The career novelist

Pitching errors

The key to a good summary is distilling the essence of your story.
What would you tell me about your plot if you had only one minute
in which to pitch? There is your focus. Build your pitch around that
core. If you are still having trouble getting a handle on it, go back to
the first three questions I listed above:

1. Where is your story set?


2. Who is your hero or heroine?


3. What is the main problem they must overcome?

The shortest possible answers to those questions are probably
enough to hook your reader. Indeed, they are the essentials of any
story: setting, sympathetic protagonist, compelling problem.
Everyone loves to read a story, including the person reading your
query letter. So give her one, even if it is in miniature. The rest is
embellishment.
Now, what about the market for your novel? Does it fall into a cat-
egory? Is there anything special about you or about it that might
help in selling it either to a publisher or to the public?
If you have a background or expertise that is relevant to your
story, that is useful to know. If you have been published before that
is a selling point, too. Have you already been on the best-seller list?
Please do not fail to mention that!
More difficult is deciding what not to say. It is enjoyable to learn
that a query writer is a lung surgeon, or a breeder of bassett hounds,
or has been writing since the age of eleven, but, really, how relevant
is any of that? It does give a human face to the writer, but only one
or two such details are needed.
Queries that are limited to one page are especially nice. If there
really is more to discuss, fine, but for a simple query, the purpose of
which is solely to describe the work, one page is probably enough.
Too little information is not good, either, but believe me most folks
err in the other direction.
Do you still hate the idea of pitching? Does it seem distasteful to
be so crass and commercial in offering your novel?
If you feel that way, I do not blame you. However, consider this:
few consumer products get off the ground without effective adver-