How to Make Effective Taglines Using Proven Techniques

Last week we talked about Hooks, so this week we’re going to talk about how to put them into effect by looking at some hooks for famous novels and discussing how we can create our own. I’m also going to give an honorable mention to other types of “lines” used in marketing that writers should know, but we really are going to focus on taglines.

First, let’s check out the kinds of lines that I feel are germane to writers. There are others beyond this list, so if you go out searching, you’ll find them. However, I think these ones are the most likely you’ll encounter in your writing and publishing journey:

• Taglines
• Loglines
• Throughlines

Since we’re going to go through taglines in depth in a minute, let’s take a glance at the other two. In short, loglines are longer than a tagline and are used as an “elevator pitch” for agents and publishers. They contain the who, what, when, where and why and might very well contain spoilers you wouldn’t want to give a potential reader. Throughlines are for your agent and editor and are at most two sentences that describe the important thematic and character arc of the story. I’m not an expert at these two types of lines, so I’m not going to try and get deeper into them. But you can find a lot of sources online to help you if you want to explore those in more depth.

Now we get to taglines. To be specific, a tagline is between one and three sentences but usually less than 50 words (I suggest strongly under 150 characters for reasons I’ll explain later) and should be, to quote a friend, “sizzly” for the target market. The reason I specify that they should sizzle for the target market is that what is red-hot sizzle for a book on train engines from 1872 would probably not attract me since I don’t like the genre. However, it should read as irresistible for a train enthusiast. The tagline also must include an indication of genre and/or tone of the story. A well-written tagline matches the genre of the book, and in my presentation (which I’ll link to at the bottom), I share an example of this.

Taglines, most frequently, are used as the first thing a reader sees on the sales page. They’re sometimes on the front or back cover of a book. The function of this is to entice the reader to read the blurb. It’s step two of a funnel (where I would argue step one is a book cover that catches attention). Also, they’re specifically a hook and not a synopsis.

To further illustrate this, here are some hooks from bestselling books of several genres:

“Winning will make you famous. Losing means certain death.” — The Hunger Games

“A world is at stake. The quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready?” — Ready Player One

“Winter is coming.” — A Song of Fire and Ice

“Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?” — Clairel

Three of those names are ones you might be able to pick out due to their media and movie fame, but I chose Clariel because it has a great tagline and is written by one of my favorite authors. It’s also a bestseller par excellence. However, you might not recognize it immediately. If you don’t, before you read further, take a guess at what genre it is from reading it.

Go on, I’ll wait.

Got your guess?

That tagline is for a YA high fantasy novel that contains thriller elements and is quite dark in tone. If you guessed any of those elements (which everyone in the lecture did), you can immediately see how even a tiny snippet of text can provide insight into the tone and genre.

Now onto how to write them! I’ll refer you to last week’s blog on hooks as a refresher for the techniques we’re going to use. If you haven’t read that blog post or, better yet, watched the YouTube video of my lecture then consider doing so before moving onward because this is part of a three-part series, and jumping into the middle will leave you lacking some necessary tools.

For those who know what we’re on about, let’s keep pushing forward. I know I nodded to it earlier, but just to lay it out in a simplified form, effective taglines contain the following elements:

• Short (150 characters or less)
• Drives readers to read the rest of the blurb
• Uses one or more of the hooks listed in the previous post
• Contains genre-specific elements to target your readers
• Displays a bit of the author’s voice’
• Indicates the tone of the narrative

The reason I say it should be 150 characters or less is because if it is, you can use that tagline as an Amazon ad (which caps out at 150 characters) and can also use it in most any marketing media from Instagram images made in Canva to a TikTok video label (which is 150 characters max). You can have multiple taglines per book, too, and use different taglines for different types of marketing material. Just remember that they need to be short.

As previously stated, your hook is step two of your “funnel” (the thing we use to capture readers and bring them through to make sale). While I cannot speak for all readers, for me, my flow of evaluating a book on Amazon, is as follows:

• Look at the cover
• Read the tagline
• Read the blurb
• Glance at the reviews
• Use the ‘look inside’ feature to decide if the writing is good quality
• Buy the book (or add it to a wishlist if I can’t afford it that moment)

As you can see by that flow (which is probably the average way a reader evaluates a book) the tagline is one of the first pieces of copy I encounter either on the book cover itself (if I’m in a physical bookstore) or in the Amazon description, where you have a very small space above the “read more” line to capture a reader’s interest. This highlights the importance of the tagline or initial hook into reading the story.

I have another lecture/post/video coming next week about blurb writing, as a whole, but for now let’s keep our focus on the tagline itself.

Utilizing the hooks we learned about, we can construct a good tagline that contains the elements I listed above ,and yes, it can be done in only 150 characters. It takes practice and effort, but it’s entirely doable. Remember that copywriting is very different than novel writing and is an entirely different skill set. Any new skill set, even if it’s in the same sphere as something you’re familiar with already, is going to take time to learn. Be patient with yourself and practice (I have some advice for that, too!).

So how do we do all these things?

Start by looking at bestselling media in your genre (books, movies, video games, comics, et al) and see what taglines they use and what elements they have in them. Not everything uses a tagline, but most things do if you dig a little. Look for lines of text on movie posters, for example. That’s usually the tagline.

Second, identify key elements of your story and think about how you’ll highlight them in a tagline. For example, in Fallen, I have murder, a fallen angel trying to figure out the world, a kidnapping, and a general “thriller/suspense” feel to the novel. As such, I incorporated those elements into my Amazon ads tagline (which I love): A fallen angel faces life on earth, a murder, and a kidnapping. Some days it’s do or die. Today it’s probably die. A close second to that tagline was: A fallen angel faces life on Earth, a murder, and a kidnapping. Some days all you have is a prayer and a cocktail umbrella.

Third, try several of the hooks mentioned prior. Play around with the ideas and recognize that these are not typically one-and-done. You’ll write a bunch of taglines, workshop them, tweak them, play with them, and eventually come out with something you like. It takes time.

Finally, workshop these taglines with other authors and with readers who are into your genre if you can. See what people connect with. As with all things in marketing, research and testing are golden. So don’t rush into this. Writing a tagline you really think is a winner can take days, weeks, or longer. Don’t beat yourself up if it’s not done in two minutes flat.

Practice these techniques by writing new taglines for your favorite shows, books, and so on. Pull out the key elements of those mediums and play with them, using different techniques.

I give some more information in the video than I do here, but I feel this is enough of a jumping off point. If you want a deeper dive into all of this content, check out the YouTube video I made of the lecture I gave. If you enjoy this content, I do these lectures every week and am going to be doing them over on GoBrunch for free. They’re Sundays at 3pm Eastern Time, and I post the link over on Twitter, so keep an eye out!