Elements of a Good Pitch: Thrill Us

Even if you're going the self-publishing route, there are still a number of reasons you'll want to have a good pitch for your novel written and memorized: entering contests, afternoon tea with other writers or potential readers who want to know what your book is about, or, if you're toying with the idea of going traditional, the possibility of meeting an agent or editor at a writing conference or other writing hangout. Another good reason to develop a novel pitch is because of the practice it provides us writers of, essentially, writing a super-short piece of flash. Some say writing a novel is easier than writing short fiction because you don't have to worry about quick, direct exposition of ideas; you can simply let a story unfold at its own pace. Yet any good writer will benefit from being able to craft a short story, and a pitch is the shortest story you can tell about your novel. Which is why they are so hard.

A good pitch needs to leave readers with a sense of both the novel's main character's inner journey and outer journey, but doesn't necessarily need to spell out all of the events that might affect them. Remember the distinction between telling people what your story is about (which is what people want to know) versus what happens in the story (which is what they'll discover as they read it). The events you mention need to all be clearly associated with each other so readers get a sense of the cause-and-effect plot arc and aren't lost in a sea of disconnected details.

Formula for a four-paragraph pitch:

Hook (emotional or personal)Theme Stakes Cliffhanger ending

The first paragraph is where writers blurt out the extremely (and by extremely, I mean think of this as the oxygen that blows vital life force into the lungs of your pitch) crucial hook. Why should readers care about this story? Readers have no investment in an amorphous, fictitious world yet (unless your book is a later release of a series), so start with something that will make them emotionally or personally connected to the story or its characters. In short, make us care.

Then move into the theme. What is the overall story about? An epic adventure where destiny triumphs over love? A sword and sorcery tale where only the truth is more powerful than magic? Or something more sublime such as tolerance (sexual, racial, religious, or what have you) is the only path to salvation? Describe this theme using a few specific and descriptive, but not confusing, events from the story, and keep them as linear and as tightly linked as possible. In other words, make us think.

Then tell us why it matters. Who stands to win or lose, and what do they stand to win or lose? Is it a matter of being mistaken for a criminal and possibly being locked up for life? Or even worse, is the main character's fate inextricably linked to the fate of the world, and if one dies, so does the other? In other words, thrill us.

And finally, the cliffhanger ending should take us to the point where the greatest obstacle is unveiled and faced, while subtly cluing us in to what will happen if it isn't overcome. Leave readers scared, nervous, worried, and uncertain, but not confused, angry, or bored. In other words, make us buy your book.

When it comes to pitching to an agent, you may be interested in reading my post: If at First You Don't Succeed. For more pitch and query help, don't miss literary agent Janet Reid's Query Shark blog.

Does anyone have an example of good or bad pitch strategies or experiences? Please feel free to share them with us.

Enjoy what you've seen so far? Subscribe by using the 'Click to Follow' button or enter your email near the top of the page, and never miss a post.

All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.

What's Your Story?

Where the magic (er, suffering) happens

As a fledgling writer, one of the things I continually wonder is in which genre I should be writing. I'm not sure how many other writers ask themselves this, but I've read in a number of places that its best to hone your craft to as close to perfection as you can in one genre first. Many new publishers and agents begin to think of you as "that" kind of writer, and if you throw something new at them early in your career their enthusiasm may wane or be non-existent, or they may simply not represent this new type of story and have no idea how to help you get it published or promoted. If you have a good relationship with your agent, and you've gone through the monumental effort of landing one that believes in you, it's very daunting to have to think about starting that search again for someone new who will believe in this other type of work.All that being said, I have a really hard time limiting myself. I enjoy coming up with people and situations that range from blood-and-guts military stories, to surrealist never-could-have-been mythologies, to gritty zombie and horror, to paranormal. I guess the one thing my stories all have in common is that they are only loosely based on plausible reality, which is just fine by me.The benefit, I realize, is that I am a fledgling writer, and therefore free to write in anything and everything. I'm still so new at the craft that I have carte blanche to play fast and loose with all the genres I want. Goody for me.One of the things I ponder when trying to decide on whether to solo genre or not to solo genre is what kind of stories do I most like to read? The theory being, if you love to read, you'll love to write it, right? Problem is, my reading tastes are just as wide and varied, more so even, as my writing tastes. In the last year, I've probably read forty or fifty books (not nearly the number I wish I had, but there's only so much time in a day), and when I think about the ones that have stuck with me the most, the really curious thing is that they are not necessarily the ones I enjoyed the most. Sometimes the story isn't as compelling as the writing, or vice versa, and those separate, but necessarily integrated, elements stay with you long past the memory of what the story was about or who the characters were. The top five books I've read in the last year that still rattle around my head, regardless of how much I enjoyed the story, are: Jim Butcher's Storm Front, Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash, Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain, Patrick Lee's The Breach, and J.J. Connolly's Layer Cake. What do all those books have in common? Uh, they're all written in English? Otherwise, they're as different as different can be. The point of this rambling paragraph is just to say, I think, that good writing will out no matter what the story is about, which maybe helps support the idea that sticking with one genre in both what you choose to read and what you choose to write is quite simply a bad, self-limiting, idea.If the words and the story are there, use them, I say.What do the rest of my writer buddies think?

Enjoy what you've seen so far? Subscribe by using the 'Click to Follow' button or enter your email near the top of the page, and never miss a post.

All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.

If at First You Don't Succeed

There's a saying in skydiving that goes, "If it first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you."Fortunately, I was successful on my first jump, and all those that followed (with a few minor injuries and close calls, but those are other stories), and I'm extremely glad to find that that streak of luck has carried through to some of my other ventures. Most of you already know that I won a writing contest for my first novel, but the thing that is really extraordinary to me is that, not only was it my first novel, but also the first writing contest I've entered. There was this short story that I wrote in 2nd grade and won a contest for, but the difference is I didn't even know it would be in a contest, so...I guess that means my first timer's success still holds true.But the thing that I really want to talk about is something totally different. While this was one of the best weekends of my life, there is an altogether more subtle event that contributed to how terrific it was. And that, dear readers, is the success of overcoming my biggest fear.When I was in the army, I was on a few jumps where I started to get a little nervous. I don't know why, we were only jumping WWII-design chutes at 500 feet above the deck in the middle of the night with 100 lbs of gear hanging from us. Nothing to worry about there--especially if you didn't know that it takes 250 feet for a reserve to fully deploy once pulled, and you usually don't realize you need to pull it until you've already fallen 300-500 feet. You can do the math.So, yeah, sometimes I started to get a little worried, just a little wet on the palms with the sense that if I didn't blink, my eyes would soon dry out. But I didn't want to blink because things could really go wrong in that short span of time and I needed to be prepared for anything. That gut-churning worry that things are about to terribly, irrevocably wrong.Then something really strange would happen.I'd look around at the other 60-100 GIs with me and realize that I wasn't nearly as scared as about half of them. I once had my own company commander throw up right in front of me and every jumper had to walk around that on their way out the door. This was supposed to be a hard core guy. When I got a good look at that fear in others, a strange and monumentally welcome sense of calm would overcome me. I'd get that zen feeling that whatever was going to happen was just going to happen, and being ready to jump out of my skin at the sight of the little red light over the door turning green would do nothing to change that. It was kind of that hippy "go with the flow" sensation, and I would get completely chill. Almost relaxed. This bizarre psychological reaction got me through some very tense moments.And that's what happened to me this weekend. The biggest fear I've ever had was having to confront a real-life literary agent and try to sell my book. It's so counter to my every fiber to talk about my writing--to baer my soul, in a manner of speaking. But at the conference, I did it.Imagine if you will, hundreds of writers all convened in a swanky hotel, all with words that have poured from their subconscious in a relentless, uncontrollable flow, all eager to be recognized for their unique brilliance and have their talent validated. Now imagine the most introverted, self-conscious, retiring person you know. Overlay them onto this eager writer, and you have the bulk of people that attend writing conferences. We are a quiet lot, but an intense lot.Then take me: a total basket-case, spending hours and hours trying to write a pitch that will be, if not be the most exciting thing an agent has ever heard, at least have enough pauses for breathing when recited that I won't pass out for lack of oxygen. Then imagine me realizing, 40 minutes before the pitch, that it's all wrong, that it's completely inane and bland, and that I must start over. Imagine, if you will, trying to force yourself to do the thing that you would sooner throw yourself into a burning cauldron of oil than do. Then imagine yourself doing it.But the skydiving thing happened. Ten minutes before my appointment, I joined another group of new authors about to do the same thing in the waiting room. You want to talk about a bundle of nerves; many of my fellows were like OJ Simpson right before the jury came back. Shaking legs, clenched jaws, thousand yard stares. Suddenly, that same sense of calm came over me. The knowledge that I was not going to die, and even if I were, my last few moments were definitely not as agony-filled as these poor folks. I took a deep breath, and killed the last few minutes checking my email on my iPhone.And the big surprise, the thing I least expected: it wasn't in the slightest bit scary. It was easy, it was mellow, it was a natural conversation that occurs between two people with common interests. It was no more of a big deal than ordering a meal at a restaurant.Nothing feels better than a sigh of relief, and I took a huge one in the middle of my pitch session, and another one afterwards. The biggest fear of my life has passed and I have come through unscathed, stronger, more prepared than ever. It's ridiculous, but facing the business-side of writing is my last big, dreaded hurdle to becoming an author. Now that it's over, I can't imagine anything that can slow me down.

On Writing Queries

You've all heard me groan (Or, as Mark Haddon's character Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime puts it, "doing groaning." Everyone should read this amazing book.) these last few days about writing an agent query letter in the hopeful attempts of getting one to pick me up as client and help me get my books published. In a funny way, this task has been more daunting to me than writing a book ever was, and I've been putting it off for about two years. Yeah, I'm an excellent procrastinator that way. In the meantime, I've pored through endless websites and agent blogs trying to learn the secret formula for writing a good, eye-catching, totally un-ignorable pitch. Of course, there is no secret formula, only good writing and an ability to be succinct and to the point. Okay, that's easy to do if you're born that way, but most writers, by nature of enjoying communicating through words, do so with a rather high volume of words. We digress, we ramble, we tell multiple stories at once, just trying to fit in everything we have to say. So, summing up your book in a single paragraph, to a writer, or at least to me, has been an akin to undergoing major surgery.However, I survived. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a webinar on how to write a winning query lead by Rachelle Gardener at Wordserve Literary Agency. Aside from the stupendous presentation she put on and the wonderful pointers and tips, Rachelle was kind enough to offer a pitch critique to each of the attendees. I struggled, I bled from the brain, I sighed, I cringed, but I eventually wrote my pitch and sent it off to her with, to be totally cliché (it's my blog and I occasionally like some kitsch in my life), baited breath.She responded in just a couple of days, and I was really overjoyed. There were minor edits, but they were really minor. Wow! She commented that it was a "strong" pitch. Eureka! These are the kinds of little victories that reinvigorate me.

Enjoy what you've seen so far? Subscribe by using the 'Click to Follow' button or enter your email near the top of the page, and never miss a post.

All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.