FRESH ON FRIDAY: What's in a Pitch?

CONFESSION: I have never, ever, sold a novel using a query letter. Truth be told, I don't believe I've ever written a query for a book-length work of fiction. 

But I've sold plenty of novels in face-to-face conversations with acquisitions editors: conversations that began with me making a pitch.

Most people think that the pitch for a novel is a description of the story. But we all know that trying to describe a novel in one brief conversation is an exercise in futility. If a novel can be easily described, then it probably doesn’t need to be a novel.

A good pitch should
be concise enough that,
if necessary, you could
fit it in a Tweet.

So, in a pitch, rather than describing the novel in its entirety, what you want to present is its premise. And—here’s the really important part—you want to present that premise with a “hook:” a distinction that sets this novel apart from the hundreds of others that the editor is going to hear about this year, and a reason that readers are going to clamor for that novel and not want to set it down.

For instance, I’m not certain how, exactly, Audrey Niffinegger pitched The Time Traveler’s Wife, or if she ever did a sit-down pitch at all.

But if I were pitching it, here’s how I’d do it:

I’m here this morning to talk to you about a book in which time travel is an essential element. But it’s not a science fiction story; it’s a love story. And it doesn’t concern itself with relativity and physics; it concerns itself with relationships. It does this by asking three questions.

The first question is this: What if time travel was not only possible, but unavoidable? What if it was an extremely rare and virtually unknown convulsive disorder; one that could strike the afflicted person at any time, without warning?

The second question is this: What would it be like to be such a person—to know that at any moment you might be snatched out of the present and deposited, naked and disoriented, at some point in your past or your future?

And the third question, and the question that is really at the crux of this book, is this:

What would it be like to be that person’s wife?

That’s the pitch—the entire thing. In this form, it’s only 160 words long. And if I absolutely needed to, I could reduce it to a single sentence:

What would it be like to be in love with a person who, at any moment, and without notice, could be transported away from you in time? 


That’s just twenty-seven words. In fact, that’s only 133 characters—brief enough to fit in a Tweet.

Pitches should be brief because they are meant to be conversation-starters: conversations that, if all goes splendidly, result in the party being pitched asking you for a proposal. And the proposal is where you describe the novel—or at least get closer to describing it.

Now go get warmed up. 

We need you to pitch.

TUESDAY TIPS: Warts and All

ONE MISTAKE newer novelists make is understandable in the extreme. We think of our main characters as heroes. And because of that, we tend to make them … well, heroic.

By “heroic,” I mean that we make them perfect. First-time novelists are often tempted to create characters that have straight teeth, clear skin, hair with plenty of volume and no split ends, and the sorts of bodies rarely seen without the benefit of Photoshop.

They are strong, smart, always know what to do and are able to do it.

And that doesn’t work very well.

After all, Christian charity aside, don’t you absolutely hate—hate and want hurtful things to happen to—the sort of person I just described? And even if you don’t hate those types of characters, do you find it even remotely possible to identify with them?

Nor do I. Nor does anyone.

You, I and every single human being you or I know, have known, or will ever know, have one thing in common; we all have flaws.

And another thing most of us have in common is that we tend to fix upon, and magnify, our own flaws. We think they are more apparent than they actually are, and as a result we view ourselves as damaged goods.

So, to strike the readers as realistic, and to give the readers someone they can relate to, the main character needs to have, and be to some degree burdened by, his or her own flaws.

I say “flaws” (plural) because that describes most of us. But as the character is introduced, it works better for both the writer and reader if we focus this a bit: a single flaw, maybe two.

Sometimes the opening flaw is physical. Christopher Snow, the lead character in Dean R. Koontz’s “Moonlight Bay” Trilogy, is afflicted with xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare but real adverse reaction to ultraviolet light (including that part of the ultraviolet spectrum present in daylight). This makes him of necessity a creature of the night, and so challenged in his ability to interact socially with most people.

When we first meet Smithy Ide, the hero of Ron McLarty’s debut novel, The Memory of Running, Smithy is obese—maybe not worthy of thirty minutes on The Discovery Channel, but certainly far too heavy for his own good.

Sometimes—and usually—the flaw is internal or psychological. In Stephen King’s novel, 11/22/63, the lead character is Jake Eppling, an English teacher whose wife has left and divorced him for another man (whom she met at her Alcoholics Anonymous meeting). In Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell’s Scarlett O’Hara’s precociousness masks her central characteristic—her internal insecurity. Don Quixote is convinced he is a knight on a heroic quest; indeed, it is this delusion that is central to his charm as a character.

And certainly the main character’s flaw can be both physical and psychological: the wounded war hero who does not think he will ever return to a normal life, or the athlete who finds her life without purpose when an injury keeps her from competing.

So that’s where fiction differs from most other forms of art. Sculptors begin with unflawed marble, and painters start with a perfectly prepared canvas, but if you want your novel to work, you will find your work easier if you open your work with a character who has flaws.