I'm attempting to come up with an enticing description for my next short story on Amazon. They give you more room than a standard logline, but I'm not sure how helpful having a full paragraph would help. This is all I have so far: Frank is not a very nice guy and his next few days are going to go badly for him. A dog, a gun, whiskey, and lots of unpleasant creatures. Hunting used to be so much fun for Frank.
That's pretty good. But there's something lacking in the part about the dog, etc. Like a verb. And that would make me question the author's competence. I'd try something like: Frank is not a very nice guy, but what did he do to deserve this? But mix in a dog, a gun, too much whiskey, and a lot of unpleasant creatures, and the next few days will not go well for him. Poor Frank. Hunting used to be so much fun. I'd read that.
I have to say I wouldn't use this one exactly because of the repeated "but". Otherwise I do think it's an improvement though, bit more dynamic.
Lol .. I already noticed that. I'm just about ready to upload this file to Amazon. Trying to figure out all the little details now. Formatting some of this stuff is a pain. I wanted to add a button to the end of the story that links back to Amazon for the reader to enter a review & found out I can't actually do this until after the story is posted & Amazon creates the page. So I get to upload the file, wait a few hours, get the link to the page, THEN reformat the file with the new link & upload it a second time. Seems like an inefficient way to do it, but all the Googling in the world hasn't shown me a better way.
Yes, and convoluted and quite shortsighted on Amazon's part. Computers are capable of some amazing things, but the humans who program them have to come up with the ideas first. It's crossed my mind quite often in the last twenty years that programmers have been lulled into a narrow-minded approach to writing both software and web site functionality. A simple example: Back in 1996, I worked for the company that first made online banking a reality (You'll never have heard of it, but it was called TVI Inc. and was located in Vancouver, BC, Canada). Anyway, we were trying to come up with a foolproof way for a user to change his/her password without ever having to worry about getting locked out of their account by maliciousness. The specific scenario we were working with was: user starts the password-changing process, they get interrupted and leave their computer unattended, when they come back, someone else has finished the process and now the user doesn't know the new password because some anonymous person has finished the process in the user's absence. And the solution we came up with was for the user to first enter the new password, then reenter it and finally enter their old password to finish things off. It was elegant and there was no way the user could get locked out, but not one single bank, company, or web site has ever adopted this approach. Programmer thinking has only gone downhill from there.
Is your story written in present tense? I may be weird, but I've always found it odd when the book description is written in the present tense, while the book itself is written in the past. Going on what Catrin Lewis said: Frank was not a very nice guy, but what had he done to deserve this? Mixing a dog, a gun, too much whiskey, and a lot of unpleasant creatures was not the way he wanted to spend the next few days. Hunting used to be so much fun . . . What about something like that? Actually, I've used a few websites that adopted that approach. Think positive!
Reading that a loud to myself it sounds weird. I think it may be that extra "but". However, allow me rephrase: Frank isn't a very nice guy, and he's about to have a bad time. Why? Well put together a dog, a gun, a plethora of awful creatures, a bit too much whiskey, and you'll see what I mean. Does he really deserve all of this though? Poor, poor Frank. Hunting will never be the same.
Disregard. I wasn't thinking well and I got confused by how "story-like" the description is, instead of just being "this happened and now the person must solve the dilemma."
I think my bank uses it (sorry, but I'd rather keep my bank anonymous . . . paranoid and all that), and also a game I used to play (runescape). I don't remember the others--I've had to change my password on so many websites I get them all mixed up. I do remember that I've changed my password on a good number of websites that required me to enter the new password twice and also enter my old one, usually all on the same page. >enter new password< >re-enter new password< >enter old/current password< Like that. Frequently when I change a password, the website will send me an e-mail telling me my password has been changed and asking me if I'm the one who did it, telling me to ignore the e-mail if I am.
