Let’s Think Up a Story Line!

“I gave you until today for the All About Volume 4 story line blurb, but do you have it?”

“……………The story line……?”

It was the day after Nayuta’s surprise-party suggestion, later on in the evening, and the sudden phone call from editor Kenjiro Toki was making Itsuki’s temples ache.

In addition to Sisterly Combat, which had its newest volume come out the other day, Itsuki was also writing a series called All About My Little Sister. Sisterly Combat was an earnest, serious battle-fantasy series, but All About My Little Sister was the opposite—a modern-day, wacky love comedy, although the hero’s passion to overcome all the odds for the heroine (his little sister, of course) was pretty similar. Three volumes of the series were now on sale, with Volume 4 due to launch in two months…allegedly.

“…You forgot to come up with one, didn’t you?”

“Wh-what? Of course not! I was just wrapping up the final revisions!”

“Really…?”

It was a lie, triggered by the coldness—and accuracy—of his editor’s accusation.

“R-really! I’ll absolutely send it to you before the day is through, so just relax and sit tight! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“…All right. I’ll be here.”

“S-sure thing… Whew…”

With the call ended, Itsuki breathed a well-deserved sigh of relief.

“Did something happen?” asked the dashing young man (actually a girl, but Itsuki didn’t know that) cleaning up the apartment, trying to look as neutral as possible. This was Itsuki’s younger stepbrother, Chihiro.

“…I need to think up a story line for All About Volume 4 right now.”

“Think up…a story line?” Chihiro asked, curious.

“When I say ‘story line,’ I mean just a few sentences. It’s that little blurb you see on the back cover of the book, or on publisher websites and pages on online bookstores.”

“Oh, that…” Chihiro nodded at himself, realizing what Itsuki meant. “The author writes those themselves?”

“No, the editor writes them a lot of the time, but I do my own.”

Toki wrote the summary for Itsuki’s very first novel, but Itsuki didn’t like it very much, so he requested the right to contribute his own from then on.

Some publishers are adamant that this is editing work and refuse to budge on it, but as Toki put it, “Whoever can write a better blurb will help the book out more,” so he let Itsuki handle it without too much pushback.

“Your next book’s coming out in June, right, Itsuki? That’s two months from now. They need it already?”

“Yeah, they need it for PR and advertising and stuff. We need to have a blurb written two or three months before launch. Whether the novel is finished or not, you’ve got to at least provide that in advance.”

“And…is the novel finished?”

“…About two-fifths of it,” Itsuki awkwardly replied. “I was planning to have the whole thing done by now, but I had a ton of trouble with the new Sisterly Combat volume… So now All About’s running late.”

“Is—is that gonna be okay?”

“The deadline’s still a ways off,” Itsuki told his concerned brother. “I’m fine. Based on my calculations, I should have juuuust enough time.”

“Enough time, or juuuust enough time?”

“…Enough time. It won’t wind up a disaster like Sisterly turned out to be. At least, not for the main text.”

“That’s great…but not for the main text? What about that story line blurb?”

A bead of cold sweat ran down Itsuki’s cheek. “I have to write that today…but those are kind of tricky.”

“Why is that? Whether you have the full text or not, you already thought about what’s gonna happen in this volume, right?”

“Heh… Well, about that…”

“Huh?!”

Chihiro was shocked, but Itsuki almost seemed proud.

“With Sisterly Combat, I only start writing once I’ve got the full plot worked out, but with All About, I like it to be kind of like a jam session, where I don’t know what’ll happen in advance. I go right into writing it without any previous prep. So I may be the author, but I don’t know what’s happening in Volume 4 yet!”

“Wow. I had no idea it was so unplanned like that…”

“It—it’s not unplanned! Like I said, it’s a jam session! A show where the characters move as they like and weave a story for me!”

It seemed like too much of an easy excuse for the exasperated Chihiro. But All About My Little Sister was a high-tempo story, packed with twist after unexpected twist, and while some reviewers called it “jarring” or “too random,” it was generally well received—and with those proven results, Chihiro couldn’t say this was the wrong writing style to use.

“A jam session’s great and all…but what’re you gonna do about that blurb?”

“I dunno. I guess I’ll just have to make something up,” Itsuki glumly reported.

To be honest, whether the manuscript was done or not, Itsuki didn’t really like writing story line blurbs. At the same time, if he handed the job over to Toki and didn’t touch it again, he also knew it’d affect the passion he had for completing a book. Writing it himself was the only option.

“That blurb’s only, like, not even a page of text, isn’t it? Is it that hard?” Chihiro seemed genuinely curious.

“…With my label, I’m asked to come up with maybe a hundred, no more than a hundred twenty-five words. Which isn’t a lot, but I wind up agonizing over that size limit a lot more than with regular writing.”

“Agonizing? Like how?”

“First off, I can’t have any major story spoilers. If it’s a detective story, you can’t talk about the criminal or the trick behind the murder, and if it’s a fighting series, you gotta be careful not to talk about who wins, or what kind of abilities the enemies have, or which abilities the heroes are gonna learn. With romance, it’s more like who’s confessing to whom and who starts dating whoever. You can’t write anything that’d affect the reader’s enjoyment of the novel…but at the same time, you have to fan their expectations, too.”

“Fan their expectations?”

“It’s part of the book’s packaging. With Volume 1 of a series, it’s the second-most important advertising tool after the front-cover illustration, but even with subsequent volumes, if you read the blurb and it doesn’t get you excited, some readers will stop buying at that point.”

“Oh… So not only are you talking about what’s inside; you’re trying to make it sound as interesting as possible.”

“Yeah. It’s really hard, figuring out how much detail you should go into. But, for example, sometimes you do need to talk about what kind of surprising things will happen, or what kind of crazy-strong enemy we’re facing off against, or who the hero’s going on a date with. Stuff the reader will want to read about.”

“…It’s kind of a fine line between what readers will want to know before they read it, and what they’ll want to know after they read it.”

“Right.” Itsuki nodded. “That sort of thing. And you have to be careful about some other stuff, too. If it’s not a Volume 1, you have to remember that the person reading the blurb may not have necessarily read all the past volumes.”

“How so?”

“The story line blurbs get posted on places like publisher websites and ads in brick-and-mortar bookstores. There’s a chance someone who doesn’t know the series at all might read that blurb. You have to avoid spoiling past volumes as much as possible.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, for example… Let’s say you have a character named A who first appears as an enemy. What if, in Volume 3 or whatever, the blurb reads, ‘The hero, working together with A,’ or something? Readers will wind up knowing that A does a face turn somewhere along the line.”

“Oh, that makes sense. If I read that first, then the first time A appeared in the story, it’d be like, ‘Oh, he’ll become a good guy later.’”

“Yeah. If you write ‘Overcoming the death of X,’ then everyone knows that X dies. If you write ‘Going on her first date with Y,’ everybody knows the heroine’s getting intimate with Y… There’s this famous real-life example, actually. It was this fantasy novel that relied on a lot of mystery elements, and they find the culprit at the end of the first volume. He gets away from the heroes, but then in the blurb for Volume 2, the culprit’s name is written right there. I really want to punch the guy who wrote that!”

“You were a victim, huh?”

“…The guy who wrote that, the guy who wrote the obi back text on Volume 8 of Vland Saga, and the guy who spoiled the main bad guy in Persona 4 are gonna pay for their crimes. All of ’em.”

Itsuki’s voice grew lower and lower.

“I mean, a lot of readers pick up a book only after they get interested in the anime or manga version, or they hear some good buzz about it. Some people don’t pick up a series until years after it was released. Spoiling a plotline is one of the most nefarious things you can do! It robs the reader of their fun and stomps all over the story and its author. People who get off on spreading spoilers around are barbarians, unworthy of being called civilized human beings! And doing something like that while in an official capacity? Idiots! A disgrace to the entire industry! They should be forced to live in an open sewer to atone for their evil deeds! You’re telling me, ‘Oooooh, I don’t care about spoilers, it’s fine’? Don’t give me that shit! Just because you don’t mind having shit in your pants, does that mean you can smear it on other people, too? And some people are like, ‘Well, if it’s really a good story, it’ll be fun to read even if you know what happens.’ Come on! That just means it’d be a lot more fun if you didn’t know! If you’re stupid enough not to realize that, you don’t have the right to get a single ounce of enjoyment out of something ‘really good’! Eat shit, assholes!”

Looking rather distressed, Chihiro watched Itsuki as he angrily recalled his history of coming across lethal spoilers when he least expected it.

When he spotted his brother looking at him, Itsuki calmed himself down.

“…So, uh, yeah, in a story line blurb, you have to avoid serious spoilers while giving readers a taste of what’s to come to get them excited. And you have strict space limits. Too short is a bad idea, too. You have to freestyle to get the atmosphere across—adding dialogue, or making it all informal-sounding, or even making it into a poem or going for a more literary style. It’s a different skill set from novel writing—I know Kanikou lets her editor handle them ’cause she sucks at it, but Haruto self-produces everything and has a real talent for it.”

“What about you?”

“Ehh, not bad, not exceptional. But I just hate it because it’s a pain in the ass.”

As he spoke, Itsuki turned toward his computer and began writing. His conversation with Chihiro had done a lot to organize his thoughts, letting him mentally shift gears from manuscript mode to blurb mode.

Of course, his brother was both intelligent and a good listener, so he suspected he may’ve just gotten carried away and talked his ear off for no good reason—but regardless: success! It was done before Chihiro finished making dinner.

After a week of agony following a shocking confession, Kazuma finally discovers the answer within himself. Meanwhile Ichika, becoming aware of her own feelings, decides to give Kazuma the whole truth—but those who wish ill for the couple are about to make their move!

“Ichika, I think I—”

“For you, my brother, I would—”

Where will the relationship between these two siblings and their passing memories go next? And what about Shingo and Yukiko, that other brother-and-sister pair? Will the secret of the Akatsuki clan finally be revealed?! Itsuki Hashima’s megahit sibling rom-com reaches its shocking, long-awaited Volume 4—showing off a kind of love that nobody’s seen before!!

“Oooh…”

Reading the completed blurb, Chihiro gave a soft sound of approval. He had read up to Volume 3 of All About My Little Sister, and from that experience, the blurb honestly made him want to read on. He knew what that “shocking confession” was, and both he and any other reader could surmise who the people “who wish ill for the couple” were.

As the author tucked into the tasty-looking curry in front of him, Chihiro asked, “…Are Kazuma and Ichika a ‘passing memory,’ or…?”

“Huh?” Itsuki lifted his head up enough to give Chihiro a questioning look. “I dunno.”

“You…don’t?”

“…I haven’t written it yet, but I’m sure they will be. Whether their relationship is, or it’s just referring to something else, I dunno.”

“Something else…? Well, it could be anything, then! I mean, they live together!”

“…Hey, I didn’t lie in there.”

“Mmh… Does something new happen between Yukiko and Shingo?”

“I don’t know. Assuming it does. It might not.”

“Aw, come on! You’re insinuating so much in this blurb!”

“It’s mostly just a bunch of hype I’m writing. There’s every chance their relationship won’t change at all.”

“Awwww…” groaned Chihiro, thoroughly unconvinced by this. “At least we’ll dive into the Akatsuki family secret. I’m looking forward to that. You’ve been dropping hints about that since Volume 1.”

“…Read closer. I said, ‘Will it be revealed?!’ Maybe it will, and maybe it won’t.”

“C’mon…”

Chihiro seemed seriously disappointed about this. Itsuki felt a tad guilty. “Look,” he offered, “I’ll make an effort to reveal that secret, and I’ll do my best to make sure Kazuma and Ichika get some quality time together, and I’ve got some active ideas about what might happen between Yukiko and Shingo, too.”

“Well, I’ll be looking forward to all that, so…”

“…Yeah,” Itsuki said, withering under the eyes of Chihiro as he leaned forward.

“…By the way, did you make up the ‘megahit’ and ‘long-awaited’ parts?”

“…Kind of.”

“I think you described yourself as ‘master talent Itsuki Hashima’ and, like, ‘the supreme leader of little-sister darlingness’ in previous ones.”

“……Is there a problem with that?” Itsuki bluntly asked, even as his face turned a little red.

“Noooo,” Chihiro teased back.