The elevator pitch. A delicate balance of information and time management I still have yet to master. For those who don't know, an elevator pitch is the idea that you should be able to "pitch" your idea in the time it takes for an elevator ride. Like if you had somehow managed to be alone with a high-up editor from Harper Collins in an elevator and only had until they made it to the 30th floor, how would you sell them your book? It needs to be catchy without being over the top. You want to hit all your major points without giving away everything that happens. It's supposed to entice someone into reading your books.
Over the past few months, between working author events and starting a writing group at my bookstore, I've been asked several times what my book is about, and each time I kind of stutter before I give some vague plot synopsis and then person across from me nods politely and turns away. My pitch goes something like this:
"uh... It's sort of like the movie Little Miss Sunshine, but less funny. It's like these two siblings, but they're in their 30's. And the brother just got out of rehab because he tried to kill himself, so he has to go live with his sister and her husband, and their kids. And the sister is also kind of trying to figure out what she wants from life. They make each other worse, but also kind of better. And the brother and the son become close, and the sister is trying to go back to college..." you get the gist. It's messy. It was painful for me to even write that. I literally had to go stream of consciousness and not let myself clean it up. Though, even if I tried to clarify that, I'm not totally sure how I would.
I might say something pretentious like: "It's about how much of ourselves we're willing to give up for family." But that makes it sound way more dramatic than it really is, plus that's only true of one character. I could also say something like: "It features the healing power of Dungeons and Dragons." But I don't know if that would be a big seller to my target audience- women ages 18-70 who like contemporary fiction. AKA- Anyone who likes Anne Patchett.
Trying to capture everything that might make someone want to read my book, or trying to say what's special about it, without going on a ten-minute-long rant feels impossible sometimes. While working these author events, I've noticed that many of them have a sort of shorthand they've clearly said a million times when describing their book. It's the blurb you might read on the inside jacket of a book. Succinct without being dry. Catchy without being overly rehearsed. It's an art form almost. One, I still need a lot of practice in.
My second book is a little easier and I think it's because it's more exciting. Where my first book is simply about a family doing their best, my second one is a mystery set in the early 2000s and is told out of chronological order. It's fast-paced and flashier than the first book. That pitch goes something like this:
"It's set from 1999 to 2002, and it's about three sisters who get locked in an underground bunker with their mom because she thinks Y2K is coming. But it's also told out of order, so it starts with her on trial for child endangerment, so you obviously know they make it out, but it's still a mystery of how. And it's told from 6 different perspectives, with each of the sisters, the mom, the aunt, the dad who is a mystery in himself, and then the boy who helps them escape. It's trying to answer the question of what makes a good mother and how far is too far to protect your child..." As you can see, it's also very much a mess, but maybe slightly better?
Part of my work in writing an elevator pitch is thinking about what the major plot points of my story are, then thinking about the main characters, and lastly picking out what makes this story different from others like it. Those three elements will help set my novel apart when people are picking what to read (or what to publish.) An elevator pitch is different from what you might include in a query letter because it doesn't give everything away. In a query letter you're not trying to leave on a hook, you're allowed to spoil the ending so the agent can decide if they want to represent the book or not. In an elevator pitch though, you want to entice people and make them want to find out what happens next.
I'm obviously still working on my pitch and probably will be until I'm actually standing in front of someone with the power to make my book a reality. Just like writing a novel, there's always room for adjustments until you finally have to set it down and let the world see.
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