Let’s Talk The Sexy One-Sentence Summary

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation

THE ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY

Let’s be honest, here. Sometimes I throw the word “sexy” into a podcast title just to get Shaun to pay attention.

But the one-sentence summary is kind of sexy.

Over on the Advanced Fiction Writing Blog, Randy Ingermanson writes:

In that summary, you want:

• To show us the setting via information about where or when the story is happening.
• What Ingersoll calls “a paradoxical description of a major character.”
• Something weird/shocking/surprising that makes you think of that story question
• Something sexy. He calls this an emotive/kicker word.

Why is this sexy?

It’s sexy because if you can do this, you can understand your novel. Understanding is sexy. It becomes a map for your novel. You can see where you’ve gone off on a tangent, where things don’t adhere to that sexy summary.

Us writers often go off on tangents.

Or as Nico Waters on Rene Pen says,

“It’s the quickest way to explain or write what your book is about. It’s the hook to entice readers to want to buy your book. It also serves as our compass, our true north, as we continue writing the book.”

Waters has a great post about this and shows three formulas to do this, too.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Don’t be afraid to amuse yourself. Confidence and goofiness is a sexy combination.

SHOUT OUT!

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

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