Hello! So i’ve officially written a blurb for a pirate/sirens/paranormal novel and I’d love some extra eyes to make it the best it can be. I appreciate all help!
A pirate crew. A family of sirens. One path to choose.
When forced to marry a man she doesn’t love, Lucille joins a pirate crew as a boy to escape. The other secret she has to face daily is that she can see and speak to the dead. All thanks to the ghost who haunts the Charmaine. Along the way, she learns the ropes of life on the sea and makes a few friends along the way. She just has to learn never to get too close.
Captain Oliver Shaw is a man of honor and as Lucille Farrow starts to notice, she unwillingly wants to experience the forbidden romance every chance she gets. Slowly, the truth begins to unravel until the entire crew discovers who she really is, and then do things begin a turn for the worst.
When sirens attack the ship, Lucille is the only one who can save her family. One bite from a siren is all it takes until her pirate life is ripped away. Having no choice, she leaves the crew and finds herself swimming amongst sirens and fighting the urge to rip men apart for survival.
As the events of curses, ghosts, and murder unfold, Lucille finds herself back where she started—on board the Charmaine with the Captain. When she gets a vision of a war between her two worlds, she has the choice to decide between love or hiding away from the world for the monster she’s become.
I must mention this is not a wattpad story, but rather going to be published so its a longer blurb like similar titles within my genre in the same industry.
my primary concern is that it may tell too much, depending on where your starting point is in the story and how long it takes you to get through the plot points the blurb describes. like, do we start with her running away and joining a pirate crew? how many chapters are spent with her working with this pirate crew before them uncovering her true identity and the siren incident? because as a reader i personally would find it a bit of a slog to read through several chapters of the exposition before getting to plot outside of what’s mentioned on the blurb. particularly, the blurb spoiling that she is eventually accepted by the pirate crew once they find out her secret will take a lot of the punch out of any suspenseful encounters in the actual book dealing with this, and knowing from the beginning that she is forced to leave her crew due to becoming a siren may also soften the emotional blow. of course, this is all dependent upon your pacing.
The book does begin with her running away and then joining the crew, but i do see what you mean about mentioning thwm finding out her secret. Ill fix that, thank you!
If this start with her running away, I feel like the blurb gives away too many plot twists. It might not be impactful when the twists come, and the story would feel too slow, or not built up enough. How many chapters does it take to get to the decision in the blurb? It wouldn’t feel set up enough for me personally (as in I wouldn’t really feel connected to the characters or setting.) if that decision didn’t come until say midway or more through the book, but in that case it would feel too slow if I knew the twists.
I see what you mean. What would you suggest? Im trying to figure out the best way to rewrite the last half of this blurb without exposing that she becomes a siren.
The first chaoter begins with her running to become a pirate, and she spend half the book as a priate and then the second half as a siren. So im trying to figure out how i could rewrite that and make it fit and still sound compelling.
Maybe… maybe that doesn’t have to be part of the blurb. Something like: Lucille has spent her life running away, but her past is catching up. (because at this point in the blurb, she’s already been shown to run away from both her marriage and the pirate crew. ) When her past collides with her present and forces her to confront her demons, she has to choose between her love and embracing who she really is.
It’s a very rough try, but I’m still not sure if this is the decision to involve as the punchline, because this decision comes much later in the book. But if some other decision is involved, then the point of the book may get lost… Is there any information readers don’t need at first?
This helps a lot, thanks! And im not sure. It has ghosts, sirens, and pirates so i just want it to be obvious that this is very much a fantasy romance. Thays the main vibe. But ill give it another look and rework the blurb.
