Blurb Plotting, Part 2

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

In my previous blog, using Dean Koontz’s What the Night Knows, I demonstrated how an analysis of publisher’s blurb can--on occasion, at least--result in the identification of a formula by which a writer may plot a novel of his or her own, using this same formula.

In this post, using Bentley Little’s The Store, I demonstrate again how this method can generate a plotline for one’s own novel.

Fiona Webster summarizes the plot of Little’s novel; I add, in bold font, the steps that she creates in doing so that you or I (or anyone else, Bentley Little included) could extract from Webster’s synopsis, using these steps to develop the plot for his or her own novel:

Appeal to readers’ personal interest: . . . "In The Store Little examines the steadily expanding influence, over all of us, of chain stores. . . . "

Focus upon the ordinary while suggesting that, underlying the everydayness of the initial situation, something bizarre might be happening: "The Store builds paranoia by starting with simple descriptions of the picturesque landscape and the deceptively banal Western town that is Juniper, Arizona. Then The Store arrives. The Store razes a lovely hill to build its huge parking lot. The Store offers well-paying jobs and an astonishing variety of consumer goods. The pattern of delight and worry in the citizens, as The Store spreads its tentacles into local concerns, is believable--disturbingly so. The Store seems like any other of the familiar chains that reproduce like rabbits, invade communities, wipe out small businesses, and turn unique localities into a generic America that looks just the same from Alaska to Florida." 

Involve the main character and others in the situation: "But what exactly goes on, when Samantha and Shannon meet with their boss in the basement of The Store? And who are the Night Managers?"

Refer the situation to an established type of fiction (in this case, the dystopia): "This is dystopia in microcosm. This is horror fiction at its subversive best." --Fiona Webster 

Once again, the blurb has provided a sequence of steps by which to plot one’s own novel:

1. Appeal to readers’ personal interest.
2. Focus upon the ordinary while suggesting that, underlying the everydayness of the initial situation, something bizarre might be happening.
3. Involve the main character and others in the situation.
4. Refer the situation to an established type of fiction (in this case, the dystopia).