I’ve
been up since 4:00 a.m. for the last three mornings. Why? Because I’ve been
worrying about an elevator pitch. On September 15, I’ll be attending a writers’
conference where I’ll be making a practice pitch to a literary agent. The agent might find my WIP interesting or I might only get advice to make my pitch better. Either way,
it’s a good thing.
As a self-published author,* an actual face-to-face pitch is a first for me. I have mixed
feelings about paying fees to an agent and a publishing house, but it’s good to
be knowledgeable about all the details and different paths to publishing my
current WIP.
So
back to 4:00 a.m. I signed up for the conference and the pitch weeks ago. My mind
must have been mulling it over quietly, behind the scenes, and eventually
kicked into over-drive. Because three mornings ago at 4 a.m. exactly, I awoke
to my mind-voice droning on:
“A notorious politician is found dead of an
apparent heart attack.” No, no no. How about this?
“After the death of prominent politician, Sylvester Fox, journalist Harry Jersey uncovers Sly’s sinister past and dangerous
double life…” Nope, nope not right either.
“A journalist needs a really big story…” Ummm.
Did that sound a little like Ed Sullivan? Wow, this isn’t easy.
My
mind-voice went on tossing out ideas until I gave up, turned on a light, picked
up a notepad and pen, and started taking notes. Did I say it was 4:00 a.m….in
the morning? Did I say it’s happened three mornings in a row?
A
friend kindly emailed me a couple of articles on pitching and I Googled more. Boiling all the advice down to bullet points, this is my pitch list.
·
What’s the Genre and word count?
·
Who’s my hero?
·
What is my hero’s goal?
·
What conflict is keeping my hero from his
goal?
·
What is the resolution?
·
And, importantly, what is my target
audience and what are some examples of comparable books that are making big money for
their agents.
Next authors are told to make the pitch short and sweet, a sentence for each bullet point. Here’s what I have for now.
No doubt it will change many, many times over the next seven weeks.
· The novel is a 90,000-word
political thriller.
·
Hero is a down-on-his-luck reporter living
in Miami.
·
To keep his job, the reporter has one last
chance to write a killer investigative newspaper article, and the perfect story
could be the murder of a powerful politician living a dark double life with a
secret stashed in Alaska. (Okay, that’s a compound sentence. So I cheated.)
·
Hero is threatened by the politician’s
co-workers and wife who are keeping secrets of their own and the hero’s editor
who fears the political machine.
·
Ends with a chilling meetup in Alaska between
the hero and the killer who is determined to escape at any cost.
·
A great read for adult readers who enjoy the
novels of John Grisham and Tom Clancy.
I
suppose my mind and I will be mulling this over and over until we are sick of each other. No doubt I’ll be
woken at 4:00 a.m. any number of times between now and November 15. Ah, the life
of a writer.
I’ll
let you know how it all works out in my October 1st blog, “Getting
the Most from a Writers’ Convention.”
* SEE my 12/15/18 BLOG to read about my crazy adventure through the looking-glass world of self-publishing. https://paustinheaton.blogspot.com/2018/12/self-publishing-book-using-amazons-kdp.html
Other places to find me:
Other places to find me:
No comments:
Post a Comment