One sentence book descriptions

Apr 20, 2018 keywords are the breadcrumbs you leave that allow readers to find your book, and they play an especially important role in the blurb where you explain what your book is about. Ive written a onesentence overview of every book of the bible. Youll use your onesentence summary when you or your agent pitches the idea to your editor. About 25 words that capture your novel, memoir, or nonfiction book. Add description to one of your lists below, or create a new one. If you go for three or more sentences, that can be fine. When she returns from a walk and tells some one about it, her descriptions are accurate and vivid. The shorter version its handy for bios, blog interviews, and promotion sites like bookbub, which require much shorter descriptions. Nov 17, 2011 the iliad homer during siege of troy, the arrogant, yet powerful, achilles refuses to fight over a stolen woman, changes his mind after friend is killed. A good one makes you want to open it immediately to see what is inside.

Apr 09, 2014 to drive this deeper, create a one sentence job description for each of your direct reports. Best one sentence summary advanced fiction writing. And while job descriptions are still necessary, and the more descriptive the better, its also important to be able to encapsulate what a person does in a onesentence job description. Many times, ill see blocks of text, pulled from the back cover of the book, used as promotion. It has all sorts of usesfrom your email signoff to encouraging wordofmouth buzz. Now, with one idea at its heart, you should easily be able to craft your book descriptions. It pays to take time to make sure you have one idea big enough to support a booklength tale. Those are the questions readers want answered before theyll buy a book.

But you know where i found some fantastic, concise, summary grabbers. Apr 30, 2018 id like to post about some of the book basics that ive found particularly challenging, starting with the one sentence book summary. Social media platforms explained in one sentence each. Its one sentence that defines the story question for your novel. King lear tries to retire by giving land away to his three. Why everyone on your team needs a one sentence job description. One of the services i provide is a newsletter and blog 1 where i summarize technologies e. The best advice i ever got on constructing a onesentence pitch came from author lisa scottoline, who ran a seminar i attended a couple of years ago. How to write a one sentence pitch nathan bransford. Dec 26, 2010 the book length sentence is a literary genre in itself, though one few writers have had the nerve to tackle. One sentence guides to 16 great books the iliad homer.

Before you can create a logline, you will need to understand where your book is going. Technically the list of descriptions may provide two or three separate facts about the word that youre describing, but in practice, they dont deserve equal attention. Onesentence book description writing a first novel, how. Solar bones by mike mccormack, middle england by jonathan coe, fieldwork in ukrainian sex by oksana zabuzhko, the las. The one sentence, one paragraph, and two paragraph pitch. Use descriptions in a sentence descriptions sentence examples. I dont want to oversell the importance of a one sentence pitch. How can one convey all the color, the introspection and thematic concerns of such lengthy, important works in a single sentence. No matter how big the job is, you can boil it down to one sentence. The book description is the pitch to the reader about why they should buy your book. What is your one sentence how to be heard in the age of. Single sentence novel wins goldsmiths prize for books that. So the ones i need descriptions and examples for arethe crooked. Your editor will use your one sentence summary again.

In stripping a canonical novel to its component parts, the texts are injected with a certain absurdity upon realizing just how many famous literary characters are truly insane. Hamlet shakespeare angsty danish prince broods, seemingly goes crazy, and kills many, including his uncle, who had killed his father and married his mother. The art of writing onesentence product descriptions. The above amazon book description generator will help you to create those beautiful descriptions with just a couple of clicks of a button. Lets discuss the onesentence summary, also known as a logline, a hook, or a onesentence pitch. A onesentence summary clinic advanced fiction writing. Usually job descriptions are a page or several pages of different roles and responsibilities. Heres what well cover about how to write amazon book descriptions. Once you have your one sentence pitch down pat the rest of your descriptions will be gravy. The professional, the spooky, the wronged are the ones that already have descriptions and examples in the book. This is one of the best book descriptions ive read.

Thanks to the programming side of the kindlepreneur team, weve created a book description generator that anyone can use, without having to know html. Books of the bible in one sentence september 26, 2012 caseyrclark reading tips tags. In a nutshell, the one sentence job description explains the essential purpose that you fill in your organization. Brief one sentence description of each playbook and examples. He received the book of mormon, founded the modernday church of jesus christ the leader of the last dispensation of time. Apr 18, 2017 part of the art of the one sentence description is knowing your audience.

The word in the example sentence does not match the entry word. Brief one sentence description of each playbook and. One sentence to describe church presidents the millennial star. Apr 12, 2017 however, crafting this sentence is one of the most strategic decisions a founder can make. How to separate a list of descriptions with commas dummies. Below, are some one sentence descriptions of some of the best books ever written and a few of my personal favorites.

Part of the art of the onesentence description is knowing your audience. For example, sometimes a few descriptive words seem to blend into each other to create one larger description in which one word is clearly more important than the rest. From beyond the grave, the true limits of a mothers love are tested. The books of the bible in one sentence quick descriptions of the bigger themes of books well come across in the next few months. Last week i outlined the general necessity of whittling down your plot to one sentence, one paragraph, and two paragraph pitches in order to give yourself a head start on the literally thousands of times you are going to need to summarize your work over the course of a books lifetime today i want to zero in on the one sentence pitch.

It may also be called a pitch, a oneliner, or a longline the latter is often used by screenwriters for their scripts. Oct 08, 2019 elevator pitches focus on the core of your bookthe one element that your book could not be withoutand thats what matters most to your reader. Here are a couple of examples which im going to steal from my book. Figuring out this sentence can focus your product development on the inputs and outputs that really matter.

In the meantime, you can feign familiarity with centuries of great literature by semimemorizing these onesentence guides. Your editor will use it when she presents your book to the publishing committee if the editor doesnt have the authority to buy a book. Jeremiah he was given the tough task of announcing the destruction of judah, pointing out their sin. Why everyone on your team needs a one sentence job. Jul 12, 2018 writing a one sentence description is always a big burden for the author, because every story contains numerous ideas, suggestions and messages, dozens of which can be precious for the readers, but the author must choose only one message. If you want more, ive linked to quick, 3minute guides to every book of the bible, too. Thats the 150300 word version in your book description. Come next month, a new one will probably be popping up.

Keywords are the breadcrumbs you leave that allow readers to find your book, and they play an especially important role in the blurb where you explain what your book is about. Elevator pitches focus on the core of your bookthe one element that your book could not be withoutand thats what matters most to your reader. T oday i came across a blog post from kem meyercommunications director at granger community church. People can talk on and on about every scene and line from their favorite movie, but if you want a real challenge, try explaining your favorite movie in just one sentence. One of my favorite stories is for jt mccormicks book, i got there. Oct 07, 2009 i have always heard one paragraph, not one sentence, though i dont have a credit for that. To drive this deeper, create a one sentence job description for each of your direct reports. Ive been able to make my story description elevator pitch length, but not logline yet. Pitch your book like its a movie the one sentence synopsis. Her post is titled, we scrapped our job descriptions, and in it kem articulates the following exercise that helped each staff member on their. What is your one sentence how to be heard in the age of short attention spans mimi goss on. Theyre listed in the order they show up in the protestant bible. And believe,once you get into the book,you will not care about the writing or.

Friday afternoon, while at catalyst, i heard andy stanley talk about the onesentence job description. Angsty danish prince broods, seemingly goes crazy, and kills many. The art of writing onesentence product descriptions hacker. Use descriptions in a sentence descriptions sentence. In his words, his career involved 10 years spent learning. Jun 17, 2009 t oday i came across a blog post from kem meyercommunications director at granger community church. Popular one long sentence books goodreads share book. Onesentence book description i subscribe to various writing newsletters, and more out of procrastination than anything else i decided to go through the months and months of backlogs to see if i could find anything that would help me with my current publishing quest, namely how to find the right publisher that might want to publish my book.

It grabs you from the first sentence, and forces you to read the rest, which is short and to the point. Since it is his first book it gives the credentials of mckernan, then explains what the book is about, where it came from, states the huge question it addresses, and it does so in a way that creates an emotional reaction. Writing a onesentence description is always a big burden for the author, because every story contains numerous ideas, suggestions and messages, dozens of which can be precious for the readers, but the author must choose only one message. Here are the winners of the onesentence pitch competition.

It might help to write short summaries of your book long before you finish it. The start of a query, book proposal, or anytime someone asks you, whats your. When it comes to fiction, buyers have a lot of options, so your opening sentence should be the best youve gotbecause it. When you try and select a movie on cable, you see loglines all the time. There are so many social media platforms out there today, it is difficult to remember which one does what.

Although thats not a bad idea, youll want to make sure that the. One sentence guides to 16 great books huffpost life. A logline is a one sentence synopsis of your story. Not so easy when you think about it, but that doesnt mean its impossible, especially when you focus on its bad points, no matter how many of few there are. Description definition in the cambridge english dictionary. If you want your product to be shared by word of mouth, then you must accept that it will likely pass from person to person as a single sentence. Sometimes that insight is the thesis of the book itself, sometimes its a minor detail that made an impact. This punches all the right buttons for those who read this kind of novel. Its hard enough boiling our stories down to a query letter let alone a single sentence, but we all have to do it. How to improve your amazon book descriptions jane friedman. This is so common, actually, that it sometimes seems most of the stories i read are of this type. Quebec author who wrote novel with descriptions of child sexual abuse ends up with a charge of production of child pornography and his publisher with charge of dissemination of child porn.

When it comes to fiction, buyers have a lot of options, so your opening sentence should be the best youve gotbecause it might be the only chance you get. Id like to post about some of the book basics that ive found particularly challenging, starting with the onesentence book summary. Ive been asked to dig up the following previously posted article on book pitches for those who might need a little help before this weekends spring. A onesentence summary is a description of your book in 25 words or less. Youve probably noticed many descriptions end with a questionand thats because it works. In between really straightforward but fascinating descriptions of the whaling industry, a wayward, lonely. Onesentence paragraphs make powerful prose the worlds greatest book posted on june 16, 2014 by dave bricker june 17, 2014 s earch for onesentence paragraph on the internet and youll mostly find questions about whether writing them is even an acceptable practice. Talking about a movie is as much fun as watching it. The spooky, the wronged are the ones that already have descriptions and examples in the book. But the act of condensing isnt necessarily aimed at that goal. The exploration of parts of the new world next brought to hand descriptions and specimens of many novel forms of animal life, and in the latter part of the 16th century and the medical beginning of the 17th that careful study by special anatomists of the structure a. This last book contains a summary of the arguments on either side, a full bibliography of works on the subject. Here is a stab at onesentence descriptions of church presidents.

For this blog post we take a look at eight of the most popular social media platforms and define them in one sentence using phrases from the associated companies websites. Your one sentence is that irreducible part of your message that you want your audience to remember. Sticking with mark dawsons book descriptions as an example, here is part of a blurb from another one of his thrillers. The concept has been bouncing around inside my head all weekend long, and i have to say i am quite taken by the concept. Youll use your one sentence summary when you or your agent pitches the idea to your editor. By onesentence novels, i mean something more than a book that comes to a deeply satisfying and comprehensive conclusion, like i been there before huckleberry finn. Boiling down classic tomes to a single sentence may seem like a pointless exercise.

The very idea strikes fear into the hearts of many writers. Theyre in no way exhaustive, but they may help give you a start and can serve as a quick reference. Jan 09, 2010 response to describe a book in one sentence. A onesentence summary takes your complex book with. Your editor will use it when she presents your book to the publishing committee if the editor doesnt have the authority to buy a. Steve martin was one of the most successful comedians of his generation. For instance, i operate a directory of technology for teachers.

There are so many examples of how book descriptions lead to huge changes in sales. Yeah it has its problems like the written style but this book has one of the best story plots i have ever read about. Were talking about character descriptions, after all its quite literally in the name. The start of a query, book proposal, or anytime someone asks you. Its really not something that is going to sink or float your book.

Every book description needs some sort of intriguing tag at the end, one that readers will crave an answer for. And in todays age of information overload and short attention. Jun 27, 2009 here is a stab at onesentence descriptions of church presidents. Of course it wouldnt be if i didnt give it some tweaks continue reading. The one sentence pitch for your manuscript writing for children. My main struggle is that i have a paranormal protagonist. Your one sentence pitch is a very condensed, supertight yet concise description of your story, specifically the plot of your story. This is a lot to take in, so if you want to start with baby steps, check out this list of the shortest books of the bible. Right on tv, while thumbing through the channel guide. How to write a book description that sells with examples. In the case of fiction, this will be a ministory in its own right. You dont need to, but its a good test of where you are on the path.