From the Backlist - What's in a Blurb

 

A desperate prince… a castle full of lies… and an ancient shapeshifter trapped in the form of a human girl. Mistwood by Leah Cypress

Hello to all Sup readers! Today, from the Backlist, we are looking at the topic of BLURBS. Though the contest is long over from this April 28, 2011 post by Leah Cypess, the question remains. Do book blurbs make a difference?

NOTE - For those interested in the history of book blurbs:

In 1907the writer and illustrator Gelett Burgess decided to satirise the practice of putting women on the cover of books, whether they were about women or not. He put a sickly sweet fictional girl named Miss Belinda Blurb his new release, “Are you Bromide?” to incite sales. His plan worked, or back-fired (not sure which) when Bromide sold so well that the term Book Blurb was popularized and all future books included one on the back cover. 

Miss Belinda Book Blurb (1907) from Buried Under Books

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What's In A Blurb 

by Leah Cypess

. . . Blurbs make an author feel good (trust me), but the constant question in publishing is: Do they actually have any effect on the reader? What I’ve heard from some people is that the answer is age dependent – in adult publishing, the consensus is that blurbs do affect readers; in YA, probably not to a great extent; and in mid-grade, probably not at all. 

Of course, as with most information in publishing, this is based on a strenuous and scientific review of five pieces of anecdotal evidence. So, I’m curious: do blurbs affect your buying decisions? Will they make you look at a book more closely? Do you even notice them?

Let us know what you think in the comments . . . Read the whole post and fascinating comments ..

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What is your take on Blurbs? Read them? Love them? Distrust them?

Let us know!

 

The Art of Adaptation - Reader Persuasion

What have we learned?
Riot says Farewell to Arcane in a Hauntingly Romantic Music Video 

Hello everyone! 

Welcome to another instalment of The Art of Adaptation in the written and spoken word. Today, we explore how the reader might adapt to the story world based on the author's ability to persuade... in other words, how the author might push readers out of their comfort zone and into new experiences and perspectives.

Can stories really do this? Cause us to change our attitudes in real life?

The answer is yes, they can!

Simply put, storytelling has the potential to effect change through a technique called narrative persuasion. 

What is Narrative Persuasion?

Current research on storytelling and its functional role in human experience, including how people use media to interrogate their own beliefs and feelings, shows that they can glean social meaning from books, film, TV series and games. (For a deeper dive, check out Dill‐Shackleford, K. E on the social psychology of our engagement with fictional narrative and its functional value. (2016) 

But for this phenomenon to occur, it must begin with the writer persuading the reader/viewer of the story world's truth. If successful, it may open the way to new or different responses to familiar, and possibly blocked,  situations. In this case, the reader adapts to the author's Narrative Persuasion by believing in and immersing in the story.

How?

Narrative Persuasion is an art in and of itself. Through storytelling (the narrative), readers/viewers are coaxed toward a fresh or alternate perspective, or at least the possibility that one might exist. In this process, it may be the fictional characters that have the greatest impact. Still, it takes a certain style of writing to bring them to life for the reader.

Generally, pounding the reader with exposition, info-dumping their way to justification of a new idea or alternate response doesn't work. Instead, narrative persuasion invites us to immerse ourselves in the story, and by doing so, bond deeply with the characters.

And as our favourite characters believe, so too may we.

Take the multi-layered metaphors played out through the characters in Persuasion by Jane Austen. First, society persuades Anne Elliot to betray her love interest, Frederick Wentworth. Through his deep love of the sea, he persuades himself to accept her rejection and move on. But, the results for Anne are miserable, and eventually both Anne and Frederick are persuaded yet again to give their love another chance. 

Through the experience of sympathising with this fictional couple, we may also be persuaded to change our own worldview, just like the cinematic characters in the film The Jane Austen Book Club. Played by Marc Blucas (the disenchanted husband who has given up on his marriage), and Emily Blunt (his wife, a high school French Teacher who has fallen for one of her students) becomes a persuasion, within a persuasion, within a persuasion!

Marc Blucas and Emily Blunt in The Jane Austen Book Club (2007)

In the plot thread of the film, we see the estranged couple try to love again while reading Austen's book.  As a reader/viewer, it is hard not to adapt to Austen's, and screenwriters Robin Swicord and Karen Joy Fowler's, persuasive writing as we follow the characters deeper into the story until they find renewed love.

Creating Engagement is Key

Persuasion stems from engagement and connection.

In the paper, Connecting the Dots between fantasy and reality we find that the main ingredient to identifying with the characters is the ability to get lost in a story. From the perspective of immersion in another world, the narrative persuasion urges us to adapt, changing our attitudes, beliefs, and even behavioural intentions to match the story world characters', if we are moved to do so.

This process relies on creating engaging narratives, well-developed characters, and emotional resonance to reduce resistance and increase acceptance of information and viewpoints. For example, consider how Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness has influenced our adaptation to changing personal pronouns over the last decades. (Even though the use of the non-binary they reaches back to Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century Canterbury Tales, the popular usage is recent.) It all pivots around our ability to relate to narrative.

Media psychologists use terms to describe this feeling of absorption and connection in a narrative with words like transportation, engagement, flow and presence.  I particularly like the term participation mystique, a process of interconnection where the definitive disappears, creating a spiritual experience or 'truth' within the story and its characters.

How is it done?

There are standard lists of advice for creating believable, engaging characters that can be persuasive. It begins with giving them goals, flaws, challenges and often some kind of secret.

In Delirium by Lauren Oliver, we find an engaging narrative, a YA novel that exemplifies a story of intimate telling that is 

1) easy to immerse in

2) provides a main character we can root for

3) is written in a persuasive form that touches on contemporary issues without excess exposition. 

Delirium offers a chance for readers to expand their world view of their own accord, without being told how or when to do so. 

The book has conventional chapters but uses epigraphs to portray our hero, Lena's, progressively adapting perspective. In a world that treats love as an illness, we follow her slow-boil rebellion with increasing sympathy. Here is an example below:

 Chapter One

The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well.

-Proverb 42, The Book of Shhh

As the story progresses in the deeply personal POV of the first person present, it's easy to become so immersed that we feel what happens to Lena is happening to us. When that occurs, the narrative persuasion succeeds. We no longer question the truth of the story world, but begin, outside of reading time, to question the truth of our own sanctioned beliefs. 

Concluding Thoughts

Have you read a book recently or seen a film that changed your worldview? Have you adapted to narrative persuasion and felt, in retrospect,  changed by it?

We'd love to hear your thoughts!

Meanwhile, all the Best for the Holiday Season!

:) Kim

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About Kim Falconer 

Kim Falconer, also writing as AK Wilder, has released Crown of Bones, a YA Epic Fantasy with Curse of Shadows as book 2 in the series. Currently, she is ready with the third book, out in 2025. TBA

Kim can be found on AKWilder.com, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and KimFalconer.com. 

Throw the bones on the AKWilder.com site.. See you there!

From The Backlist: "Book Addicts Anonymous" by Kerrelyn Sparks

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I think we're all book addicts here -- right? Right!

But here's the great Kerrelyn Sparks on that very subject:

"I love to read, and that love led me to writing. I love the whole business of books so much that I get swamped. One time I was so engrossed in writing that I got a phone call from the elementary school. School had let out twenty minutes earlier, and I'd forgotten to pick up my daughter! How embarrassing! Luckily, my daughter never held it against me. She understood, because she already loved books, too. Fellow readers understand the addiction... and the consequences. Supper gets burned. You go to work after a measly two hours of sleep."

Hard to beat, huh?! 

To read the full post-of-awesome (from our equally awesome backlist) click here.

And to catch up on Kerrelyn's books-and-writing latest, go here.

Enjoy!! 

Great Leaders in Speculative Fiction #3 -- Pyanfar Chanur & "The Pride of Chanur"

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Roll up, roll up, 'tis time for Instalment #3 in the great leaders of Fantasy and Science Fiction series.

If I'm being true to the theme, it's very very difficult indeed to go past Pyanfar Chanur, from CJ Cherryh's now-classic Chanur series.

The opening standalone is The Pride of Chanur, on which today's post is chiefly based, but I believe my comments apply equally to the subsequent trilogy: Chanur's Venture, The Kif Strike Back, and Chanur's Homecoming. The fifth novel, Chanur's Legacy, is a spinoff that follows another member of the spacefaring Chanur clan. 

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As you've probably gathered from the covers, Pyanfar Chanur is not human. She's a Hani, from a lion-like race where (in pride fashion) only females go into space, to trade and deal with a range of other species, some oxygen, and others methane breathers. Collectively, they call their space system Compact space. 

The Pride story starts when Pyanfar's ship (the titular Pride of Chanur) is docked at Meetpoint station, where an unknown creature is loose on the docks. Hani and spacer practice is to mind one's own business and leave well alone, but Pyanfar and her crew's luck is out, because the stray makes a determined incursion into their loading bay, then the ship itself.

The stray turns out to be a human being, a species previously unknown in Compact space. Tully was a crew member on an exploration vessel that was pirated by another species called the Kif, who are inclined to raiding, kidnap, and torture. Tully is the final survivor and has managed to escape, but the Kif want him back and are prepared to go to any lengths to get him. 

Dockside skirmishes, interstellar pursuits, and space battles ensue, because this is space opera at its finest, and Pyanfar and her five Hani spacers are a riproaring, swashbuckling crew. In the midst of the furor, Pyanfar definitely leads from the front. But what begins her transformation into a great leader, rather than a courageous fighter alone, is when her moral line of sand becomes a line of blood, spilled on the Pride's deck. One that she's not willing to cross -- or to back away from.

When Tully seeks refuge on the Pride, he speaks no Compact language and is completely different to any species Pyanfar has previously encountered. She also knows that taking something the Kif want will bring down a world of trouble, not only on the Pride, but other Hani ships. The easiest course would be to hand Tully over and forget all about him.

The reason Pyanfar won't do that is because she realizes that Tully is a sentient being and should be accorded full Compact's rights in that respect. Her leadership shines in not only about holding to that point herself, but convincing others, both Hani and other species, to do the same -- despite a general reluctance to cross the piratical Kif. Her journey also involves a shift in  perspective, from seeing the Compact and its species from a purely Hani point-of-view, to comprehending a much bigger picture -- one that encompasses dealings with new species like humans, as well as the existing Compact members.

Pyanfar's ability to see that picture not only enables her to discern that change is needed, both in the Compact and within Hani society, but to be the change that will bring it about. Ultimately, this leads her to become (by the end of the trilogy) the equivalent of a president of Compact space, whose work has become wrangling the differences between its species, in order to preserve the cooperation that Tully's arrival threatened.  

Not by handing him over to the Kif, turning her back, and walking away, though. And the fact that Pyanfar Chanur can always be relied upon to kick-arse and take names, just makes her journey from spacer captain to galactic leader all the more enjoyable for readers. 

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About Helen Lowe

Helen Lowe is an award-winning novelist, poet, and lover of story. With four books published to date, she is currently completing the final instalment in The Wall Of Night series.
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Helen posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog, monthly on the Supernatural Underground, and tweets @helenl0we.

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Previous "Great Leaders in Speculative Fiction" Posts:

February: Mara of the Acoma in the Empire series by Raymond E Feist & Janny Wurts

March: Kaladin and Dalinar in The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

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