Today I got together with Charlie after her work and discussed how to pitch my novel Genesis Earth. We did it in the following way: I took a few minutes to explain what the book was about, while she wrote down the words that stood out and excited her. Later, I took the words and worked out a thirty second pitch for it.
It was HARD! I spent nearly two hours after meeting with her just to write out a stupid four or five sentence blurb! Selling your work is totally different from producing it. Anyway, here’s what I came up with:
Michael has never set foot on Earth, but it haunts him as much as the legacy of his parents. So when his parents build the first artificial, traversable wormhole, he sets out with his mission partner, Terra, to explore the Earthlike planet on the other side. They arrive only to discover an empty, abandoned world and an unresponsive ghost ship advancing towards them. When Terra’s schizoid tendencies threaten her mental stability, they both must learn to trust each other in order to confront the mysteries of the new universe–and the personal insecurities that keep them from what they truly desire.
I have that down to 29.6 seconds. I should probably cut it shorter, but as it is it only has about half of the words that Charlie wrote down. If I cut it any more, I’m afraid it just won’t make sense.
It’s a start, though, and talking with Charlie helped me out tremendously. I realized that when I’m selling this stuff, I need to focus on the characters. Sure, all the worldbuilding stuff is interesting, but it’s not what hooks the reader. If all you’ve got is thirty seconds, don’t cut to the chase–and don’t give a synopsis! Synopsis =/= pitch!
Charlie was exhausted, so as we talked, she started ranting in a way that can be described as bluntly honest. Interestingly enough, most of what she said was actually quite helpful, not only for Genesis Earth, but also for my other projects.
The most helpful thing she mentioned was that when you’re writing characters, you often have to pick out their distinctive character traits and consciously overemphasize them. If you don’t, the reader might not pick up on it and find your characters stale and boring. While I hate melodrama and try to keep my novels free of it, I also need to keep my characters interesting. It’s a fine line to walk, but one that you can’t avoid.
She also said that it’s very easy for protagonists to be more boring than the main characters. I think this is probably because we rely on formulas and cliches when we’re starting out, since that’s much less risky than breaking the rules we don’t yet fully understand. The protagonist is the character closest to the trope, while the side characters can do what they want without threatening the integrity of the story.
Charlie said that because it’s so easy to fall into the trap of a boring protagonist, you need to consciously choose the traits that are interesting about that character and work them into the story as much as possible. I realized, as she said that, that my main protagonist for Hero in Exile is, indeed, a boring character. I need to pick out the things that make him interesting and consciously work those into his character.
This got me to think about planning. I’ve found that if I try to outline a novel when I set out to write the rough draft, I end up telling a completely different story. However, if I try to write a second draft without an outline, I have a hard time keeping things straight and fixing all the stuff I missed while discovery writing the first draft.
(I’m really upset now, because I was going to mention something that I need to foreshadow in the next revision of Genesis Earth, but…I totally forgot what it was! GAH!!! That’s what I get for not outlining!)
Charlie then started to rant about some of our writing friends, and how she would never listen to criticism on her writing from someone she considered to be an inferior writer to herself.
That part was…interesting. While I agree 110% that arguing with criticism is a sign of a poor writer, I don’t think it’s especially useful to rank writers in terms of “good” or “bad.” I would like to believe that I can learn something from everybody, and not just what not to do. Perhaps that’s optimistic, but I think it’s also practical–I’ve found that a bloated ego can shoot you in the foot six ways to Sunday before you even know what’s going on. I’ve found that not just through one unfortunate experience, but through several.
Brandon Sanderson said something very interesting in the last email he sent out to his English 318 class: he said that in New York, editors and agents don’t rank manuscripts by “good” and “bad,” they rank them by how much work they think it needs to be publishable. There is a distinction between the two, just as there’s a distinction between recognizing something that works really well and something that follows the rules.
That’s about all I have the time for now. I’ve got to get to bed. Late night internet == bad idea.
I think your pitch is awesome. In your last post, you mentioned that you’d try to pitch it if you got a chance at the BYU conference–I say “Go for it!” You’ve got a great story here, and so find an opportunity. If you do it and mess up, you’ll have no regrets. But if you miss the opportunity, I think you’ll regret not trying.
Three thoughts.
1. My opinion: great dust-jacket blurb, terrible elevator pitch. Is that how you really talk? Do you really use “haunts” and “legacy” in your day-to-day conversation? You want to sound normal to an agent, not like you’re quoting a dust jacket blurb.
2. Picking out distinctive character traits and emphasizing them is brilliant advice. It really struck a chord with me; I think my characters would really benefit from that. Thank Charlie for me.
3. Criticism. I disagree with Charlie 110%. You’re not taking criticism from a writer, so whether the critiquer is a better or worse writer than you is moot. You’re taking criticism from a reader. If the critiquer said, “Your characters seem flat and uninteresting to me,” what does the critiquer’s writing skills or lack thereof have to do with their opinion of your characters?
Thanks, Drek. You’re right, it probably is a terrible elevator pitch. How about this:
A guy and a girl set out on an exploration mission on the other side of the first artificial wormhole, but one or both of them may be insane, and an ancient ghost ship is chasing them down.
I agree with your points about reading as a reader, not a writer. Well said.
Ooh, much better! That would really grab me! It gets the main idea of the story across, and emphasizes what I think are the really key exciting parts to the story (the potential mental issues and the ghost ship).
Again, that’s only my opinion and I’m hardly qualified to speak for an agent, but I’d certainly bite on that second version. 🙂