Tip 1: Read more

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The first thing to do is get analytical about your own reading habits. You're a writer, but you're also a reader - so you also have gone through the motions of landing on someone's page, reading their summary, and deciding whether to proceed with the story. Read lots of summaries on Wattpad, and make a note of which ones make you want to read the book.

Think critically about the ones which bore you, or which turn you off reading. Do they sound too cliche? Do they just not "grab" you? Why? What's missing? Make a list. Then apply that to your own summary.

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Check out the summaries of books you've read and loved, particularly if you selected the book in a bookshop or online based on the blurb. Take a look at what the publishers of those books do with their summaries. Make a note of things like: tense, how many characters are introduced in the blurb (usually no more than two or three), and how much plot is revealed. Try to be analytical about what it was which made YOU want to read this book.

Here's an example. The blurb for Twilight, one of the best-selling books of recent years:

"Isabella Swan expects her new life in Forks to be as dull as the town itself. But her new classmates don't seem to mind her awkward manner and low expectations. They seem to like her - with the exception, that is, of Edward Cullen. The problem is that Bella finds herself fascinated by him. What she doesn't realise is that the closer she gets, the more she is at risk. And it might be too late to turn back."

If I get analytical about this blurb, I can see it's very simple, and it sets up a series of questions, to which the reader wants answers. In the first sentence, we have the beginning point (situation normal), the location, and main character. A fish out of water, in a new town, with low expectations of how much she will enjoy it. But we also have a question - why has she started a new life? Why does she have low expectations? Then the author introduces the central tension: everyone likes Bella except this one person. The reader asks, "Why? Why doesn't this person like her?" And then the hook (that is, the actual story): the closer she gets, the more she is at risk. The reader wants to know why she is at risk. And, of course, the central question of any love story is: will they end up together?

It's also worth noting what isn't included in this summary. The vampire war. Edward's weird family. Bella's friends aren't named. The situation with her home life (her mum and dad). And, of course, there's no mention of the secondary love interest, Jacob. The blurb really distills down what's important.

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Read the discussion threads in the Clubs where people rate each other's summaries. Don't just put your summary up to be judged by a random stranger, but read what people write about each other's summaries there. Look at what comes up again and again:

"I didn't want to read on because I couldn't work out which character to root for"

"I was put off by the number of spelling and grammatical errors"

"It was a big chunk of text, it just felt like a stream of consciousness, and it wasn't really about anything"

Look critically over your own summary. Do you think any of these criticisms apply to you? What could you do to fix these?


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