Books That Don't Exist

[reiver33]

Maybe it's just me but I find myself sometimes writing the blurb for a story that (to my knowledge) hasn't been written yet. Anyone else do this? For example...

As God Wept

Both sides were in a race, although neither of us knew that at the time. The Yar Nebula looked like the ideal location for a covert base of operations; a solitary star orbited by a single Goldilocks planet.

Maybe someone should have considered just how unlikely that was.

So what remained of the Alliance and the rising Unity took their war to Eden, but what we found there changed everything.

Forever.

(First in the Tears Of Stone trilogy)

 

[Ursa major]

It's a shame that As God Wept isn't a bit more concrete, as then there'd be... er... mortar read (i.e. the rest of the Tears Of Stone trilogy).

*cough*


I know what you mean, though: sometimes ideas come to me in this way, though it's quite difficult to see how some of them might be made into a viable novel. Coming up with a blurb for an existing story should be easier, but I don't find this in practice. (Perhaps it's a matter of trying to do the book justice, which then leads to attempts to put a quartgallon into a pint pot.)

 

[reiver33]

I crash-and-burn when it comes to distilling a storyline into the proverbial 200-words or less, despite having been a systems analyst in a previous life...

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I can't do either.
If I can come up with a summary at all, it's much longer, if I have a long summary then I can write it. Though that doesn't mean it will be good.

 

[Cli-Fi]

Maybe it's just me but I find myself sometimes writing the blurb for a story that (to my knowledge) hasn't been written yet. Anyone else do this? For example...

As God Wept

Both sides were in a race, although neither of us knew that at the time. The Yar Nebula looked like the ideal location for a covert base of operations; a solitary star orbited by a single Goldilocks planet.

Maybe someone should have considered just how unlikely that was.

So what remained of the Alliance and the rising Unity took their war to Eden, but what we found there changed everything.

Forever.

(First in the Tears Of Stone trilogy)

I seem to do this all the time. When I'm watching intriguing TV Shows or movies certain things sometimes stick in my mind and I think about how I would have expanded on that particular idea. Yet it took me two years to write a good query letter for my own novel that I am working on.

Here are some of my ideas:

A world dominated by Conservative ideas and liberals are seen as weird or stupid. (Just an idea)

I have an idea that a prison is a new viral streaming internet sensation where all is recorded and all is viewed by the public who always want more. The prison is more like a community/town that the prisoners run. The producers have to keep the tension going and the brutality up. It's not complete anarchy but it's close. (this one is actually more developed and I may attempt to write it one day)

I'm currently working on a time-travel metaphysical novel.

 

[SciFrac]

I have an idea that a prison is a new viral streaming internet sensation where all is recorded and all is viewed by the public who always want more. The prison is more like a community/town that the prisoners run.

That's interesting. I had a similar idea where a country's justice system is broadcasted live so the whole public can vote on verdicts and assign punishment.