Writing a pitch

[Brian G Turner]

From a screenwriting book I've just read it makes the following point about pitches:

That sentence should give you a sense of the entire story: the character of the protagonist, the character of the antagonist, the conflict, the setting, the tone, the genre

ie

When a great white shark starts attacking beachgoers in a coastal town during the high tourist season, a water-phobic Sheriff must assemble a team to hunt it down before it kills again.

A young female FBI trainee must barter personal information with an imprisoned psychopathic genius in order to catch a serial killer who is capturing and killing young women for their skins.

A treasure-hunting archaeologist races over the globe to find the legendary Lost Ark of the Covenant before Hitler's minions can acquire it and use it to supernaturally power the Nazi army.


See if that helps.

 

[Mark R]

Those are all really good and useful Brian, however I have to ask about this:

A treasure-hunting archaeologist races over the globe to find the legendary Lost Ark of the Covenant before Hitler's minions can acquire it and use it to supernaturally power the Nazi army.

If you saw that synopsis today, would you go and see that movie?

 

[Boneman]

I always liked the pitch for Alien - "Jaws in space."

But a one-line pitch is a great starting point to any pitch or synopsis. So when the CEO of Gollanczasks you: "what's your book about?" you hit him with it... (Do they have a CEO at Gollancz...?)

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

One thing to remember is that the pitch is not meant to appeal to readers; it's meant to appeal to agents and/or editors who have their own ways of evaluating whether something is worth looking at.

 

[Montero]

Could you possibly give an example of what the required differences are Teresa?

 

[millymollymo]

Marketing appeal, I would suspect? That and a well created pitch will show an agent/publisher that you have the plot arch nailed, if so your characters aren't likely to run away with the plot.
The blurb on the back of the book hooks the reader, but that isn't a pitch. If you're on twitter #pitmad is a good idea to keep an eye on, 240 characters to sum up your book. There's also a site that displays the pitches that "hooked" interest so you can get a feel for what works.

 

[Montero]

I could see the pitches Brian quoted at the top of the thread as either book covers or pitches. What do you think?

You don't happen to know the name of the website that displays pitches, do you?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Use the twitter hashtag for eg pitchmadness or pitchMAS.

 

[J Riff]

Plus it only takes ten seconds to read. )

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Could you possibly give an example of what the required differences are Teresa?

It looks like others have already answered -- and better than I could, because they know where to look for examples.

 

[abraves247]

These are some great pitches.