Queries are the billboards for stories
Authors who I help often get invited to sum up the books we’ll work on. The writing can be the most challenging they will face. You don’t have to know the exact ending, or cover all the meaty plot points, to write this summary. Your readers will need it as much as you do, though, because we use these things to decide what to read.
You can give yourself a nice template on how to write this summary. You’ll need it for your query letter, if you won’t publish yourself. Can you do this in under 200 words? Not on the first try, but you can get there through revisions. When the World Goes Quiet is a historical novel set at the end of World War I. Amazon’s publishing arm Lake Union Press is offering it for free in an advance release to Kindle Unlimited subscribers.
This novel’s timeframe is close to my own Sins of Liberty. The 187 words, probably written by an editor with marketing chops, is a good study in how this can be done well.
It’s 1918 in German-occupied Bruges, Belgium. With luck, Evelien will make it to the end of the war and be given what she was promised: a prized painting in exchange for safeguarding her employer’s possessions. Until then, Evelien knows to keep her head down and stay out of trouble. But life never goes to plan, especially in war.
A member of the resistance approaches Evelien: steal a list of names hidden in her employer’s home. In return, she’ll get a letter from her long-missing husband, Emiel. She’d lost hope of Emiel’s survival, but the promised letter puts her certainty of his death in question. Evelien begins her mission and soon forms a friendship with a soldier who is struggling with the devastating demands of battle. Their shared passion for art deepens the bond, and Evelien faces a heart-wrenching truth: she longs for Emiel’s safe return…but not necessarily to her.
As the final days of the war loom closer, Evelien has never been in more danger. And should she survive the war’s bitter end, what choices will she make for a life beyond liberation?
I admired the craft of that summary. At 187 words, it’s about as short as you’d want to make for a historical novel. How about the logline? It’s standalone in a single sentence.
In the final days of World War I, an aspiring artist’s courageous journey is just beginning in a powerful novel about love, danger, and survival.
The logline tells us the novel is powerful, so that tips into marketing language. In truth, readers want that promise of a book’s power. Go easy on the marketing, but you can have more than zero, once the book is ready.
The mix of Evelien’s job to preserve the art with the mystery of her husband’s disappearance — well, it might provide a metaphor that can be teased into a theme. All the rich promise about paintings could get mapped onto the permanence of marriage. Something like, “It’s hard to change a canvas, but its ownership changes all the time.” For sure, there’s some love of art going on in this story. “We give you a painting for your hard work,” and so that’s enough for her, means she loves a nice canvas.
I’m deconstructing the summary as a way of choosing where my book will lead and lure its readers. Like everything else in writing, the summary starts with a rough draft. If you’d like a short consult on how to get started with your book’s summary, get in touch.
