Pitch practice thread!

[annathepiper]

Okay! Since there was a little bit of interest on my post about this from earlier today, I'm going to start a Pitch Practice thread. The purpose of this is to help any of the writers on my Friends list, whether they have been published already or not, practice giving pitches for their books. This is a skill one needs to learn when preparing a query letter to send off to an agent or editor, as it will help you get a good handle on the critical thing you have to do: interest the agent or editor enough in your book to make them ask for more of it to look at.

If you are a writer and have a book you're working on with intent to publish (or even a vague half-serious consideration of intent to publish), this thread is for you.

If you'd like to post a pitch to this thread and ask for help with it, an easy way to start would be to just try to think about how to summarize your book in a single sentence. This is what got called the "elevator pitch" at this year's Writer's Weekend--just a quick, easy answer to the question "What's your book about?" If you're media-oriented, you can also think of this as the one-sentence blurb that might get listed for your story in a program guide or on a Tivo if your story were a movie or a TV show. I will post some examples of my own in a comment. If you haven't already, you might want to look at my Day 1 writeup from this year's Writer's Weekend, where I talk about the "Query, Synopsis, Pitch" panel, or my Day 1 writeup from last year's WW, where I mention Liz Wolfe's "snowflake" method of writing a pitch.

If you are not a writer, what you can do to contribute on this thread is to look at the sample pitches offered up by the writers on the thread and tell us whether or not a pitch would make you want to buy the book. It doesn't matter if you haven't read the book already--in fact, it's actually good if you haven't read the book in question, because that is more like a real-world 'reader looking for a new book' kind of situation.

Also, in general, suggestions on how to tighten up a pitch to make it more attention-getting are good things: tweaks to word choices or grammar, anything that would add more snap to how a sentence reads, etc.

So let's see some pitches, people! :)

P.S. Pitches for short pieces as well as long ones are welcome! If you are considering trying to sell it in a professional market, go ahead and share your pitch for it!

Comments

Anna's current pitches

[annathepiper]

Faerie Blood: A young woman discovers her fey heritage when her Seelie Court kin come to Seattle to kill her.

The Dove, the Rook, and the Hawk (overall pitch): A healer, an assassin, and a knight unite to overcome ancient corruption at the heart of the religion that dominates their homeland.

Lament of the Dove (Book 1 of DRH): When an assassin steals a young half-elven healer out of slavery, the knight who is sworn to pursue them is forced to question the very Order he serves.

(I could post pitches for Books 2 and 3, but I won't yet, 'cause spoilers. :) )

Child of Ocean, Child of Stars: A young telepath discovers secrets that threaten the forming alliance between humanity and a newly discovered alien race. (This is my SF novel set on the oceanic world about which I world-geeked some time ago on this journal.)

The Tower in the Wood: A young prince risks the safety of his homeland when he becomes obsessed with a mysterious maiden locked in a tower in the wilderness. (This, of course, is my future treatment of "Rapunzel".)

Shards of Recollection: An orphan joins forces with a smuggler to help him uncover the past he cannot remember--and to elude the shadowy forces bent on eradicating both his memory and his life.

Re: Anna's current pitches

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

If I'm a pretend-editor:

Faerie Blood: I'm interested! I love my Urban Fantasy. The title is pretty generic, though.

Dove, Rook, and Hawk: I'd like to hear more. Sounds like it could have some good character interactions. What makes the world more interesting than a Generic Fantasy Setting? The nature of the corruption and complexity of the Knight's moral choices seems like it'd make or break the conflict.

Child of Ocean, Child of Stars: A good hook. I can think of a lot of different ideas for what might be in here, and I like most of them.

The Tower in the Wood: We've seen a lot of fairy-tale retellings, though not this one. So, if I'm an editor, I probably know if I'm interested in something like this.

Shards of Recollection: This also sounds intriguing. Smuggler backdrop could be an exciting setting with colorful characters.

I'd probably be most interested in treatments for Faerie Blood (because I'm shopping for Urban Fantasy), Child of Ocean, Child of Stars, and Shards of Recollection.

Re: Anna's current pitches

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

The Dove, the Rook, and the Hawk (overall pitch): A healer, an assassin, and a knight unite to overcome ancient corruption at the heart of the religion that dominates their homeland.

This isn't going to be a let's-write-the-Catholic-Church-in-and-call-it-something-else-a-la-Mercedes-Lackey book, is it? :-)

Re: Anna's current pitches

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The Faerie Blood pitch sounds good as is.

I know you have some fresh ideas in Dove/Rook/Hawk, but the fresh ones aren't the ideas that made it into your pitch. Try to figure out what you're already doing in the story that other folks aren't, and put that in the pitch. I'd be worried that these descriptions sound too much like Extruded Fantasy Product.

Likewise with The Tower in the Wood. I want to see just a few words more of what makes your take on the old story cool.

One more sentence or clause would help Child of Ocean, Child of Stars. What is the main consequence of the telepath's discovery? Does s/he have to flee, giving us a chase story? Does war ensue right away? Does s/he engage in intimate political intrigues to ward off the threat to his/her world?

There's an antecedent problem in Shards of Recollection. I'm not as sure as I'd like to be about which character is the amnesiac and which is the helper. The gender and age of the orphan could also be helpful, with only one or two words added. Is this a love story? Does an amnesiac smuggler come to stand in for the orphan's lost parents? Two words could give a lot more of the story's flavor to the pitch.

Re: Anna's current pitches

[technosage.livejournal.com]

FB: I'd ask to see pages b/c urban fantasy works right now. But if you want to sell it when UF isn't working, give me another detail about the heroine. Who is she before they come after her?

DRH: Tell me something that makes it very different from other similar stories. It's a nice summary, but I don't have a sense of the story at all. Consider a more high-concept pitch here.

Lament: good, but give me some code words. Tell me something, one adjective, about each the assassin, the elf, and the knight.

COOCOS: again, what kinda secrets? and how is she related to the power-structure? Give me a sense of the conflict.

TOW: very good. I'd suggest adding just one characteristic detail about the prince. Headstrong or something, to give it a little oomph.

SOR: very good. Give me something that tells me what kind of world this is set in.

All in all, I think you've really taken the lesson of short and snappy to heart. Now you need to punch it up just a bit by giving the one or two details that will show how the story is different from another story that might use a similar tag.

GOOD work!

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

Does this work for short stories, too?

Customer service: When everybody's mind has been uploaded to computers, the fate of humanity rests on the Tech Support Guy.

[annathepiper]

It does work for short stories, yes! Short pieces need to be pitched to their target markets just like novels.

And HEE, I like this one! :) My one question is whether "When everybody's mind has been" is grammatically correct, or whether it should be "when everybody's minds have been".

Let's throw that question out to the thread at large!

[kissare.livejournal.com]

This pitch makes it sound like a funny story - if you do go the serious route, you'll probably want to change the pitch to sound more serious. If it IS done as a funny story, well... I want to read it! :)

[technosage.livejournal.com]

This is quite clever. I like it!

Kate's Pitches

[kathrynelaraine.livejournal.com]

Eden: When a young queen is kidnapped by Demons plotting to take over the world, an Oracle must discover the secrets of the queen's heritage, harness his hidden powers, and learn to battle the dark forces before the world ends.

Re: Kate's Pitches

[annathepiper]

Oh, cool. :) The only overall reaction I'm having here (aside from 'hey, that sounds like a fun read') is that maybe you might want to tighten up your word choices in the sentence just a tad, just to make it a tiny bit briefer if you can. If you're writing up a pitch to be put into a query letter for this book, and you want to expand this out into a full paragraph, lose any word you can without sacrificing your intended meaning. :)

Might I suggest this: "When a young queen is kidnapped by Demons, an Oracle must harness his hidden powers to learn the secrets of her heritage and to battle the dark forces plotting to take over their world."

(Perhaps you might also say "the dark forces plotting to take over--and destroy" if applicable? Don't know the goals of your Demons here. ;) Or maybe "take over--or destroy"?)

Anybody else out there want to chime in with some thoughts here?

Re: Kate's Pitches

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Is the queen going to do cool stuff in this book? You mention her first, so I expected her to be the protagonist, until I got to the end of the sentence, and she hadn't done anything cool. If the Oracle is the protagonist, maybe he should be mentioned first. If the queen is going to be a heroic character rather than a McGuffin, try giving her one action to commit in the pitch.

Re: Kate's Pitches

[technosage.livejournal.com]

I'd agree with annathepiper. Good use of "code words", but now modify the code words to give me a sense of what some of the items are.

When a conquering race of demons kidnaps a young queen with a shadowed past, the oracle who loves her (okay so I made that part up, LOL) must harness his buried magic in time to defeat the demonic powers before the world ends.

Just a thought. BTW, I'm the one who gave the workshop referenced.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

okay, umm, ahem!

"werewolves. my novel is about werewolves!"

"my book is about a student doing high-tech research in lycanthropy, which draws him into a territorial battle among werewolves. he's an aikidoka, so he's not going to take that lying down!"

only umm, nobody knows what an aikidoka is. let's try again:

"harry potter goes to grad school! sex scenes that are really, really short! also martial arts!"

maybe not.

"john intended his research for medical purposes, but it turns out to be a weapon of war for the local werewolves. the gods and his girlfriend help him fight the battle for peace!"

"magical realism at the the miskatonic institute of technology."

"werewolves but not a horror novel; magic as a field of academic research; polyamory without psychodrama; also aikido."

sigh. clearly i need help....

[gerimaple.livejournal.com]

No. 6 "john intended ..." is the best of that lot. don't have any better suggestions to offer, thought

[annathepiper]

"werewolves. my novel is about werewolves!"

*giggle* That's a start, and if the folks at WW are to be believed, it's actually a GOOD start; werewolves are pretty popular right now. ;) However, they're going to want to know what these werewolves are doing!

"my book is about a student doing high-tech research in lycanthropy, which draws him into a territorial battle among werewolves. he's an aikidoka, so he's not going to take that lying down!"

I'd lose the second sentence here... it's one of those quirky character details that is not immediately vital when you're just giving somebody the really basic sound-bite version of what your book is about. The first sentence strikes me as a good beginning... but I'd tighten it up. Maybe this: "A student's high-tech research in lycanthropy draws him into a territorial battle among werewolves."

My thought here is that the goal from what I've learned seems to be as brief as possible when you're doing the one-sentence version of your pitch. It should contain only the critical heart of your conflict. You can expand on that in, oh, say, the paragraph version of your pitch. In the "snowflake" method I mentioned at the top of the thread, you take that one sentence and expand it out into five, and then you get something you can plug into a query letter. So, say, in a five-sentence version of the pitch, you might mention John's aikido skill as one of the chief things that keeps him from being eaten on the spot. ;)

Also "territorial battle among werewolves" feels 'right' to me just as a way to describe what you've got going on in your plot without being too over-the-top.

"harry potter goes to grad school! sex scenes that are really, really short! also martial arts!"

Actually, "Harry Potter goes to grad school" strikes me as a really good example of the "high concept" thing that Alisa McKnight was talking about in her Query, Synopsis, Pitch panel. The impression I got of several of the agents and editors in the WW crowd is that if you used that as your elevator pitch, that might actually work. ;) You get that very important magic + intensive research flavor of your story boiled down into one simple phrase. Sure, there's way more to your story than that, but the idea here is to make them say "Ooh, that sounds like fun, tell me more."

"john intended his research for medical purposes, but it turns out to be a weapon of war for the local werewolves. the gods and his girlfriend help him fight the battle for peace!"

This one doesn't work for me so much--mostly because I think it gives the wrong idea of the flavor of your book as it comes across to me. It makes it feel more like epic/high fantasy, which isn't what you're writing. It may be accurate--the spiritual aspects of your plot are certainly there--but phrased this way, it feels a lot more like an epic fantasy to me. And you've got urban/geek fantasy. :) I like "territorial battle among werewolves" a lot better as a pitch phrase... it feels more like your overall style.

"magical realism at the the miskatonic institute of technology."

This seems like another example of "high concept" to me, which isn't necessarily a bad thing... it would fit in well with Alisa's whole "Six Slide Pitch" thing. But it'd only be a piece of that. You'd still need to get that crucial heart of your plot across in the pitch.

"werewolves but not a horror novel; magic as a field of academic research; polyamory without psychodrama; also aikido."

Hrmm. Not really a pitch, this--they are all great descriptive aspects of your story, but none of them are immediately vital to that critical core of your plot, so you don't need to include them in a pitch.

sigh. clearly i need help....

No worries! Practicing this kind of thing is exactly what I want this thread to be for. You can practice it without the stress of doing it for real. :)

[technosage.livejournal.com]

Harry Potter meets Jackie Chan when a grad student's high-tech magic research draws him into a territorial battle between the local werewolf packs.

:)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Will post pitches tomorrow. All worn out from sending parcel to agent. Excellent idea, this pitch practice thread. Thanks for hosting it.

Sleep soon.

LAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[solarbird]

A440
A444
A436

[annathepiper]

You're most welcome! I think I'll do another one later, for taking the one-sentence pitches and expanding them out to a paragraph.

Hope you get caught up on that sleep! And congrats again on getting that package out to the agent! :)

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

Crumbs, but I have a lot on the go. :)

Only The Piano Player

Can a young musician survive the pressures of stardom long enough to figure out who's trying to sabotage her band's rise to the top?

Next Train Home

A chance encounter on a train draws Ian into a new kind of game that all too rapidly becomes very real.

Target For Tonight

For the crew of C-Charlie, it's the last mission of their tour of duty, a nighttime bombing raid over the most hotly defended city in Germany.

[This one's tough to grab in a sentence or two: I'm sort of aiming for the Downbelow Station vibe - jumping from viewpoint to viewpoint, the crew, folks on the ground, in other aircraft...]

Three To Go

Romance, rumours of match-fixing, and the possibility of an England call-up make the end of the season a nerve-wracking time for an up-and-coming county cricketer.

[Another toughie to pin down in a couple of sentences.]

England Expects - non-fiction, sport

One armchair cricket fan's diary of the the highs and lows of the Ashes' summer.

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

For Only the Piano Player, I get a YA mystery vibe - is that what you were going for? Personally, I might phrase it as a statement, rather than a question. The question, however, might look good as one of those little cover blurb things.


I love the sound of Englad Expects, though. It sounds like it could be very funny.

[annathepiper]

Crumbs, but I have a lot on the go. :)

AND you're in a band! I'm impressed. It's official. ;)

Only The Piano Player

See my comment elsewhere on the thread for this one--offhand I like this one the most out of all your pitches, it feels the strongest.

Next Train Home

Hrmmm. Maybe a little tweaking? What do you think of 'A chance encounter on a train draws Ian into a new kind of game that rapidly becomes all too real.'? I'm also not sure what you're shooting for with 'new kind of game'--something outside Ian's experience? An implication of something 'outside the norm'? Trying to decide if you need 'a new kind of game' or whether 'a game' would work... but 'a game' by itself doesn't sound like enough to me, either.

Target For Tonight

This one feels like it wants a bit of tweaking, too... perhaps 'The crew of C-Charlie must take on the final mission of their tour of duty: a nighttime bombing raid over the most hotly defended city in Germany.' What do you think? My thought here being getting a bit more of an active verb in there.

Three To Go

I can't think of a single thing I'd do to this one, so whoot! :) (What's a call-up, asked the cricket-clueless Amurkin girl?)

England Expects

Works for me!

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Hey

Got pointed at your LJ by grumpoldusenaut, when I was asking her about Writer's Weekend. I thought I'd introduce myself with an attempt at pitching the novel that so far had no name. So...

An Oxford don-cum-demonologist investigates how a mysterious artefact is related to his ex-girlfriend's apparent suicide.

And that's the first time I've come close to summarising it without waffling about the supporting cast!

Gina

[annathepiper]

Belated hellos! I'm sure you've already noticed that I tend to get behind on my LJ comments sometimes. ;) But I do try to get to them eventually. Welcome to my journal. I don't recognize the ID of grumpoldusenaut, but I'm rather flattered to hear that people I don't know are stopping by!

Your pitch has taught me something: I didn't know 'artefact' was a valid spelling! Cool.

And hrmm. It feels like a good base pitch to me, but it seems to need something, and I can't quite put my finger on what. It might expand well out into a paragraph pitch, though, and therefore solve this question in my head.

I'll post a link back to this thread as a more current entry, and get folks back in here to look at your comment, too!

[cats-haven.livejournal.com]

First, my apologies for not saying anything before today. When one belongs to several communities, friends' posts tend to get lost. heh My bad. Anyway... a few picthes for my few stories/books.

Society of Night and Lies: (part 1, Unnamed)

As the rain fell, Sabreela's hidden past returned with a note and a warning to bring her back into the fold.

Society of Night and Lies:The Past in Shadows

Keeping an eye on Jason was one thing, but Sabreela found more than just his and her cousin's life at stake after following her former mentor to an empty warehouse.

Quest to the Well of Souls (working name)

With the life of her rival hanging tight onto her merest whims, Jade finds the key to undoing his treachery at the legendary Well of Souls.

Evolutions: Rise of the Kiyrie (series of short stories)

By surviving hunters, nature, and the need to build their own species, the kiyrie hang onto existance as each new evolution takes place and turns fact into legend.

Changing Times: A Vampire's Tale

In Clarissa's diary, we see the world as it changes through her eyes from modern technology back to medieval like ways.

Way of the Comet

Larana was an average girl living in rural Kentucky on her father's horse farm until Shadow Wing entered her life and showed her a whole new world that she was meant to govern.

Elf Story (file name only)

Since the day was she was born, the stars guided Nar'Ore's every step toward a destiny she neither wanted or asked for.

Enjoy!

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Changing Times: A Vampire's Tale

In Clarissa's diary, we see the world as it changes through her eyes from modern technology back to medieval like ways.

I'm intrigued by that one.

Gina