Pitch practice thread!
Jun. 21st, 2005 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperOkay! 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!
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!