The Pitch
A pitch is a quick one-line description of your story.
It’s one of the most overlooked facets of writing. Many people don’t worry about the pitch until after they’ve written their story.
That’s a mistake.
Your pitch not only helps sell your work, but it’s a key factor in determining if your idea is worth developing in the first place.
It serves three functions.
1. When an editor/publisher/producer asks what you’re working on you have an answer that makes them want to hear more. (Many times you only have one sentence, about ten seconds, to hook them.)
2. You can test your idea on a friend before you write a full novel/screenplay/etc. (If a pitch doesn’t grab someone’s interest, odds are another 100,000 words won’t help).
3. It focuses you on the most important aspects of your story.
The parameters of the ideal pitch are:
* 25 words or less (17 is ideal)
* explains who protagonist is
* makes protagonist sympathetic
* shows protagonist and antagonist relationship
* describes the task ahead (plot)
* gives the beginning, middle, and end
* describes the setting
* provokes a spine-tingling reaction
Now it is darn near impossible to nail all these things for every story…but you need to try (especially that last point).
Classic pitch mistakes:
1) You say your story is about saving the world; people want to hear about interesting characters.
2) You keep secrets (“...and then something fantastic happens that solves the mystery…but you’ll have to read my novel to find out”).
3) use of proper names
Here’s an example of a good pitch (thanks to best-selling author, John Sual)
“What if a small, elite mountain community covertly uses growth hormones on their prize high school football team and accidentally creates monsters?”
And for (A Game of Universe)
“What if an assassin from the far future is hired to find the Holy Grail--only to succeed he has to first regain his soul?”
These days I make sure I have the inklings of my pitch before I start the outline, and darn sure that the pitch is perfected before I market anything.
Sure there are great stories that defy the Pitch process, but for me, life is too short to spend a year writing something that has little chance to sell.
It’s one of the most overlooked facets of writing. Many people don’t worry about the pitch until after they’ve written their story.
That’s a mistake.
Your pitch not only helps sell your work, but it’s a key factor in determining if your idea is worth developing in the first place.
It serves three functions.
1. When an editor/publisher/producer asks what you’re working on you have an answer that makes them want to hear more. (Many times you only have one sentence, about ten seconds, to hook them.)
2. You can test your idea on a friend before you write a full novel/screenplay/etc. (If a pitch doesn’t grab someone’s interest, odds are another 100,000 words won’t help).
3. It focuses you on the most important aspects of your story.
The parameters of the ideal pitch are:
* 25 words or less (17 is ideal)
* explains who protagonist is
* makes protagonist sympathetic
* shows protagonist and antagonist relationship
* describes the task ahead (plot)
* gives the beginning, middle, and end
* describes the setting
* provokes a spine-tingling reaction
Now it is darn near impossible to nail all these things for every story…but you need to try (especially that last point).
Classic pitch mistakes:
1) You say your story is about saving the world; people want to hear about interesting characters.
2) You keep secrets (“...and then something fantastic happens that solves the mystery…but you’ll have to read my novel to find out”).
3) use of proper names
Here’s an example of a good pitch (thanks to best-selling author, John Sual)
“What if a small, elite mountain community covertly uses growth hormones on their prize high school football team and accidentally creates monsters?”
And for (A Game of Universe)
“What if an assassin from the far future is hired to find the Holy Grail--only to succeed he has to first regain his soul?”
These days I make sure I have the inklings of my pitch before I start the outline, and darn sure that the pitch is perfected before I market anything.
Sure there are great stories that defy the Pitch process, but for me, life is too short to spend a year writing something that has little chance to sell.
posted by Eric Nylund at 8:45 AM
19 Comments:
Sorry for the delay in posting. After the storm I had to catch up on my writing, and then took a vacation to a place a lot warmer than North Bend.
This post on the Pitch is the end of the series on outlines. I know some might object to making an artistic process so commercial, but in my experience going through this exercise yields better stories--which is worthwhile no matter where you fall in the art vs. craft debate.
Thanks, this will help me alot. i am a amateur writer and have been working on my project for some time.
I have the story in broad outlines and the end. Do you have any good tips as how to fill in the blanks?(connecting the dots)
There’s no easy solution I know of to fill in the blanks—but you might try adding another character or throw up a roadblock to your hero’s progress. (For me) it always takes lots of hard work to think of interesting things that happen to interesting characters in interesting settings. Sometimes it helps to have more than one project going at a time so you can set the project that’s “stuck” aside to ferment in your subconscious.
Good luck!
Is A Game of Universe going to be re-released? It is one of my favorite books and it is a shame that it is so hard to find now.
Is it possible to achieve all the parameters you advise in just 25 words? I mean, it seems a little hard to describe the plot, protagonist(s) and antagonist(s), setting and any twists in the space of a single line...
Welcome back to civilisation by the way :)
After taking a screenwriting class (for writing scripts), I know that there is a big deal to be said about the 'Pitch.' If the storyline cannot be simplified into one sentence and still be interesting, than it is probably too complicated already, or being written incorrectly.
But it is actually very difficult to make a good description line. If anything, it might be easier to write up a treatment (or synopsis), which is typically 3-10 pages. This will help get all of your ideas out and into the open for scrutiny. Things will always change, but the Pitch should stay the same.
Plus having all your thoughts on paper really helps.
Allen, GAME may be the favorite of all my books. Sadly, no one is interested in re-publishing it (yet). I’m still trying.
CP, yes it _is_ possible. I wish I had found one that hit all points in my notes. I’ll keep looking. Remember, though, the important thing is to give your audience the gist of the story--and get them to say” tell me more....”
SB, Absolutely correct on all counts! It’s much easier to write a treatment than a good pitch...which is why I work on the pitch concurrently while writing my outline/treatment/etc. I didn't want to mention that writing a pitch is hard work because I’m _always_ saying that about writing. :)
If no publisher is interested in publishing a paper version of GAME, would it be possible for you or another narrator to read it for release on Audible.com? I am sure it would rise to one of their best sellers in just a few weeks. Quality unabridged science fiction always does extremely well there.
I'm probably wrong about this, but I believe that doing that would require the publisher to agree to it as well. Mainly because they would pay for the reader, and hopefully a good one. As well as paying for all the other expenses.
Of course whoever owns the audio rights must agree to the production terms.
But the cost of producing an Audio Book is much lower than printing one on paper with all the costs associated with production, warehousing, distribution, marketing etc.
However the cost to the public is usually higher for an audio version than a paper book. Therefore the return on investment is much better than traditional publishing. So a publisher should be much more agreeable to an audio version than another print version.
Allen-That's the way it went with Ron McLarty's book, "The Memory of Running." He'd shopped it to publishers and no one wanted it, so in the course of his work with an audio book company that sells primarily over the internet, his editor there showed interest in making the book one of their audio releases. That's how the book originally became available.
Later, Stephen King mentioned it in his bi-monthly Entertainment Weekly column and the rest, as they say, is history...
A GAME OF UNIVERSE is out of print and all rights have reverted to me, including audio, so it would be possible to do this. However, I know what it costs to hire a good voice actor, book a real studio and audio engineer, and it’s a tad expense for my budget. Frogwart mentions McLarty’s book—brilliant, btw, which he did himself. But he is a professional voice actor. I’m not.
So for the moment, GAME will have to be relegated to obscure bargain bins in used bookstores (and the ridiculously overprice online retailers).
That makes me wonder if that has brought storytelling around full circle and whether or not it would behoove a writer of today's world to learn the ability to orate a good story as well as write it.
I think its a great excercise to do anyways. Everyone tends to use too many words while writing, and generally a 100,000 word manuscript can be cut down substantially, between 5,000-20,000 words.
If anything, being forced to describe a story in as few words as possible will enable you to keep a focus on the key plot points or events. Most people, in my experience, focus on the smaller details, like how one character may act do to his history. But looking at the book in a sentence, paragraph, or even a few pages really puts into perspective the big picture.
This is probably why it's so difficult to write.
Nikoda—Yes, taking a voice class is on my to-do list (right after finish latest novel!).
Oh man...I have two copies of Game of Universe and I guard them....but I do loan one out at a time because I just want everyone to have the fun of reading it.
Why is Game of Universe not a movie yet? I've thought it through in my mind so often I feel like I've seen it...(Capt Mal from Firefly would have been very very good as the lead eh?)
I'm not a writer, but I am a huge appreciator of writers and I read and re-read and spread the news as far as I can....LOL....
thank you...thank you...so much...
You really help me...
Dude, you saved me! I had lost direction with my main story plot that I have been working with for the last six years and all I needed to rewrite it the correct way was a good pitch to base it off of. Thanks!
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