Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop ✒ Writing Tips

Lesson 4: How to write a good description?

I can understand why many of you have some problems when it comes to writing a description of your fanfic. Well that's because firstly you have to clear your concepts about the difference between a description and a summary.

In this chapter, we will be discussing the steps to writing a good description, the difference between summaries and book description as well as the reason why your boo should have a significant description.

Description:

A description is used to describe a story. It is detailed enough to give the reader a clear view of what to expect with the book but does not cover the entire plot.

Summary:

A summary is a brief account of the entire plot of your story including the beginning, middle and end of the book all explained in a short and simple way.

Now that the difference between these two terms is clear to you, let's continue with the lesson.

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Basic Overview Of A Description:

After the title and the cover, the most important aspect of your book is the description. The book description goes on the back cover for paperbacks and is included right below your cover and the Read icon at Wattpad. It's crucial that this short paragraph be right.

In many cases, the description is the factor that solidifies in the reader's mind whether the book is for them or not. If you get it right, readers are more likely to add your book in libraries and read it. If you get it wrong, nothing else can really save you (except a recommendation from the right source).

Have you ever been in a perfume outlet or a cosmetic store? These shops have testers for their products so that the customer may apply the tester and easily judge whether they want to purchase the item or not. Similarly, your book description is that tester.

Also, these testers are a marketing trick. If the outlet lets the customer use testers of their products, they feel that the outlet cares for them and wants them to be satisfied with the results given by the product before aimlessly throwing money at it.

For books, if the book description is good the readers feels the need to read the book. That is why it is always important to include descriptions. People are more likely to check those books out which have a sufficient description rather than the ones which have nothing at all.

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Below I'm including two descriptions of the same book, Sweet Vengeance by Angelily2015. You can yourself decide which description you like best but I'll also state the dos and the don'ts from these descriptions.

Description 1 (Don't):

In a hopeless world where evil is at peak and the innocent have seldom places to hide, a target killer is on the loose. You must not be fooled by his looks for he may appear to be a gentleman, a banker, a businessman or all in all a civil member of the society but in reality he is neither. He is a killer... And a deadly one at that.

Description 2 (Do):

If revenge truly is sweet, Lysander should have been at peace by now. But unfortunately that isn't the case.

No matter what happens, somehow or other karma finds a way to get back at those who did wrong to the innocent. But when the innocent try to outsmart it, by delving deep in the quicksands of revenge, the consequences are even worse.

Unknown to Lysander Smith, his karma is also waiting. Waiting like a clever predator seeking the right time to hunt. A bitter grudge, carefully hidden and nurtured, is about to erupt.