Taglines and Book Trailers - The Similarities

Taglines are used for many reasons, but what is their purpose?

A person's time and attention span these days is so short that you have to get their attention and then hold it. A Tagline about your book must convey the heart of the story -- a dramatic, but basic overview. Taglines are also used to give people an insight into what you write. My tagline is 'Contemporary romance with sizzling sensuality' -- this should tell the author exactly what kind of stories I write in a nutshell. Coming up with one for your story may take a few more words, but keep it short and always one sentence. For A Psychic Hitch, I use 'Cheri London wants a baby, but not the man.' This should give the jist of the storyline, but also leave unanswered questions -- make them curious.

Book trailers are no more than a teaser -- a venue to entice the viewer to buy the book. You think writing a synopsis for a 50,000 book in less than five pages is hard, well, it's nothing compared to this.

The reader needs to feel the emotional tug, they want to know more, and a reason to rush off to buy it. How do you do this? Use the emotions -- reach right out and twist the heart just enough to hook them.

Find the scene which stands out as an emotional kicker and choose snippets, no more than six words. Or you can write snippets which coincide. Find music at royalty free site and carefully choose a piece to reflect the story and the scene. Gather up photos at royalty free sites, keeping in mind the characters, what they look like - color of hair and so on.

Now you have everything for the video in one place. I use Windows Movie Maker, so then I upload the photos and music to it. It's time to make a masterpiece.

Blending images and text to the music, hitting the right tempo at the height of the scene is important. I find my program easy to work with. You simply place the images and text in the timeline bar in the order they should appear and choose the pacing - how fast it changes from one image to another. It's important they glide from one to another rather than come off choppy.

With A Psychic Hitch, I used music to tell the story. The lyrics are perfect while the photos give the gist of Cheri's conflict and that is 'the man'. This was my first attempt two years ago, so yeah, if I did it again, I'd do it different. I'd use text and maybe focus more on the hooking with a teaser; draw on the emotions. I might yet redo it, and make one for the other two books.



Since I ventured out in the book trailer world, Windows has improved the functions of Movie Maker. This helped making the second video so much easier. Also, I have a graphics program in which I can add text to anything. I did this with my second video where I used text from my brochures to introduce to people what kind of an author to expect from me. What I don't like about the video is the sharp end of the music. I had shortened it to meet the images. When I go to redo it in order to incorporate a review for my new book, I'll have to figure out what to do about it.




Do you have a tagline? For you as an author? For each of your books?

Check out Lindsay's Romantics June 23 for my post on Interviews.

Bekki
Contemporary romance with sizzling sensuality
Jewel of the Sun's Blood Destiny - paperback
Last Glass of Wine
A Psychic Hitch
Servin' It Up
Love, Stalker of the Heart
http://bekkilynn.net/
http://bekkilynnsplanet.blogspot.com/