How to Write your Tagline

If you're attending writer conferences, it's good to have a tagline for yourself that describes what you do and a tagline that represents your work. At tagline isn't the same as its cousin, the dreaded elevator speech for pitching a book. A tagline is actually shorter, which in some ways is harder to write.

Usually a tagline for you, the author, contains 

1) What genre you're writing in

2) How your version of that genre/book is different

3) Extra credentials if you have them

For example: "I'm an award-winning author of cozy and rosy Romantic Suspense books."

That gives the genre, the style/tone of the work, and the added bonus of mentioning you are a good enough writer to win awards.

Short and sweet works best. But sometimes you want to give a "sense" of your work as a tagline. My Romantic Thriller series follows a former war photographer with PTSD and a disgraced FBI agent who fall in love during their mission to fight an underground law enforcement corruption organization named Goliath. That's an example of using the overall plot as a tagline.

When in doubt, ask your characters what they'd want you to say on their behalf. Or pair up with someone  in your genre and write each other's taglines.

The key is to give just enough intriguing information or story conflict to make the person say, "I want to know more about this or that" or "and then what happened?" 

TIP: Try using loaded words, like secret, love, heartbroken, danger, death, affair…words that have intrigue or longing or subtext.

Here's a cheat-sheet to get you started…


_________________________(character name) 

desperately wants ___________________________________________ 
   
in order to _________________________________________________ , 

but he/she is prevented by _____________________________________ 

until ____________________________(overcoming obstacle) happens.