Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Okay, so let me practice my preachiness on yours 
Quote:
The baby is sick and fading fast. Annie wants to help, but she is only seventeen and this is her first job as a nanny. No one will listen to her.
When Houston Monroe, the baby's wealthy father, fires Annie, she is forced to take matters into her own hands. Drawn into a web of lies, deception and evil, Annie uncovers the terrible secrets that threaten the innocent child, and now her own life.
[optional] A story of corruption, intrigue and one young woman's fight to save an innocent baby.
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I've re-arranged things to try and introduce the hook early. The third paragraph is a throw-away, the sort of thing I see on the end of trad' pub' blurbs. It doesn't matter if no one reads it. The example I've offered definitely needs work. The repetition of innocent is not ideal. Is there intrigue? Is it political? Are there other superlatives that could be thrown away in the throw-away paragraph?
The point of the example is mainly to try an get the hook in early, you can get a bit more adventurous after you've gotten the potential reader to come past the first paragraph. |
It doesn't quite work for me. It sounds too passive and remote. I see what you want to do in the opening, but I read it and think: What does Annie want to do? Why
should anyone listen to her? The blurb is starting in the middle of the action, and I prefer a more leisurely opening where Annie thinks she's gotten a nice, probably easy job as a glorified babysitter, and then things aren't as they seem to be.
Also, I don't like knowing that Annie is fired--if that's something that happens a quarter of the way through, I wouldn't want it in the blurb.
The last paragraph sounds like it could be the tagline of a legal drama.