Yoon Ha Lee recently posted about How to Write a Sizzling Synopsis by Bryan Cohen, which is a topic that’s been on my mind lately. I can’t swear that I’m a genius at cover copy — what Cohen calls a synopsis; it’s the stuff written on the back or inside flap of the book, or in the “description” field online — but I actually enjoy writing it. And lately I’ve found myself even thinking of various works in progress from that angle, because figuring out what I would put into the cover copy helps me focus on what’s core to the story, what I want to use to hook the reader.

Basic principles: you want the reader to know who your protagonist is and what conflict they face, and you want to do so in a fashion that’s consistent with the overall mood, whether that’s lighthearted or lyrical or grim. After that, you walk a tightrope between being specific enough to convey flavor and being general enough that you don’t drown the reader in new information. The latter is especially tough in speculative fiction, where sometimes presenting the conflict is nigh-impossible without first explaining the world. (Ask me some time about trying to summarize the Varekai novellas. Or better yet, don’t.) Writing cover copy requires you to develop your eye for what details are load-bearing (the text will make no sense without it), what details are beneficial (not necessary, but they add a lot), and what details are extraneous.

For novels, I often adhere to a three-paragraph approach. The first paragraph introduces the situation; the second introduces the problem; the third leaves the reader with a sense of momentum and/or tension, a clear awareness that you have shown them the tip of the iceberg, but there is much more to come. Yes, it’s formulaic — but formulas come into existence because they’re good, reliable workhorses.

Since discussing this kind of thing goes better with examples, I’m going to dissect my own copy for Lies and Prophecy, because I can say exactly why I made the choices I did. (It’s also my earliest effort, so not the best, but in some ways that makes it even more instructive.)

First, the copy in its entirety:

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and prophecy.

Kim never had to wonder what to major in at college. Her talent for divination made her future clear in more ways than one. But there are limits to what even a gifted seer can predict, and no card reading or prophetic dream can prepare Kim for what’s to come during her junior year at Welton.

Something has taken an interest in her friend Julian — an unseen force neither of them can identify. What starts as a dark omen quickly turns dangerous, as Julian finds himself under attack. To defend him, Kim will need more than her strengths; she will have to call on a form of magic she has never been able to master. If she can’t learn fast enough, she may lose her friend forever.

Kim knows she isn’t ready for this. But if she wants to save Julian — and herself — she’ll have to prove her own prophecies wrong.

This looks like four paragraphs, but really it’s three, with a strapline at the top. Where retailers permit me to do so, I put that first line in bold or italics to set it apart from the rest.

Now, dissecting it:

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and prophecy.

True story: this book went through several titles, none of which really clicked until I thought up this line. It’s an allusion to “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” it provided me with my title, and I think the contrast it creates between prophecy (which is usually treated in fiction as immutable truth) and falsehood is a nice way to get the reader’s attention.

Kim never had to wonder what to major in at college.

Introduces the protagonist and the setting. The name and the reference to college majors tell you this is probably set in the real world, in something like the modern day.

Her talent for divination made her future clear in more ways than one.

Our protagonist is now gendered (most people default to reading “Kim” as female, but that’s not a given), and our modern setting is now established as urban fantasy. Furthermore, it’s an open urban fantasy, where magic is known enough that you can major in it during college. We also get a touch of characterization for Kim, who is a) talented and b) a diviner.

But there are limits to what even a gifted seer can predict, and no card reading or prophetic dream can prepare Kim for what’s to come during her junior year at Welton.

To be honest, this is one of the weaker lines. “Gifted seer” repeats information we already have, and while reinforcement isn’t a bad thing, it doesn’t add anything new, and “card reading or prophetic dream” only fleshes out the theme of prophecy. The main function here is to hint at trouble and thereby create a bridge to the second paragraph, and to add the fact that this is not a story about a wet-behind-the-ears freshman; Kim is old enough to have some real training and experience, but not yet done with that process.

I’ll note here that “Welton” is an extraneous detail. Do we need to know the name of Kim’s college? No, because it’s made up and therefore has no existing resonance for the reader. But it also isn’t much of a stumbling block; context makes its meaning clear. I felt the sentence flowed better with the name in there, and it adds a small bit of verisimilitude to what is clearly sort of but not quite our world.

Something has taken an interest in her friend Julian — an unseen force neither of them can identify.

Now we introduce Julian, the secondary protagonist of the novel. I wrestled a lot with this part, because I really wanted to mention Julian being a wilder. But unlike “Welton,” that word doesn’t easily slot into the reader’s understanding; it refers to a specific concept within the world, and furthermore one that can really only be defined by dragging in yet more concepts and comparisons to other things I haven’t mentioned in the cover copy: Krauss ratings, sidhe blood, gifts at birth instead of puberty like most psychics, etc. Ultimately those things, while core to the story of the novel, aren’t core to the story of the cover copy, which is about a young woman on the cusp of independent adulthood having to apply her skills to a real problem. So even though wilders are one of the key characteristics of the setting, they’re too complicated to include here, and Julian remains just Kim’s friend.

As for the vagueness of the threat, well, that’s a limitation imposed by the novel, where the characters don’t know what it is for quite a while. 😛 Which brings me to one of the other vital questions you have to answer in writing cover copy: how far into the book do you go? The cover copy I’ve written for one of my works-in-progress references an event that will be at the midpoint of the book, because it’s a pivot point that doesn’t require much explanation and doesn’t spoil anything significant before it, plus it sounds really shiny. In the case of Lies and Prophecy, I could have said what was behind the problem, and in fact I considered doing so. But that revelation doesn’t happen until more than a third of the way into the book, and the mystery around it drives much of the early plot, so I wound up deciding to leave it out. Am I positive that’s the right course of action? Nope, but here we are.

What starts as a dark omen quickly turns dangerous, as Julian finds himself under attack.

Still a bit vague. I could probably do better with this; again it serves mostly to bridge to the next sentence, which means it isn’t pulling as much weight as it could. But since I can’t say what’s attacking him, giving detail would mostly lead me into a dead-end of information the reader doesn’t need about the exact steps the characters take to investigate and what happens when they do.

To defend him, Kim will need more than her strengths; she will have to call on a form of magic she has never been able to master.

This is better! Here we characterize Kim some more: she’s talented, but she also has a weakness, and I’m making her life harder by requiring her to face and overcome that weakness in order to achieve what she wants. In the calculus of “what details should I include,” the nature of the magic Kim has trouble with and why she has trouble aren’t necessary; that’s another dead-end, because the meaning of the phrase “ceremonial magic” wouldn’t be transparent to the reader, nor is there any point in explaining her early experiences with Yan Path training. If the story conveyed by the cover copy is “a young woman on the cusp of independent adulthood having to apply her skills to a real problem,” then the key thing here is that she needs not only to apply the skills she has, but acquire some she lacks, too.

If she can’t learn fast enough, she may lose her friend forever.

DUN DUN DUNNNNN!

I’m actually serious in saying that. You want your cover copy to have a DUN DUN DUNNNNN! moment — at least if it’s the type of story where there’s a threat, as opposed to it being a quiet, meditative exploration of someone’s personal growth. The reader needs a sense of what’s at stake if your protagonist fails to meet the challenge.

Kim knows she isn’t ready for this. But if she wants to save Julian — and herself — she’ll have to prove her own prophecies wrong.

Here’s one of my secrets of writing cover copy: I will move heaven and earth to avoid ending on a yes/no question.

A lot of books end their copy with that kind of question. “Can [A] and [B] find happiness together?” Yes. I’m looking at a romance novel; the answer to that question is not in doubt. “Will [C] be able to defeat the bad guy?” Of course they will. For me, the impact of a binary question is approximately zero — unless you manage to find one where the answer isn’t screamingly obvious. The cover copy for Yoon Ha Lee’s Raven Strategem ends with “[Jedao] seems intent on defending the hexarchate, but can Khiruev — or Brezan — trust him? For that matter, can they trust Kel Command, or will their own rulers wipe out the whole swarm to destroy one man?” Shit, dude, I read the first book in the series and I had no idea what the answers were: Jedao’s unpredictability and the ruthlessness of Kel Command were sufficiently well-established that those questions were actual questions.

You want the final paragraph to hook the reader. Questions are one way to do that, but they’re more effective when they focus on how or why rather than a simple binary. I could, for example, have tried to end the copy for Lies and Prophecy on some question to the effect of “How can Kim help Julian when the only thing that can defeat this threat is a form of magic she’s never been able to master?” (Compare that to “Will Kim be able to save Julian from the unknown force that has targeted him?” Magic 8-ball says: yeah, probably.) But questions aren’t the only way to sink a hook into the reader’s mind. In this case I chose to loop back around to where we started, with Kim’s gift at divination and that idea of “lies, damned lies, and prophecy.” She has a strength; she has a weakness; victory will require her to overcome that weakness and, in a sense, undermine that strength. Reminding the reader of that kind of contrast or paradox has the effect of highlighting the challenge at hand; the equivalent in a romance novel might be one last evocation of the obstacle or seemingly irreconcilable difference that keeps our romantic leads apart. Or you can go the “but wait — THERE’S MORE” approach; in a mystery, you might hint at another layer to the crime that the protagonist doesn’t even realize is there. Or provide a ticking clock. Anything that gives the reader a sense that there is more to come, and it’s exciting.

Now, I alluded to something up above that I want to draw out properly, which is:

Much like with cover art, the purpose of cover copy is not to illustrate the story.

You are allowed to simplify, even if it means your cover copy winds up being slightly inaccurate to the details of the novel — so long as you don’t wildly misrepresent the contents of the book. It isn’t actually true that Kim has to master ceremonial magic in order to save Julian. Rather, that’s a highly-simplified pointer toward something too complicated to fit onto the cover, which is Kim’s desire to become a Guardian and her uncertainty about whether she can hack it and then her being shoved into a situation where she basically has to play Guardian without having gone through the training (while trying to help someone who does have a lot of that training and is still in danger anyway). Ceremonial magic is involved in that, but it isn’t the core; it’s just the part of that narrative cluster which can most easily be pulled out and made to stand as synecdoche for the whole.

That’s okay. I made a contrast above between the story of the novel and the story of the cover copy. They should be reasonably similar, but writing cover copy is about figuring out what story you’re telling in three paragraphs (or however many you have), and putting in the information that’s needed for that story.

Let me close with a comparative example, which is the one-paragraph copy for Deeds of Men:

LONDON, 1625. A young gentleman lies dead in a Coldharbour alley. Before his death, he uncovered secrets that could threaten the mortal world above and the faerie world below. Now, to find the murderer and protect both realms, Sir Michael Deven will need the help of a man with reason to hate the fae of the Onyx Court — the victim’s own brother.

Here the strapline is just the location and the date, establishing “this is historical fiction!” in thirteen characters. Next line: murder! Coldharbour is an unnecessary detail, since most readers have no clue where Coldharbour is in London, but the name is chilling and adds a bit of atmosphere. Next line: by the way, this is fantasy! Here there be faeries, and also context for why this murder matters and what trouble it might cause going forward. The last line is the real workhorse, as it introduces the protagonist (quite late, structurally speaking), implies that he connects those two worlds mentioned before, name-drops the Onyx Court so people who have heard of the series will realize this belongs there, and ends with both our DUN DUN DUNNNNN moment and our hook in the same element, which is the Team-Up of Unlikely Allies. Will the unnamed brother help, or become part of the problem? Read and find out!

I have a lot less room to work with here because it’s only one paragraph (why? I dunno; I think subconsciously my brain decided that a novella didn’t merit as many as a novel). As a result, I leave out a lot more details: who Deven is, who the murder victim is, who his brother is, why his brother might hate the Onyx Court, why there are faeries under London, etc. If this were longer, I’d include a lot more of that — especially since the victim’s brother is Antony Ware, and people who have read In Ashes Lie would immediately go “buh?” because they know where he winds up in a few decades. But the story of this cover copy is espionage and murder, so at this pared-down length, the extra material falls away and leaves us with just dangerous secrets and two investigators who may or may not be on the same side.

There are no cut-and-dried rules for determining which details you should include and which you should leave out. There are some underlying principles — is it easily comprehended vs. does it require explanation, does it serve more than one purpose in elaborating on setting and/or plot and/or character vs. is it redundant with what we’ve already been told, does it support the story of the cover copy vs. introducing some completely new idea, etc. — but ultimately you just have to juggle things around until it seems to flow well. Hopefully these examples and their dissection at least shed some light on how that juggling can go.