The Top Book Description Mistakes Romance Authors Make by Morgan Lee Clasper

Let’s welcome back monthly columnist Morgan Lee Clasper as he shares with us “The Top Book Description Mistakes Romance Authors Make.” Enjoy!

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Romance is an immensely popular genre with a huge reader base.

But with a big audience comes serious competition.

One of your greatest tools for standing out and attracting readers is your book description (otherwise known as your blurb).

When readers land on your sales page, an effective blurb is often what turns them from curious shoppers into buyers and raving fans.

Which is why if your book description is making a fatal mistake, it could be seriously undermining your book’s appeal to readers.

Having read and worked on hundreds of romance blurbs, I’ve identified three major mistakes that romance authors often fall into.

While these mistakes can appear in blurbs from other genres, romance blurbs have some unique pitfalls — and potential strengths — that set them apart.

1. Describing the romance instead of selling the tension

This is a very common mistake, and it comes from authors treating their blurb as a simple summary of their plot.

They dedicate too much time to setup and backstory, resulting in the actual romance getting buried several paragraphs down.

The problem is that an effective romance blurb isn’t a mere summary of events.

It should also sell the emotional experience, making readers anticipate the romantic tension.

As a rule of thumb, “What happens” isn’t as important as how the characters feel about one another. 

Enemies-to-lovers romance is a beautiful example of this.

Because the romantic leads begin by hating each other, the blurb can easily create suspense, raise questions (“will they get together?”), and highlight powerful stakes.

The result is a push-and-pull that immerses readers in the dynamic and makes them anticipate how the protagonists will fall in love.

Even in stories without this trope, the underlying question is “how will these characters get together?”

Tension can come from numerous sources:

• They want each other but can’t be together
• One wants a relationship while the other refuses to commit
• They need each other’s help but don’t trust each other
• They pretend not to care while they clearly actually do
• They want to fall in love, but trauma or insecurity holds them back

In each case, the important thing is showing the relationship dynamic.

Readers need to understand why these characters could never be together, because the entire story is about how they actually can.

Additionally, the kinds of words you use in your blurb can either heighten the tension or undermine it.

This is particularly noticeable in enemies-to-lovers, rivals, forbidden romance, dark romance, and other dynamics where attraction is mixed with hostility, resentment, distrust, or power imbalance.

Consider the following examples:

“Ever since he broke her trust, Emma never liked Jake. But when they’re forced to work together, she starts to develop feelings for him.”

The language here is neutral and lacking in power. 

The relationship reads like a mild inconvenience that happens to end in some romantic feelings.

Let’s see what would happen if we strengthened the wording:

“Emma has spent ten years despising Jake. Now she’s forced to work beside the man who exposed her darkest secret — and the more she tries to hate him, the harder it becomes to resist him.”

Now, the same events are charged with emotional tension. 

This helps readers become more invested in the story and feel the underlying emotions for themselves.

Every kind of blurb can benefit from stronger wording.

Just like when editing your novel, look for places where you can swap out weak or unclear words for more powerful alternatives.

2. Hiding the Tropes Your Readers Crave

The romance genre is a great example of the power of story tropes.

Romance fans are voracious readers.

However, they can also be very particular about the kinds of stories they enjoy.

Romance boasts an immense number of tropes, with hyper-specific subgenres and niches that cater to almost any interest.

Romance fans may enjoy specific relationship dynamics, settings, themes, and protagonists.

One reader might only want cozy, small-town, later-in-life stories.

Another might binge-read college sports romance with palpable tension and snarky protagonists.

As authors, we can take advantage of our story tropes to attract readers who enjoy them.

One effective way to do this is in what I call your “selling paragraph”.

This is the final paragraph of your blurb, placed after your cliff-hanger.

It gives you an opportunity to mention similar authors (i.e., “Perfect for fans of X and Y”), as well as list your main tropes.

You could mention your book’s subgenre, for example:

• Billionaire romance
• Mafia romance
• Sports romance
• College romance
• Clean romance
• Romantasy
• Paranormal romance
• Regency romance
• Romantic comedy

You can also mention your specific story details.

This could include the love interest’s personality or the relationship dynamic:

• Fake dating
• Slow burn
• Forced proximity
• Opposites attract
• Grumpy/sunshine
• Enemies-to-lovers
• Friends-to-lovers
• Second chances
• Forbidden love
• Fated mates
• Secret relationship
• Surprise pregnancy

This list is far from exhaustive.

There are hundreds of possible tropes with hyper-specific combinations, and readers will often binge their favorites.

By leaving your tropes out of your blurb, it makes it harder for readers to know if they’ll enjoy your story.

Authors may worry that they’re narrowing their audience with this tactic.

However, it’s better to attract a smaller readership that loves your kind of story, rather than a broad audience that feels lukewarm — or worse, actively dislikes your tropes.

I’m not saying to cram your blurb with every possible trope.

But by highlighting the top 3-5 tropes that feature prominently in your story, you can help your book appeal to your desired readers.

As a practical exercise, try chaining different subgenres and tropes together.

You could lead with your subgenre, then sprinkle in your relationship dynamic, protagonist’s personality, or setting:

Romantasy + Fated Mates + Forbidden Love

Clean Romance + Second Chances + Small Town

Dark Romance + Forced Proximity + Grumpy/Sunshine

These combinations give readers essential information about your story while using only a handful of words — and in a blurb, every word counts.

As an aside, remember to show how your specific tropes influence your book.

There’s a big difference between dumping an inventory of tropes on your reader vs. showing how those tropes shape your story.

Example: “Her ex-boyfriend is the man she swore she’d never forgive. Unfortunately, pretending to date him is the only way to keep her career afloat”.

If you were to then mention second chances, fake dating, and forced proximity in your blurb’s selling paragraph, readers can see exactly how those tropes apply.

Example: “Step into a thrilling second chances romance that will delight fans of fake dating and forced proximity.”

As an added bonus, taking the time to examine your story’s tropes will also give you potentially powerful keywords that will improve your book’s search ranking.

3. Ignoring The Power of First-Person Voice

Romance blurbs offer a unique opportunity that’s absent from many other genres.

Because these stories often place the reader in the shoes of the protagonist, letting them experience everything through a first-person perspective, the blurb can also be written in a first-person voice.

Doing this has several major benefits.

First, it allows readers to get a taste of your book’s writing style.

If your heroine is snarky and irreverent, consider using that tone in the blurb.

If the book is witty and ironic, having your POV character make sarcastic comments in the blurb lets readers know that this will be a recurring theme in the book.

Second, writing in first person allows readers to feel the romantic tension for themselves.

If our heroine is frustrated with the male love interest, or if she’s risking death by participating in a forbidden romance, a first-person blurb makes those emotions bleed through, letting us experience the character’s feelings for ourselves.

All of this combined can result in a punchy, voice-driven blurb that lets readers meet your protagonist before the first page.

The best blurbs using this technique feel like your protagonist is directly speaking to the reader.

Some authors worry that this approach won’t work for a dual-POV novel.

I find this fear to be misplaced.

I’ve seen (and written) many first-person blurbs for dual-POV novels.

Just like when you’re deciding which perspective to write a chapter from, the trick is to pick whichever character has the most to lose, is driving the action, or has the most interesting view of things.

To take our earlier example, a female perspective would work best because the heroine is the one driving the action (pretending to date her ex) and has the most to lose (saving her career).

A dark stalker romance, however, might benefit from a male POV because the male lead is the one stalking, obsessing over, and fantasizing about the female love interest.

It’s also possible to break your blurb into two points of view.

The first half can be written from one character’s perspective, while the second half can be written from that of the love interest.

This lets you show both sides of the situation and their separate feelings.

Not every romance blurb needs to be in first person.

There are many successful romance books that are written in third.

Nevertheless, it’s a missed opportunity to not consider whether your story is one that would benefit from the personality and immediacy of a first-person blurb.

Conclusion

These are the top three mistakes I’ve seen after hundreds of romance blurbs.

Fixing some of these mistakes might be as simple as swapping weak words for stronger alternatives, or adding a “selling paragraph” with your tropes.

Others might require you to rethink your current blurb.

To sum up, when writing your next romance blurb, remember to sell (and not merely describe) the emotional tension, mention the big tropes that your ideal readers enjoy, and consider whether your book would benefit from a first-person perspective.

With these tips in mind, you can craft a blurb that puts readers in the shoes of your protagonist, creates irresistible romantic tension, and leaves them desperate to read your story.

Happy blurb writing!

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About the Author

Morgan Lee Clasper is a copywriter, book sales strategist, and author of The Blurb Puzzle.

With over seven years of experience in the publishing industry, he’s worked with New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling authors, writing 4,000 blurbs and counting.

To download a free copy of The Blurb Puzzle, visit https://morganclasperauthor.com/the-blurb-puzzle