Revised Amazon.com Book description

[TheIELighten]

The Dreamer Awakens is a short book/novella of approximately 70 pages.


A Futuristic Fantasy taking place on another world.
The man was haunted by dreams of himself as a boy, waking up in a room disguised to look like his own. His parents were gone. He was terrified and alone. A little girl he thought was an angel comforted him, promised she would take him home. The man couldn't understand the dreams; he had no memory of being kidnapped.
Then another little boy, the president's son was abducted. When they showed his picture on the news, the man was shocked to see that the little boy looked like him. Could he and this boy be connected somehow?
Out of his mind with anxiety and fear the man decided to give one more therapist a try.
Will the man have the courage to face his fears, conquer his dreams, and save the little boy?

 

[Andrew LH]

A few things: most important is to name your protagonist. It feels like you're going out of your way not to, and selling a story about a nameless cipher isn't going to be easy. I'd also strongly advise switching to the present tense. "A man wakes up" is more immediate, and no-one is going to assume the story itself is in the present too.

I think you're spending too much time on scenes one and two (Dream; TV reveal) before rushing off the rest. I'd be inclined to shorten the first rather than expand the second, something like:

A man wakes from dreams of being kidnapped as a child, a trauma that never really happened. When he learns of the kidnapping of a child who looks just like he once did, he blah blah blah.​

I have to ask: can it be the most exciting thing that follows this opening is that he goes to a shrink? I don't think that will draw in the readers - you've hinted at high stakes so far, which is good, but you need to build on them not back away. Introspective analysis won't cut it, but something simple and open ended based on "save the boy" will.

Along these lines (and I was also thinking this about the actual text, though I've not had time to read much yet), I think you blow the reveal of "it's the president's son" too early. Hold something back, as I have above - the coincidence of their visual similarity is fine to start with; learning that the child has a high-powered connection adds pressure, but it's best to increase it in a controlled way. Ending the blurb with "But when [HERO NAME] decides to act, he learns the child isn't all he appears" (or something like that) gives you a nice teaser to lure in the readers.

 

[TheIELighten]

Thanks for the tips, Noumenon.

I'll keep working on it.

I can certainly add back in the protagonists name. And no, visiting a therapist isn't the most exciting thing that happens (at least I hope not), that's the action that sets the rest of the story in motion. Basically the catalyst to the plot.

My greatest concern is not setting up readers with false expectation. I don't want them thinking it's a political thriller and then being disappointed. The president's son thing is more a red herring than a reveal. It's hard for me to get into readers head 'cause I don't understand how normal people think. So when trying to write something that will interest people but not lead them to believe the story is something it's not is challenging, to say the least.

Your ideas help though.

 

[kmtolan]

Uh, is this guy a psychic? That would be a great angle. What you have now is less a selling job and more a fast synopsis, me thinks. Good ideas given on jazzing it up, but I agree that your approach seems a little off. If we're talking red herrings, then don't sell the herring. Sell what makes this fellow have these dreams, and where it will take him.

Kerry

 

[Cirias]

For the purpose of this post, I'll call the protagonist Alex Taylor. This is just my take on what I've seen of your blurb/description. It's tricky to put together something detailed, because everything is a little vague/mysterious, but here's what I got. This would appeal to readers far more than describing everything. People need a central character/characters to root for and you need to make it clear who that is right there in the first paragraph.


Alex Taylor is a man haunted by dreams of childhood. Always waking in the same room with his parents gone. Always alone. Always afraid.

But the girl was always there too. The girl who looked like an angel, come to save him. And the news. The president's son had been abducted. They showed a picture--a boy who looked just like Alex.

Now, as he puts his trust in one last therapist--one final attempt to piece together the fragments of his past--Alex is afraid again. Against the backdrop of a futuristic, alien world, he must find the courage to face his fears and delve into his dreams one last time. But are his memories truly his? And can he save the missing boy?

 

[Cirias]

And, to expand on my post above, here's a quick break-down of an effective blurb. These are by no means hard and fast rules, merely... guidelines

This blurb is taken from I Am Legend by Richard Matheson:


An acclaimed SF novel about vampires. The last man on earth is not alone . . . (Optional introductory one-line premise)

Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth . . . but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville's blood. (Who is the hero/protag? What is the situation? What is the problem/conflict?)

By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn. (Expand on the hero/world. Add in more complications/problems/conflict.)

How long can one man survive like this? (Closing line/paragraph. What is the story basically about? What is the challenge? What must the hero do?)

 

[Andrew LH]

Two good posts there, I'd say.

 

[TheIELighten]

Thanks for the pointers and ideas. The example blurb with the guidelines was especially helpful.

Everyone I show my various attempts to has their own opinion on what it should be and unfortunately they don't all agree. But I guess I can't please everyone.

 

[KatG]

The Dreamer Awakens is a short book/novella of approximately 70 pages.


QUOTE]

Well, you're getting a lot of feedback here. I'll give mine and you can see what is helpful.

"A Futuristic Fantasy taking place on another world."It sounds like Earth and it doesn't sound like it's in the future. So this opener is likely to confuse. Is it an alternate Earth?

"The man was haunted by dreams of himself as a boy, waking up in a room disguised to look like his own. His parents were gone. He was terrified and alone. A little girl he thought was an angel comforted him, promised she would take him home. The man couldn't understand the dreams; he had no memory of being kidnapped."

I agree that you should put his name back in. Dreams aren't memories. Wild stuff happens in dreams that never happens to us in real life. So that the man has no memory of being kidnapped doesn't matter re having the dreams themselves. So you might want to have it:

For years, X was haunted by one recurring dream, himself as a boy, waking up in a bedroom that looked like his own but wasn't, his parents never answering his cries. A little girl, an angel perhaps, comforted him and promised she would take him home from this strange place. X could not understand why he had the dream; he had never been abandoned, kidnapped or abused, nor was he anxious. He never saw the little girl in the waking world. (One day, the dreams simply stopped, as mysteriously as they began.)

"Then another little boy, the president's son was abducted. When they showed his picture on the news, the man was shocked to see that the little boy looked like him. Could he and this boy be connected somehow?"

Until the day that he saw a picture on the news, a picture of the President's son, mysteriously abducted (from his bed) and the subject of a global manhunt. The little boy looked exactly like X had looked as a child. Had his strange dream been some sort of vision, or simply a sign of mental instability?

Out of his mind with anxiety and fear the man decided to give one more therapist a try.

That makes sense, but obviously something happens that leads him to see that he is having a psychic situation, not just mental distress. Does the therapist help him or hinder him on that? What occurs to lead him to believe he has a bead on the actual kidnapped boy?

"Will the man have the courage to face his fears, conquer his dreams, and save the little boy?"

I agree that this switch is confusing. He goes to therapy because he's disturbed that the president's son who looks like him has been kidnapped and then there was the dream. But what fears does he actually have to face? How does he conquer a dream? And how does that lead to saving the little boy? You obviously don't have to give the ending -- this is cover copy -- but you do need to set up the ending, say he will be opposing dark dangerous forces, that kind of thing. It's kind of like the Underwear Gnomes of South Park -- Step 1: steal underwear; Step 3: profit. Step 2 is missing and it's missing here.

 

[TheIELighten]

Well this is what I ended up with for now. It's up on amazon now and the link is in the self-promotion zone. (teehee)


People on another forum liked it, anyway. I can always tweak it, add to it or whatever later on. I just needed to do something, throw something out there rather than wallowing in indecision land.


The Dreamer Awakens is the first story set in the "Dreams of the Alter-Sphere" universe.
it is a short Fantasy Mystery of approximately 19,000 words and is about 68 pages long.

John Davidson was beginning to think he had a problem.

Darkness waited for him, patiently. He had been chosen. It wanted to share the dreams with him. The dreams had gone so long ago, but they were back again.
He is scared and alone.
He is in his bed . . . except it is not his bed . . . it's different.
He is not alone. She is there.
Blond plaits, blue eyes, long white gown.
She is a child.
She holds him, rocks him, smoothes back his hair.
"Hush, Johnny. It's okay. I'll protect you."
'I'll take care of you. I promise."

Then he wakes - gasping, heart racing, soaked in his own sweat and tears, just as he did every night.

The dream words echoed in his mind:

"Mommy! Come here I need you."
“ Daddy? Where are you?"
They don't come. They never come.

Who is the boy in the dream? Is it John? Is the dream an echo of a forgotten trauma? Or is it a prophecy? Has the dream been sent by the recently kidnapped boy who looks so much like the boy from his dreams?

John reaches out to the one therapist in town he hasn't visited yet, and from there his entire world starts to come down around him.

Is his world real? Is he real? Who can he trust?

 

[KatG]

That'll do ya. You might want to tweak in the president's son bit, but it works okay without.