Three Words

Imagine your novel just debuted, and it's making the rounds on the blogosphere book review circuit. And people are loving it! You're getting rave reviews! (Stop drooling.)

Can you picture it?

Good. What are people saying?

I can't recall the specific site (it's probably several) but I remember reading a book review in which the reviewer chose three words to describe the book overall. My reaction: That's a great thing for writers to figure out to better understand their ms!

You don't want generic words like "entertaining" or "well-written" because obviously your book should be those things anyway. Be as specific as you can. Try to capture the essence of the book. Try to capture what mood you want to leave your readers in.

After thinking about it for a while, I came up with this:

The Temper - cool, comical, and quirky

Okay, okay, cool isn't super specific, but it's just the best word for some of the things that go down in this book. I mean, using a block of ice to surf on a gigantic wave in an exploding lake? That's just cool. I want The Temper to come off as funny, but comical is a better word choice because I want it to feel sort of comic book-y and humorous. Then I chose quirky because the characters are on the strange side, and a lot of the superpowers are absurd.

After I finish The Temper (Soooooon, I hope!) and jump into revising, I'm going to keep these three words in mind. It will help me cut, create or tweak sentences and paragraphs to better convey what I want my story to be.

You guys know the drill...


What three words would YOU choose to describe your current wip?


Also,

Happy St. Patrick's Day!