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.

[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!

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

I'm trying desperately to figure out whether to use the funny draft or the serious draft. I like them both, but I can hardly use the same story twice. I think the funny one would have a better chance of selling - there's so much serious SF out there already.

I think it should be plural minds.

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? :-)

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: Anna's current pitches

[annathepiper]

It is not my specific intention to have this religion be a thinly veiled stand-in for Catholicism, no, nor for Christianity in general. It's probably inevitable that there will be some similarity just because Christianity is the only major religion with which I have direct personal experience, so a lot of elements out of it have influenced my development of the Church at the heart of this plot. E.g., it's a huge, far-reaching influence on the realm in question, both in the secular sense and the religious one. E.g., it's got priests referred to as 'Father'.

But there's more of a gender balance in it, and it's polytheistic. It reveres a 'family' of four deities, the Father, the Mother, the Son, and the Daughter. And it's not a four-in-one deal, it's four distinct deities. The Mother and the Daughter are just as revered as the Father and the Son. Both men and women serve this Church as priests and priestesses, and both men and women serve in the Order of the Hawk, the military arm of this Church.

It's also not expansionist per se when it comes to wiping out other religions. This is not to say that the culture itself is not expansionist, because it is--the nation in question absorbed its next door neighbor several hundred years before the current storyline. But that wasn't specifically religiously motivated, it was much more a 'nice country you got there, be a shame IF SOMETHING WAS TO HAPPEN TO IT!' imperialist land grab. ;)

Other religions will be represented in the story, such as the worship of the triune goddess Djashtet adhered to by Faanshi, Ulima, and other natives of the land of Tantiulo. There will also be references to the belief system of the elves, and to the gods once worshipped by the natives of the land that got absorbed.

But the conflict of the story is not necessarily about conflict between these religions--just about uncovering the real truth behind the founding of the Church of the Four Gods. And one of the ultimate goals of the story is going to be to let the characters who adhere to various belief systems, especially my hero Kestar, who is the 'Hawk' of the story arc title, question the nature of their own faiths. This doesn't necessarily mean anybody's going to change religions in the course of the story, though. :)

Re: Anna's current pitches

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Fair 'nuff. Sounds really interesting...

[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

Re: Anna's current pitches

[annathepiper]

Why thank you. :) This is easily the most ambitious thing I have ever written, and I expect it to take me some time to finish. I'll be really lucky if I finish off Book 1 by the end of this year, but that's the plan. And I still need to plan out Books 2 and 3, too. Gah!

[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. :)

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: Anna's current pitches

[annathepiper]

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

Fortunately, or so I have been informed by the People Who Have the Clues, the title isn't necessarily all that crucial. In fact, you should be prepared to have your title changed! Because as often as not, that will happen. :)

So it seems like, if I'm reading you right, you think that all of these pitches could be interesting depending on who I'm pitching to?

[annathepiper]

Plural sounds right to me in this context, yeah.

And for what it's worth, given the way you phrased this pitch, it absolutely felt like a humor story to me. :) So I'd vote for the funny draft!

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

thanks for all the help. marketing has *never* been among my skills....i think i like the little details too much.

how's this, in at least keeping a bit to my spirit in the thing:

"A graduate student's high-tech research in lycanthropy draws him into a territorial battle among werewolves. Chaos (in the Discordian sense) ensues."

i suspect the second sentence is both hopelessly obscurant and that the mockery of teevee listings is not quite the register they are looking for. nevertheless, i think it kinda represents how my book reads :)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I think the first sentence already promises chaos. Werewolves battling for territory sound pretty chaotic to me. Well, maybe not. But still, even if the werewolves may have some kind of tribal/customary/whatever way of structuring their territorial battles,once you inject an outsider into their internecine struggle, you'll get chaos because he doesn't know their rules or necessarily want to play by them.

That first sentence is just fine.

And how many times, while I was in grad school, did I hear people talk about the job market for PhDs in terms of being abandoned to the wolves by their dissertation directors?

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

And even more about grad school and werewolves...

You're probably already all over this, but the more dysfunctional doctoral programs have rather wolf-pack-like dynamics, already, with alpha dogs and omega dogs, etc.

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: Anna's current pitches

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's true! Of course, I'm by no means an expert (in this), and it's awfully hard to tell a bad book from a good book by a two sentence blurb.

I mean, one of my favorite books of all time could be: A bunch of rabbits flee from danger in search of an ideal home.

It's a lot more interesting than that, of course. :-)

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.

[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

Re: LAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

You're sharp.