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When Steve Jobs was 12 years old, he picked up the phone and called Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard with a simple request. Did Hewlett-Packard have any spare computer parts, and if so, could Jobs have them? For free?

First Hewlett laughed. The audaciousness of this kid!

Then he said: okay.

Now I feel like the 12-year-old goober, surrounded by Hewletts, asking prominent people for spare parts. Not long ago, I DMed¹ a USA-Today bestselling author and asked for a favor. Allow me to paraphrase how that felt:

“please read my book, and if you like it, please tell the world what you liked about it? k thx”

Welcome to the current stage of THE PERFECT HOME’s preproduction. With the help of my agent and editor, letters and emails are flying out to bestselling authors on multiple continents.

The goal: blurbs.

If you don’t know what blurbs are, they’re those little quotes on book jackets with authors recommending what’s inside:

Despite having sent a zillion cold pitches and queries over the years, despite the fact that blurb requests are a normal part of the publication process, it still feels very presumptuous to ask a prominent author to

1. read my book

2. if they like it, writing something nice about it

So I confess: I feel pretty self-conscious writing these blurb request letters. Is the tone right? Am I sounding like a dork? A little of column A, a little of column B?

Imagine the awkwardness of writing fan mail. Now add the feeling of asking for a thousand dollars in cash.

🎵 “Hey I just met you / and this is crazy / but here’s my novel / So blurb it maybe” 🎵 

It’s all part of the normal publishing process, but still. I am a debut author. The people who are (or might be) blurbing me are career authors who do book signings. They have more status, more books under their belts, and enough clout that they have people who can say no for them. It’s a tad intimidating.

But here’s the fun news: We scored an early victory.

My first blurb request—that Twitter DM—did respond! And she wrote me an absolutely perfect-pitch blurb that can immediately go on the book’s early galleys² .

Drumroll please…

I was really blown away by how generous and welcoming Christina was, both in giving me the time of day and in treating me like a fellow author, which I guess I am now.

Thank you, Christina!

So where am I going with all this?

Sometimes, cool things only happen when you’re bold enough to ask.

A professor at Cornell named Vanessa Bohns even wrote a book about this phenomenon: You Have More Influence Than You Think. She says most people underestimate the odds someone will say “yes” to us. We figure people will reject us, so we never bother asking.

Call it a problem of under-confidence. It’s so common, science even gave it a name: the underestimation-of-compliance effect. A study asked subjects to estimate the odds that strangers would say “yes” to their requests for favors.

The subjects got it way wrong. They underestimated the chances of a “yes” by 48%.

I should reiterate that these author blurb requests aren’t quite as unconventional as, say, Steve Jobs calling Bill Hewlett at his home. I’m not stalking these writers and sending them texts out of the blue. Most blurb requests go through proper channels, through editors and agents. I’m sure any awkwardness I feel is much ado about nothing.

Still, there’s no playbook for writing blurb requests out there. (They didn’t cover this in Writer’s Market 2020).

So I thought I’d share what I did. For better or worse, here was my approach:

• I relied on my freelance pitching experience. And my pitching experience tells me not to go on and on about myself. “Hey there, I’m so-and-so, I’ve done this, I’ve done that.” Boring. Instead, I highlighted why book might be fun for them to read, or the specific influence they had on it.

• Research/background. Each letter I drafted only applied to one human on earth: them. In one case, I shouted out the author’s dog. To that author, I’m sure their dog is far more interesting than my blurb request can ever be. (The only copying-and-pasting I did was when describing my book’s plot, because that’s always the same.)

• Mentioning the personal connection. If there was a personal connection—I’m reaching out through so-and-so, I loved such-and-such book you wrote—I mentioned that, too. But don’t get me wrong. I haven’t met many traditionally published authors. Most of these letters are cold requests. Still, if there were one or two degrees of separation between me and these authors, I mentioned that.

• A dash of humility. You have to accept the position you’re in: asking an enormous favor with nothing to give in return. So be humble! Imagine what a turnoff it would be to read a blurb request from an author who acted like you owed them something. Blech.

• Edits. My editor helped me out here, acting as a filter before my requests went out to the world. That helped keep things concise.

And that’s really it. I wrote them as best as I could, and now I’m leaning on my publisher and on Vanessa Bohns’ insights: if you just ask nicely, you never know who’s going to say yes.

As I write this newsletter, my book’s blurb request checklist is filled with fantastic authors who have yet to respond. Many might say no.

But it’s also fun to imagine what happens if some game-changing name or two might say yes.

If you don’t ask, you’ll never know.

(Fingers crossed.)

🖋️Writing Tip: Shove Your Protagonist Across a River🖋️

January 49 B.C. Rubicon River, Italia Province.

Tensions were high between the two major political figures in Rome, Pompey and Julius Caesar. After conquering Gaul, Caesar held command of the Thirteenth Legion. Now his army was on the northern edge of Italia while Rome seemed to hold its breath.

Crossing into Italia proper was a major no-no: if you did that, you weren’t only violating a taboo, you were violating Roman law. If Caesar marched his legion across the Rubicon, he’d ignite a civil war with Pompey.

He crossed it, reportedly saying, “The die is cast.”

High drama, right?

Exactly.

If your story’s plot isn’t working, it might be missing your main character’s Rubicon moment: a decision your protagonist must make which will render their previous life impossible.

The protagonist might win. The protagonist might lose.

But either way, once they cross this metaphorical river, life can never be the same.

Some examples:

• In Star Wars, the Empire kills Luke’s family and he decides to go with Obi-Wan to find Princess Leia. His old life on Tattooine is no longer a possibility.

• In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch agrees to defend Tom Robinson. Whether the trial is a win or a loss, this decision alone makes Finch’s family the target of racists.

• In A Game of Thrones, Ned Stark agrees to become Hand of the King and investigate the murder of Jon Arryn, exposing his family to political danger.

• In Wuthering Heights, Catherine marries Edgar Linton despite her relationship with Heathcliffe.

• In Finding Nemo, Marlon has to venture into the world outside his cozy home—the dangerous open sea. He can’t go back to his old life because Nemo is missing.

Kurt Vonnegut said you should get your character stuck in a tree and throw rocks at them. As storytelling advice, that’s a pretty good rule of thumb. Obstacles are compelling. Readers want to see how your character is going to get out of the tree.

But it’s easy to misuse that advice, plaguing your main character with unfortunate coincidences that strain credibility. If you don’t force your character into a story-defining choice, they’ll become passive observers of all the obstacles you’re hurling their way. Your story will feel less organic and more like some obvious invention of the author’s imagination.

As literary agent Eric Smith once said:

Refer back to the stories I listed. Ned Stark heading south to King’s Landing? Atticus Finch agreeing to defend Tom Robinson? Those are Rubicon-crossing moments. Decisions that end the world of the First Act.

These characters are full participants of their stories who can’t walk away from the consequences of their actions.

And as a result, readers just gotta—know—what—happens—next.

Let’s use A Game of Thrones as our example of how you might structure this:

• Make us care about someone: Ned Stark, Warden of the North, is an honorable man. An early scene (“He who passes the sentence should swing the sword”) shows us he’s a man of integrity, at least by his internal logic. Readers care.

• Establish the danger of the choice: Late at night, the Starks receive a letter which claims the Lannisters are behind the murder of Jon Arryn, Ned’s old friend and previous Hand of the King. We readers understand that getting involved in King’s Landing politics isn’t just a game. The last time Starks went south, the story reminds us, Ned’s father and brother died.

• Force the irrevocable decision: King Robert asks Ned to become Hand of the King and join him down at the capitol. Either Ned exposes himself to the danger (established above), or he risks his friendship with the King. Ned decides to get to head south and get to the bottom of Jon Arryn’s murder. For good or ill, there’s no going back after this.

Now you have a page-turner. There are many reasons Game of Thrones became a worldwide phenomenon, but they all owe something to the absorbing power of those clever crossing-the-Rubicon moments.

The lesson? Stop getting your characters stuck in trees.

We want to see what happens on the other side of that river.

Thanks for reading my newsletter!

Current status of THE PERFECT HOME: Copy edits handed back to publisher and galleys in production. Something I learned at this stage: the author is responsible for clearing the rights to song lyrics.

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There’s no set schedule, but so far it’s been about once every month or two. And I already feel something bubbling up for next time…

Until then,

-DK

1  Christina and I had recently followed each other on Twitter, so there was a bit of a “warmer” connection there. Don’t pester authors on social media for blurbs if they have no idea who you are.

2  Galleys = early drafts or proofs for editorial review, or for authors to read if they’re considering blurbing. Yep, I had to Google it. Galleys are either that, or “a low, flat ship with one or more sails and up to three banks of oars, chiefly used for warfare, trade, and piracy.”