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Hello. This is Elizabeth Stark in the Book Writing World. Welcome to Finishing, Week 5: Pitch Perfect. Today we are going to talk about using your pitch as you move forward toward publishing!
At this advanced stage, you are refining your premise, your pitch and your manuscript.
They align more and more closely. This week, we are going to revisit creating a pitch. We created a pitch in the Planning course, before you’d written your book. Obviously, you now have a much firmer hold on what your book is about!
So let’s take a look back at the elements of pitch so you can create a dynamite pitch for your book. This will help you answer the question, “So, what is your book about?” whether it’s coming from a person at a cocktail party, your mother or an agent.
Once your book’s been published, this pitch will keep coming in handy as you promote your book. Being able to explain in a pithy way this project that has occupied several years and hundreds of pages is a gift for the writer and for the prospective reader.
Remember the three main elements in a pitch? The main character, what motivates that character, and the conflict brought about by the obstacles that prevent the character from getting what she or he wants.
Character: Who is the main character? Hone in on the key qualities of your protagonist. Of course, one of the strongest ways to draw a character is to show what that character wants. In non-fiction, your characters are the subjects of your book, whether you or other people you are writing about.
Motivation: What does your protagonist want? This is a very important choice, because if you make the desire weak or easily attainable, your story will die in the water. If your character wants some milk, all she has to do is go to the grocery store, right? Unless you create a world in which milk is a rare treat allowed only to certain sectors of society . . . If your character wants some milk, but is contented to drink a bit of tap water instead, your story ends at the sink. So this must be a STRONG desire that your character cannot let go of, a desire for something difficult to obtain because of the obstacles and conflicts in the way. Again, in non-fiction, you’ve picked characters with a story and that means they have strong motivations. Be sure you spend some time understanding them and working them into your pitch.
Conflicts and obstacles: So what’s stopping your character from getting what she or he wants? This has to be at least as strong a force as your character’s motivation–it has to keep pushing back and preventing your character’s success until the end of the book. In non-fiction, in found stories, obstacles are inherent. Your job is to hone in on and present them vividly in your book and in your pitch.
Examples:
Novel:
A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor – these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip’s life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens’ haunting late novel depicts Pip’s education and development through adversity as he discovers the true nature of his ‘great expectations’.
Great Expectation by Charles Dickens
Memoir:
Karr’s longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting blueblood poet produces a son they adore. But she can’t outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in “The Mental Marriott,” with an oddball tribe of gurus and saviors, awakens her to the possibility of joy and leads her to an unlikely faith. Not since Saint Augustine cried, “Give me chastity, Lord-but not yet!” has a conversion story rung with such dark hilarity.
Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr’s relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, it is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up–as only Mary Karr can tell it.
Lit by Mary Karr
Academic:
The Western Canon is more than just a required-reading list–it is a vision. Infused with a love of learning, compelling in its arguments for a unifying written culture, it argues eloquently and brilliantly against the politicization of literature and presents a guide to the great works and essential writers of the ages . . .
The Western Canon by Harold Bloom
Note the way the Canon–book and concept–becomes a character waging a battle against politicization.
Fairytale:
A young woman oppressed by the demands of her stepmother and stepsisters, who treat her as their maid, seeks the escape offer by a ball thrown by the prince to find himself wife. With nothing to wear and a step-family determined to destroy her every advantage, Cinderella is given reprieve in the form of magic wrought by her fairy godmother. But even magic has its limits, and nothing short of courage and fate will bring Cinderella her happy ending.
Cinderella
Another places you find the pitch is in the jacket copy for published novels. For these, the pitches themselves tend to be the middle portion, book-ended by some other stuff–praise, context and summary. (If you want to include this in your pitch assignment, go for it!) Troll powells.com or amazon.com for your own examples from your favorite books.
Remember: Character, motivation, obstacles. See if you can find each of these elements in the examples above.