Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The difficulties in describing a complex story

I completed my novel Alarums of Reality last night. Describing it in a few words or even a lot of words is even more difficult than with my other novels. I've made three attempts at writing a back cover text, all woefully incomplete, even combined. Notice how they're all describing different parts of the story?

I'll probably go with the first though.

Back cover text:

The end is the beginning. The beginning is the end…

The once so great Caine Manor has become a ruin, one only fit for carrion birds and revenants. No one but daring children and crazed souls dare breach its confines.

The proud and shiny Caine Manor is an outstanding example of renovated architecture at the heart of the city.

Looking at the building, the house, resembling a castle, hidden in a strange, illuminated mist, squinting your eyes, it’s often hard to tell what’s illusion and what’s real. Reality shifts and burns around the Caine Manor, either ruin or proud house, reaching out with strands of night and fire to the surrounding areas and to existence at large. It is the center, or at least one center, in an ever-shifting world.

Is Chloe Webster dead or alive? Is Marion Dexter? Is Marlon Caine? Or David Fallon Somby? Are they perhaps both? Or neither? What is the world? Is it a brick, a hard, impenetrable wall or closer to something akin to mist and shadow? Existence might make sense, to us, to them, but only in glimpses, only in passing, beyond a corner somewhere ahead. They may wonder. They may die clueless. Because they don’t know, don’t know why terror strikes them and makes their heart beat like a sledgehammer in their chest.

From a place unbound by time and space alarums of reality are reaching out to touch and ultimately engulf them all.


Second back cover text:

The end is the beginning. The beginning is the end…

There is no rhyme, no reason.

WHO KILLED CHLOE WEBSTER?

WHO KILLED DAVID FALLON SOMBY?

These are the questions everybody is asking these days, but no one can answer them.

Not the investigative reporter, not the wife that murdered her husband, not the husband that killed his wife, not the old man in the old house and certainly not the two detectives investigating the cases.

A lot is mysteriously absent.

But that is reality… isn’t it? There will always be pieces of the puzzle missing, absent in any equation, any painting of existence. We can claim otherwise, but when it comes down to it we know that not all the pieces fit the puzzle, know that nothing is as it seems.

One witness account to any given event is just that, incomplete, in the great scheme of things. What happened? What truly happened? The truth is only glimpsed by those digging deeper, seeking below the surface, beyond the veil, down there, in the boiling waters…

Third back cover text:

The end is the beginning. The beginning is the end…

Chloe Webster is dead, and no one seems to know why…

Did the estranged, former husband kill her? Was it the scorned girlfriend of a lover, or an unknown assailant she encountered during her nightly excursions into the unknown and dangerous parts of human existence?

Chloe was a seeker, a dabbler in the occult, a frequent participant in such obscure circles.

All her life she sought what’s hidden, what rests (or doesn’t rest) below the surface of everyday life, and those claiming knowledge of such things claim that she finally found it, found what she was looking for.

She was observed while she moved into the old hotel, the old building by the lake, observed while casting spells and performing occult ceremonies in the dead of night. Witness-accounts place her at dozens of seedy bars and occult stores and events around the world. Her life, also the final seven nights is fairly well documented. There is little controversy over the facts, but lots of it over what’s mysteriously absent. The final, revealing clues elude private and official investigators alike.

After years of rabid research she returned to the shores of the lake, on her path to her destiny, to what some calls her predestined fate. Truth, unquestionable and unopposed awaits her in the land and streets by the lake, and the distant and ancient and beyond mysterious Caine Manor…

8 comments:

Sulci Collective said...

If we could say it in 500-1000 words, we wouldn't bother to write a novel lasting 80-100,000 words would we? The process is a complete nightmare

marc nash

Tracy Mangold said...

I like the third version only because it really drew me in the most. But - and this is TOTALLY MY OWN OPINION AND NOT MEANT AS A CRITICISM-
It might have more impact if you put the sentence that she is dead towards the end of the text and had it like this maybe:

The end is the beginning. The beginning is the end…

Chloe Webster was a seeker, a dabbler in the occult, a frequent participant in such obscure circles.

All her life she sought what’s hidden, what rests (or doesn’t rest) below the surface of everyday life, and those claiming knowledge of such things claim that she finally found it, found what she was looking for.

Now, Chloe is dead, and no one seems to know why…

Did the estranged, former husband kill her? Was it the scorned girlfriend of a lover, or an unknown assailant she encountered during her nightly excursions into the unknown and dangerous parts of human existence?


AGAIN - totally my opinion and not meant as a slight to what you already have. I am really intrigued and your descriptions - all three make me want to read more. They are well written and very descriptive.

-Tracy

Portia said...

It is really hard to condense a story into back page copy--but bravo to you for not doing it once, but three times! I'd always rather be writing than being writing marketing copy, but it seems you can't do one without the other ...

Amos Keppler said...

Portia: If you want to be a true independent author and publisher both, and can't afford a secretary you need to do everything, except the actual printing...

Tracy: thank you. Perhaps I'll try a fourth version in a while...

Marc: not exactly a nightmare, but different than writing a novel, and hard, especially to those who aren't very good at labeling or self-labeling. But since the aim isn't primarily geared towards marketing but at making a true description the final result will eventually be better.

Everything a true independent artist does is better than what one going through the wringer, the meat grinder of any given established publisher does.

Jeff King said...

I feel your pain; I’ve attempted to write hundreds of blurs for my completed manuscript.

Let’s just say, I didn’t know how hard three simple paragraphs could be.

I’ve learned a lot from the process, and realized I didn’t understand my story as well as I thought I did.

I agree number 3 works the best for me. I think you’ll know the right blurb the second you write it… best of luck.

Wendy Tyler Ryan said...

I like the third one best, also. My next favorite is the second one.

Talei said...

Congrats on finishing your novel! These are all great,I'm leaning towards the second one but am sure you'll choose the right one in the end.

Robyn Campbell said...

Congrads on wrapping the novel up. That's an EXCELLENT feeling, for sure. I like them all, but the first one really grabbed me. That first sentence would make me HAVE to buy the book. It is hard to write a blurb. I'd rather write the book than the blurb. Explaining a novel in so few words is well, EXCRUCIATINGLY painful. Good luck with it. Thanks for visiting my blog today.