2. What’s the Story?

Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots. Some say there are more.

‘Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.’ TV review of The Wizard of Oz

Before we put pen to paper and write our blurb we need to make a couple of decisions. The first is what kind of story it is we are pitching. The second is deciding who the book is for – who is its audience? (This will be the subject of the next post.)

The question of the story is in some ways the easiest and the hardest. We’ve likely already written or edited the story so we know what it is about. But now we must decide what kind of book it is we are blurbing. (Note: I used the word decide not divine: it will be a decision.) I don’t mean deciding whether it is science fiction or fantasy, crime or historical or any other bookshop genre. No, if we are going to pigeonhole our book we are going to do so with style.

When I say we must work out what kind of story it is, I mean ask yourself which one of the great plots it is. Romance? Tragedy? Quest? Rags to riches? Overcoming the monster? Voyage and return? Or rebirth? These are the seven great plots in the world of story. (Naturally, there is some debate over these plots, with the numbers dropping to two and rising to thirty-six by some accounts. It doesn’t matter what version you choose, just so long as it is clear what you’re pitching to yourself and thus to your potential reader.) These plots we may understand intuitively as authors but they are also recognised (even if just unconsciously) by our readers. And this is the point. They are universal. They straddle genres. We know what to expect from them and so they tell us what kind of story we are dealing with. This is as important for readers as for writers and editors.

Of course, your story may feature elements or the entirety of more than one of these plots. It’d be surprised if it didn’t. But when you are writing a blurb it is wise to focus on only one story plot. In my experience blurbs that feature more than one plot read rather knottily: a tangle of characters and motivations that it takes a few readings to decipher. More to the point, the less clear to a reader what kind of book it is they are holding in their hands, the less likely they are to remain holding it for long. Watch people in bookshops. They rarely spend more than thirty seconds perusing a blurb – if they read all of it at all (a big if), then mostly they do so only once, before putting it back on the shelf.

To avoid that fate, I find that the simpler the pitch the more hooky the blurb.

So at this point you must decide which of your plots is the one that works best as the backbone of your blurb. It is worth writing down your various options. In making these distinctions and decisions you may also find that you are already starting to shape the writing of your blurb.

Let’s take an example – Jane Eyre. It is the tale of a poor young orphan who experiences the harshness of life in Victorian England before becoming a governess and falling for her dashing but taciturn employer, Lord Rochester. Obstacles – not least their vastly different positions in society – stand in the way of their love, but Rochester hides a secret that will undo them both. So how do we pitch this through the seven basic plots?

Let’s take them one at a time:

Overcoming the Monster (can a great evil be vanquished?) – can lowly orphan Jane survive the predations of the rich and powerful?

The Quest (our protagonist sets out to achieve something) – can orphan Jane find a place to call home in an uncaring world?

Love Story, plus Obstacles (something stands in the way of our heroes’ affections) – the man Jane dares to dream of loving is unavailable in ways she never imagined.

Tragedy (death and destruction stalk our protagonists) – the man Jane loves hides a dark secret in his heart – and in his house.

Rebirth (new life springs from a place of desolation) – as an orphan child Jane knew no love, but as a governess might that love grow?

Voyage and Return (our protagonist leaves home and returns changed) – vulnerable Jane finds shelter from an unkind world but will she be stronger when it drags her back?

Rags to Riches (our protagonist, who has nothing, gains everything) – will penniless orphan Jane discover that life can be richer than she ever believed possible?

Seven similar but distinct ways to look at the story of Jane Eyre. But, more importantly, they are seven different ways of pitching the story, because whichever one you choose will dictate how you frame and structure your blurb (more on this in a later post). It also tells you which elements you will need in your blurb. An Overcoming the Monster story requires an evil to threaten our hero (so it is often used for crime and thriller stories). A Quest story needs something to be achieved (see every other fantasy novel ever written’s blurb). A Love Story with Obstacles needs someone to be loved and reasons that may prevent our protagonists getting together (I’m looking at you, Jane Austen).

(* But a word of warning, below.)

I am not saying that choosing a story type precludes you from using details that do not fit your chosen story. What I am saying is once you’ve chosen a story type, you should remain true to that story and find a way of accommodating the other elements into it. Your blurb should be pulling in one direction, making clear what kind of story this is.

Why? In part because different people are drawn to different types of story (more on this in my next post). They like to know what they are going to be reading. Many readers are not eclectic in their tastes and know exactly what they want. They have a multitude of desires and the blurb’s job is to attract the subset of those competing desires which the book will most satisfy.

But the truth is that if it is not clear to the reader what kind of book it is – let me say again we’re not talking crime, romance or fantasy signifiers, we’re talking universal story roots – then our lack of clarity is at best going to confuse them and at worst to actively turn them off.

Lastly, knowing the kind of story we’re pitching tells us how to structure and write our blurb.

But before we get to that we need to think a little bit more about our audience.

* As I say, crime books often use the overcoming-the-monster story type, fantasy novels use the quest or monster stories, while romance uses love/obstacle stories. All of which we expect, but if you want to make your blurb stand out or be more interesting, write a story type pushing against expectations. What does your crime novel pitch look like with a Quest narrative? Or give your fantasy a Tragic frame? Make your romance a Voyage and Return pitch. Have some fun with it, and chances are a potential reader will enjoy this breath of fresh air.

This the second in a series of how-to posts originally written in July 2020 for Milford SF Writers website, rewritten and republished in 2025.