|
Thalamas posted:Comment on/destroy my blurb please. quote:Gandra and the crew of the Blackbird have spent years evading Humankind, scavenging from abandoned starships to keep food on the table. When they have a run-in with Enrico, a human smuggler, he bargains with a job too lucrative to refuse: a colony recently destroyed by a terraforming accident on Chantico, where trillions of dollars in resources are just waiting to be claimed. I’ve re-ordered where certain plot points are mentioned. For me, I think a blurb works much better if we open with a sense of the characters, who they are, what they hope to achieve, and how the novel’s stakes will impact them. Here, it’s easy: Gandra and their crew are struggling, they’re evading Humankind, and then they meet some guy who makes them an offer they can’t refuse. We can relate to and care about these characters. Your original blurb opens with a character who doesn’t know who they are themselves, making it especially difficult for me to care. Second para, obviously, introduces the secondary protagonist / antagonist, whose storyline we can assume will dovetail into Gandra’s at some point. I think the blurb works a lot better by leaving this unmentioned. We do need to set up some similar stakes and characterisation for this plotline, though, which I’ve taken a stab at by setting up Uki as a bootlicker whose loyalties are going to be challenged in the course of the novel. Maybe this isn’t the case. But we need something here so we know what Uki’s all about. Farouk you could probably leave out, in all honesty; I don’t know if his character is actually relevant enough to dedicate a paragraph in the blurb to. Anyway, I’ve also thrown some adjectives in so we have a better idea of what he’s about. Finally, I’ve ended the blurb where you opened it, because I do find the image of a sole survivor opening his eyes and not having any recollection of what’s happened kind of intriguing, which is the whole point of the blurb, so yeah. I’ve probably gone a bit too ham-fisted with the whole “He can only think of two things: both in the title of this book!!” angle, but I think it needs something to make this a bit dramatic and / or tie his character in to the human plots we’re otherwised engaged with. rohan fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Apr 17, 2022 |
#
¿
Apr 17, 2022 13:31
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 05:08 |
|
|
First: the book sounds lovely and definitely something I’d pick up. Happy to be a beta reader in the next round  I agree with basically all of Icon-Cat’s changes, and especially like the new ending. “When will life be humdrum again” is a much better question that reinforces the character and the tone, and helps your blurb stand aside from every other “will they defeat the big bad etc” fantasy stakes. Two remaining thoughts: - Not a huge fan of “following a sinister discovery”. I feel you could cut this without losing anything from the setup. The inciting incident, as I read it, is currently “one botched spell too many” which sets up decent stakes in my mind; I’m already thinking, well, what did he do? Accidentally burn someone’s house down? Turn the village mayor into a chicken? Which are more interesting to consider than “what’s the sinister discovery”, which feels generic. - What’s a Sage-Crafter? How does he know who Tercere is? Spitballing, as I obviously don’t know their relationship, but something like “all while fending off his old rival, the Sage-Crafter Tercere” or “all while fending off his fiancé’s ex, the Sage-Crafter Tercere” or “all while fending off his college fling, the Sage-Crafter Tercere” each add a layer of personal interest to the conflict. Maybe this isn’t supported by the text, and Tercere is just some guy — but if there’s any way to make him relate to Durndan’s character, I’d highlight this here.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2022 22:59
|
|
|
 CMYK is used for ink printing — it’s a radically different colourspace given you’re going from three additive colours (eg red+green+blue displays as white on a computer monitor) vs four subtractive colours (eg to display white, you need to not print any cyan, magenta, yellow or black).As I understand it, sRGB and RGB just cover different percentages of the total colour space, but they shouldn’t be incompatible.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 24, 2023 13:36
|
|
|
Gotcha — just a bit confused where you said you wouldn’t use RGB because that would compress the colour space of your image, but if it was designed explicitly for better conversion to CMYK, I can understand that.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 24, 2023 14:06
|
|
|
I think my first response to that synopsis is: yeah, and… ? The ending needs some work; I’m not left with any clear idea about what the novel’s really going to be about, who the antagonists actually are, or how the protagonists will attempt to address the threat. Do they need to defeat the KKK? Or is the “ancient entity” the real villain? Is that somehow siding with the KKK, or is it against people in general? My gut reaction is that introducing the KKK as villains, before introducing a supernatural enemy as a villain, seems risky as I worry it’s going to somehow diminish the very real threat of the KKK. I’m sure the book itself handles this better, but it’s a concern I have after reading this synopsis.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2023 13:14
|
|