo she starts from, I could try to rearrange some stuff around, see if I can clear it all up.

Aww, thank you soo much! :heart_01: That really means a lot :heart_decoration: I'm excited to share it with everyone on August 19th!

Perfect! I was scared a little there since if it's uber shite I have to redo the first chapter. (synopsis is baked into the first chapter)

Backstory indeed. Already planned to be explored.

The final part, no matter how I looked at it I couldn't reveal more because it's heavily tied to the backstory and becomes a huge spoiler. Also the first part is just that. Surviving, meeting people finding a new home, discovering the planet.

Thank you for the patience and the time. This was the first feedback I ever got on synopsis.

Ah, I see! Maybe you can include just that - surviving, meeting people, finding a new home, discovering the planet. This is not immediately obvious in the current set up.

Happy to help! Thanks for dropping by :blush:

No problem~

Ok, so this is all a very interesting slice-of-life mosaic, though I do have to ask - is this for an anthology of school-related stories, or is there one protagonist in particular whose journey we're following? If it's the latter, then we need to see that person and focus on them in the blurb.

Woah okay that's brutal :flushed: Not sure if I would include a headless corpse in the blurb, but to be fair, it does catch the eye :sweat_smile: It makes me wonder, though, what genre do you classify your story as? Unless it's something horror, or mature, I would maybe go for something like:

17-year-old Akilah is traumatized by the gruesome death of her childhood best friend, Adara.

I'm not sure I understand the deceiving part. Do you mean that deceitful people blinded the King? Or do you mean the King deceived people, which blinded him in the end? If you mean the former, I would recommend using deceitful instead of deceiving to avoid confusion.

The repetition here is unnecessary. Life is unfair - those are the first words uttered by Akilah after Adara's burial.

I really like the stakes and conflict here! One small thing, though - I would replace the semicolon with a question mark and make that two separate sentences. So, like: Will the deal work out in Akilah's favor? Will she be able to save Adara from the monsters that killed her or will history repeat itself?

My pleasure! :blush:

Yay, glad I could help! :smiley: