Can I Have Your Attention?

You just finished writing thousands and thousands of words in your manuscript and told an emotional love story with kissing. But wait, you're not done. Now you have to write a couple hundred words to sell that story.

It's the book blurb and why is it so hard to do?

Well, what if it doesn't have to be? I know the secret formula advertisers use to craft PSAs and Commercials. It's called AIDA.

The A.I.D.A. Formula

The purpose of the advertisement is to persuade. There is a system for persuasion. Essentially, four steps of persuasion can be applied to virtually every television or radio commercial or PSA. Or you can use it to sell your book to a new reader.

First, get the audience’s Attention. This can be accomplished by many means, including humor, a startling statement or visual, a rhetorical question, vivid description, a novel situation, or suspenseful conflict. Sound, such as pings, chords, or special effects, attracts attention. 

My advice? Put the trope up top. Readers have so many choices and they often know exactly what they want, and what they want is their favorite trope. 

Second, after you get the audience’s attention, hold its Interest. One effective technique in television is constructing the mini-drama, establishing a conflict that keeps the audience viewing or listening for the climax or resolution. Anecdotes, testimonials, statistics, examples and exciting visuals and sound are among the devices that can be used to hold interest.

This is when you introduce the hero and/or the heroine's and give us an Empathy Hit. Why should we care about them? This can be done with an adjective like SHE is an ugly duckling or HE is the new Alpha of the pack.

Then work in their GMC. What's their goal? What do they want? And what stands in their way? I like to do this separately and list it out for the hero and heroine. That ugly duckling heroine might want to convince that new Alpha to finally see her as a grown she-wolf, but she's his best friend's baby sister. That Alpha may need to mate a she wolf from a rival pack to keep the peace but he just realized his best friend's baby sister is his fated mate.

Third, arouse the Desire of the consumer. You must first understand how the target consumers think, behave, and make decisions, and then give them a reason to buy.

Our target audience are readers. But drill down deeper. My target audience is romance readers, women mostly in their sixties. I know this because of demographics I get from FB ads, my newsletter, and website traffic.

But you want to drill a little deeper and circle back around to subgenre of romance and tropes. My example is not just romance, it's paranormal romance, shifter romance with were wolves. It's also the trope of fated mates, ugly duckling, maybe cinderella. 

There are timeless struggles and stakes that go with these genres, subgenres, and tropes. In PNR, the magical beings often struggle to stay hidden from the human world or else risk exposure where the stakes could be the end of their way of life. In the Fated Mates trope, the couple will struggle to stay together as outside forces aim to pull them apart. If their love doesn't last then a spiritual death is at stake. In a brothers best friend trope, the friend who's falling in love struggles against their emotions because their friendship is at stake.

All these play on the audience desires. I would signal as many of these points to the reader as possible because these are reasons that they would one-click if this type of story is their catnip.

Fourth, motivate the consumer toward Action by telling them what to do next.

We so often forget the call to action. Be sure to write at the end of the blurb to grab the copy or preorder or fall in love with this book. Make sure the last thing they read is you telling them what to do next, which is buy the book. 

So, in the spirit of action…

Want a more in depth exploration of pacing, try out my course Page Turner Pacing: how to write a bingeworthy novel in 21 days at ineswrites.com/PTP for Page Turner Pacing. 

Happy writing,

Ines

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