Pitch Perfect Is Full of Win! And A Lesson About Book Blurbs

The world would be a much more glorious place if I got ten and a half hours of sleep every night.  I’m talking, I’d have my own songbird entourage and would probably feel like the star of a musical and burst into song and dance at random moments.  Given I have exactly zero skill at dancing (I was in show choir on the back row, only because I could project to the back of the auditorium REALLY WELL and they needed the boost in the alto section), probably the world is happy that I do not get this much sleep on a regular basis, like, ever.  All that to say, I feel better.  :cuddles nice hot mug of tea and snuggie:

WHY am I talking about bursting into song this morning?  Well, because hubby and I watched Pitch Perfect last night.

This is a movie I had been avoiding.  The previews mad it look like the kind of gross, stupid humor that is often so popular (for which I have no appreciation WHATSOEVER).  Hubby kept saying ,”I think you’d like it.”  And I kept being all meh.  But we started with This is 40, which I hated in 10 minutes and found disgusting and boring (because it IS that gross, stupid humor that is so popular), so anything involving singing had to be better.

Pitch Perfect was full of win!

Lots of great music (and some examples of bad during auditions and rehearsals where the group wasn’t gelling), a love story between rival groups, boocoodles of mashups (I love mashups), and Anna Kendrick has a flipping AMAZING voice.  Kind of like a cross between Norah Jones and Sara Bareilles.  I wish she’d do an album (which she said she won’t because she thinks the record companies suck).  iTunes indie albums, girl!  We’d all buy it!  And then there was Fat Amy, who is just frigging awesome.  WEIRD and GOOFY, but she totally embraces exactly who she is, calls herself fat before people can do it behind her back and wears it like a badge of honor rather than it being all shameful self-talk.

The Riff Off?  I TOTALLY WANNA DO THAT!  Which I totally can’t because I tend not to be able to remember the words to stuff I haven’t rehearsed, but STILL.  AWESOME.

And the homage to The Breakfast Club?  Oh yeah, I totally dug that.  Note to self: Must get Susan to watch for that alone.  She will have kittens.

One of the things I liked about this over Glee is that this felt much more like the reality.  These were accapella groups rather than show choirs specifically, but the groups had their 3 songs and that’s what they worked on for competitions.  For months.  None of this new songs with full choreography and costumes every week.  Now I understand why Glee doesn’t do that, because that would be boring as a long running show, but I appreciated the verisimilitude for this movie.

Now, I really feel like this holds a sort of lesson for people writing book blurbs (you know, the back cover copy).  I avoided this movie for months because of the trailer.  Because movie trailers are the back cover copies for movies, the thing that gives us a hint of what the movie is about.  I get that they are gearing trailers toward their target audience (and I know that for some mysterious reason, gross, stupid humor sells really well), and with movie trailers, they actually often make more than one to try and aim toward more than one.  In fact, when I went to try to find the original trailer I saw that turned me off, I saw a bunch of others that would’ve turned me on.  With books you only get one shot, so you have to be careful to present the best blurb you can to try to snag readers.  You’ve gotta hit genre, goal, motivation, conflict, and give us an impossible situation, a question we NEEEEEED to see answered.

Does YOUR book blurb do that?

3 thoughts on “Pitch Perfect Is Full of Win! And A Lesson About Book Blurbs

  1. I’m terrible at writing book blurbs,. I often find myself getting ready to publish an ebook, only to realize I haven’t done the blurb yet, which puts me in panic mode. What do I write??? Then I end up doing it too quickly so I can get the book published. Thanks for this post. There are probably many of us who need to go back and revamp our blurbs.

  2. I loved Pitch Perfect; it was such a feel good film. The riff off was cool – I wanted to be in that empty swimming pool with them.
    I need to work on my blurbs, definitely.

  3. I loved this movie! The mash ups were insanely awesome! And I loved the humor in it – especially Rebel Wilson (Fat Amy). Interesting idea about book blurbs and what trailers can teach us.

    Side note: Are you going to DFWcon again?

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