Hello everyone,

I’m really excited to be here with you this week.  I count it both an honor and a pleasure to have been invited to talk with you a bit about pitching your work to editors, and I hope we’ll have some fun as we discuss this topic together.

As for my credentials, several years ago I developed a workshop on how to prepare for and present verbal pitches to editors and agents.  I’ve presented this workshop at a number of writers’ conferences since then, most notably at the Romance Writers’ of America annual conference during each of the past three years.     

That being said, I will admit that verbal pitches differ from written ones in a few subtle but significant ways and this is my first foray into discussing that difference.  So be patient with me and feel free to question anything that seems counter-intuitive to you or that needs clarification.

A few things you need to know about this workshop:

·         I'm NOT an expert on this topic. In fact, quite the opposite.  It is always easier for me to come up with a pitch for someone else’s stories than for my own.

·        There are any number of approaches to crafting a pitch and this is merely my take on how to do it.  If there is another approach that works better for you, please do not feel you have to change based on my notes.

·        I will illustrate the lessons by crafting a pitch for my March 2009 book, The Hand-Me-Down Family, as we go. 

·        Ask questions and share your thoughts at any time. I love to chat and share
ideas, and best of all discover new approaches, so please, fire away.

Now, let’s get on with the actual topic you of crafting a pitch.

Normally, with a verbal pitch, you’d let the editor know what line your book is targeted to, the word count and whether or not its complete.  By doing targeted pitches on this forum you can safely skip that step.

In fact, it’s my understanding that the pitches on these forums consist of a logline and two paragraphs.  So let’s talk about the logline first.

 What you want to do here is give the editor a broad-stroke picture of the type of story you’ve written.  The use of a log line, or concept line, provides a familiar shorthand approach to getting your story concept across in an effective, memorable way.   

One of the ways to do this is to take a familiar story line and couple it with something unexpected that explains why your take is unique or will stand out. 

You can start with one of the well-known story lines such as:

·        Marriage of Convenience
·        Secret Baby
·        Beauty and the Beast
·        Rags To Riches
·        Poor Little Rich Girl 

Or you can use a familiar book or movie as your starting point.  For example:

·        Pollyanna

·        Runaway Bride

·        Count of Monte Cristo

·        Gone With The Wind

Next you introduce the twist.  This would work something like:

·        Elle Woods meets The Terminator

·        A Beauty and the Beast story set in outer space

·        A Cinderella story with the male and female roles reversed

·        A modern day Count of Monte Cristo

Each of these lines gives your reader (the editor) an immediate image of what kind of story you are pitching.

There’s a second method of doing this, the Who-What-How approach.  Basically you identify your lead character, his/her problem and what he/she must do to solve that problem.  In order for this to be a true logline, however, you must do this VERY succinctly.

For instance, take the movie Kate and Leopold starring Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman.  Boiling the story down to a logline might look something like the following:

A nineteenth century duke, reluctantly facing an arranged marriage, time travels to present day New York where he finds his true love in the form of a high powered career woman.

To break it down:

Who (protagonist):  A nineteenth century duke

What (dilemma): facing an arranged (loveless) marriage

How (way to resolve problem): time travels and finds his true love

Applying this to our own work:
For my book, I used the first approach and came up with the following:   

  The Hand-Me-Down Family is an adversarial Marriage of Convenience story with a Yours, Mine and Ours twist.  

Okay - time for you to give it a try.  Work on the logline (or concept line) for your own story and if you want to post your efforts here I’ll be glad to give you my feedback.  And again, feel free to ask questions and share thoughts.

I keep wanting to put too much into my line!  How can I be succinct?  This is skill I need to develop.

My overall story is targeted at medical romance.  Title right now is "The Independant Midwife".  The story is a midwife who has diabetes finds herself pregnant after one night stand.  Hero is consultant who is widowed after wife and child died in labour.  His problem - is he really over the death of his wife and child and ready to move on.  Her problem - the loss of independance as she needs support with her condition through the pregnancy.  Help me get this in one line!

You can do it - just take a notebook and write the words who, what and how - it will come to you!

>>A modern day demon hunter, Hell bent on revenge, finds redemption in the arms of an unlikely savior.

A very intriguing opening - piqued my interest for sure, and opened questions in my mind, which is a good thing. 

However, I think you could tweek it a bit to make it stronger.  The two pieces 'Hell bent on revenge'  and  'finds redemption'  don't quite connect to each other for me.  Is the redemption tied to the drive for revenge?  If so, maybe you could change it to 'consumed by revenge' or 'whose soul is eaten up by the need for revenge'  to give it the nuance that it is something actively harmful to him (her?)

Again, you know your story better than I do, so feel free to ignore this if it doesn't fit. 

Oh my, if my friends (and editor!) could hear you ask ME for help with being succint they'd be rolling on the floor laughing.  This is something I struggle with quite a bit.  But I'll do my best. 

First off, I know in a romance both the hero and heroine have a character arc, but unless they have a common goal (ie:  A master barbecue chef and a dedicated PETA member must join forces to save the earth from man-eating aliens) then you need to focus on just one of the characters for your logline.  For instance, in the example I gave from Kate and Leopold above, I focused on Leopold.  If I had chosen to focus on Kate, the logline might have read something like:  A driven career woman with little time for romance, gets a soul-satisfying taste of what she’s been missing, but learns that to hold on to it she must chose to permanently leave the world she’s known behind 

Both are accurate overviews of the story.  I chose to focus on Leopold, however, because I found his logline more compelling and with more of a 'hook' (time traveller angle) to catch the editor's eye.

Based on what you've given me, I don't have enough to give a good go at the first method of crafting a logline, so let's go with the second - the Who-What-How method.   Since the working title of your story has the focus on her, we'll focus on her story journey.

WHO  -  a fiercely independent midwife
WHAT - needs help to get her through the pregnancy
HOW - seeks assistance from a hurting soul

Pulling it together, it might come out:  A fiercely independent midwife, finding herself single and pregnant, must swallow her pride and seek help from a grieving man who doesn't really want any personal entanglements.

Okay, that's pretty rough, and, given that I don't really know your story, may not exactly fit, but hopefully it gives you a place to start.

Great topic and very timely!  I love using a logline and had never heard of it until I read Save the Cat.

It's something I struggle with too.  :-)  I am with you with the editor rolling around laughing, lol!  I'm sure she despairs of me when I try to explain - succinctly - what I have in mind for my next project.

Donna

Wealthy socialite in danger seeks help from estranged husband.

Glad my feedback helped.  We'll be working on those two paragraphs during the next few days.  As for your question, I'm not exactly certain what you mean by aiming pitches.  Can you expand on that a little?

Hi!  Sounds like a great story.  I love those wounded heroines who generously give of themselves to everyone else and in the end finally lands the perfect hero to cherish and show her her true worth.

 Since most of us are working with romances, we know that the story is going to revolve around the growing relationship between the hero and the heroine.  But even though way down deep, so deep it may be hidden even from themselves, they want a loving relationship, the hero and heroine usually have another goal they are focused on at the beginning of the story and I don't see much evidence of that here.  What is it that Meg wants?  Is something threatening her boarding house?  Are some of her tenants in trouble?  Is Nick involved in either helping or hindering her goal?  What about Nick?  Does he have something he's working toward besides convincing Meg they belong together?

I think answering these questions will help you construct your logline more effectively.  Feel free to fire questions back at me if this wasn't very clear 

>>Wealthy socialite in danger seeks help from estranged husband.

I think you have a really good start on a logline here, but while we do want these to be short, I think you need to flesh it out just a little more.  You want this to really pop and right now it is somewhat generic.  For instance, is there some other word/phrase you can add to the description of your wealthy socialite to make her more memorable (flighty, prim, barren, hypochondriac).  And give us a little bit more about this danger she's facing - what/who presents the danger? what form does it take?  You say her husband is estranged, but is he  hostile, indifferent, bitter?

Hope this helps. 

I just had to come over and wave to my dear, BRILLIANT friend Winnie!  Winnie's pitch workshop has been so very well received at the local chapter and national level.  She's a super savvy author.  Thanks, Winnie, for being so generous with your time here at eHq!

Congrats, Winnie, on your awesome line up of books coming out. :-)

From the moment I started writing - with aim to get published, about six months ago, this is the first time I'm participating in a pitch / logline workshop...  Thanks a lot for such a hands-on opportunity..

Till now I had been worrying about the synopsis and making sure I can cover my story in 2 pages.. But well, a single line..and then into 2 para-blurb.. I think that's something I really need to work on... Esp before the upcoming pitches..

Here is my (first) attempt on a logline on the paranormal I am targetting.. (Please help if I am messing up here)

(1) A succubus has to seduce the enemy, gather information to trace the killer, before she becomes the next target/victim.

OR

(2) A fae, driven by loss of his brother and the need to fit with fairies, is on a mission to capture the hidden succubae, until he is seduced by one and is forced to acknowledge the truth - All succubae aren't bad and they are being ruthlessly killed by an enemy he could'nt have imagined. 

Now, am totally confused.. If I put in a single line.. It kind of seems bland.. in (1), and then if I try to put some more action into it, then it becomes longer than a line as in (2)..

And here, which is the strong one? I mean, (1) is from heroine's perspective.. and (2) is from hero's perspective..

Any suggestions ?

You wrote

>>>
(1) A succubus has to seduce the enemy, gather information to trace the killer, before she becomes the next target/victim.
OR
(2) A fae, driven by loss of his brother and the need to fit with fairies, is on a mission to capture the hidden succubae, until he is seduced by one and is forced to acknowledge the truth - All succubae aren't bad and they are being ruthlessly killed by an enemy he could'nt have imagined. 
<<<<

Great job.  I would definitely go with the first one.  It has more focus and clarity which makes it more memorable.  I would perhaps tighten it just a bit more, though, to give it just a bit extra focus - something along the lines of
A succubus must seduce the enemy in order to gather information on a killer before she becomes his next victim.

What do you think?

>>>>A fiery Italian-American music teacher, plagued by bad luck, crash lands in the Canadian Rockies during a blizzard, landing in the arms of a Mountie who loves everything Italian but isn’t ready for a relationship.

This is a really good start, but I think we can work to take this to the next level.  First off, the phrase 'plagued by bad luck' while intriguing, doesn't really contribute to the impact of your logline.  Try cutting it and see what you think.
Next, I am a little confused about the goals of your hero.  You describe him as a music teacher yet later in your note talk about his assignment to search out drug runners.  Is he really an undercover agent of some sort?  If so, I would make that clear up front.  And is there some goal of his you can hit on here besides the romance aspect (you'll play up the romance in the next part of your pitch).  Maybe something like:A fiery Italian-American undercover agent, crash lands in the Canadian Rockies while hunting drug runners and is forced to work with a commitment-phobic female Mountie to complete his assignment.Of course this probably doesn't capture your story at all, but maybe it will give you something to think about as you hone your pitch further.

Hello again.  I'll be toddling off to bed in a few minutes since tomorrow is a work day for me.  I'll be getting up about 5:15 to get ready to head into the office.  Which means I won't be quite as responsive to your posts until about 4:00 CST or so.  But don't let that slow you down.  I'll get to everyone's posts as soon as I can.

I’m going to go ahead and post the next discussion point - but please feel free to continue working on your loglines and posting them here.

In this post I’m going to discuss the second part of our pitch.  Here is where we tell the editor who this story is about - and since we are talking romance you need to do this for both the hero and the heroine.  There are three components to telling us who these characters are:

1.      Unique descriptor:  Paint a quick word-picture using character, occupational or situational attributes.  Make it something memorable, something that intrigues the reader and has them curious to learn more.  Examples:

• Macy is a former trapeze artist now grounded by impending motherhood
• Alexis is a portrait painter who is slowly losing her sight
• Dorothy is small town girl with big city dreams
• Camille is a lifelong wallflower who finds herself unwillingly thrust into the limelight
• Judith is a workaholic exec who has found infant twins on her doorstep

2.      What does she want - This is the goal she is working toward, what drives and energizes her.  A component of this part of her description would also be at least a hint of why it is important to her.

• Angie is determined to get in shape in order to run the marathon that was her deceased twin’s dream  
• Zoe wants to learn telegraphy so that she can prove to herself and others that she doesn’t need a husband to make it in life
• Eleanor puts everything else in her life on hold in order to work toward getting the promotion at work, a prize that she feels will lead to the upscale lifestyle she’s always yearned for  

3.      What stands in her way - This is, of course, the obstacle that keeps her from achieving her goal.

• There is another candidate for the position she is pursuing
• She must earn additional funds before she can pay off the mortgage on the family ranch
• She refuses to trust the one person who holds the key to helping her

Once you’ve figured this out for the heroine, you need to go through the same steps to describe your hero.

Again, for my book The Hand-Me-Down Family, this is how I paint the picture of who my hero and heroine are.

 Callista Johnson, disfigured since birth and hedged about by her over-protective family, longs to find a real purpose to her existence, to know that she has made a positive impact in someone else’s life.  Her reclusive lifestyle, however, offers few opportunities for meaningful interactions.    Jackson Tyler, lone wolf and demolitions expert, got stuck with enough hand-me-downs during his growing up years to last him a lifetime.   Determined to escape his older brother’s considerable shadow, he left home as soon as he was old enough to strike out on his own and never looked back. 

After you’ve done this, the next step is to give us a quick note about the inciting incident, the action or thing that stirs up the routine of their lives and sets them on the new path that is your story.  I've inserted this info into my paragraph in bold type:

 Callista Johnson, disfigured since birth and hedged about by her over-protective family, longs to find purpose to her life, to know that she has made a real difference in someone else’s life.  Her reclusive lifestyle, however, offers few opportunities for meaningful interactions until she receives a marriage proposition from the widower of a childhood friend.    Jackson Tyler, lone wolf and demolitions expert, got stuck with enough hand-me-downs during his growing up years to last him a lifetime.   Determined to escape his older brother’s considerable shadow, he left home as soon as he was old enough to strike out on his own and never looked back. Until the day he receives a telegram that blows apart his world.  His brother, along with his sister and brother-in-law, have died in a tragic fire and between them left three young children with no other relatives to care for them but him - or so he thinks.   

(I warned you I had problems with brevity) 
So now it’s your turn.  Put some thought into how you would condense the essence of your characters, their tags, goals and obstacles into a few sentences.  Then gives us the incident that propels them into your story journey.   Feel free to post your draft here if you want some feedback on them.  Feel free, too, to post any questions you may have.

And stay tuned for Part 3 where we’ll discuss conflict.

1st try at loglines.

Alexis Montgomery causes a near tragedy, because she hasn‘t dealt with her grief, reverting back to what she has learned over the years she packs everything up and moves to start a new life.

A widower, thinks love only comes once, so he puts all his attention to taking care of his son while managing two businesses.

Two Paragraphs

Alexis Montgomery was used to avoiding her problems with fresh starts. Since her mother died leaving her in foster care she became accustomed to moving and starting over. So when she causes a near tragedy she bolts. It wasn’t until she meets Ryan…. A widow, trying to run two businesses and raise his seven year old son on his own, that she could see how fear can truly make someone run away and miss out on life.

Ryan … had the love of his life taken away from him way to early. Now he only sees living as surviving for his son, but when Alexis starts helping out with Tyler he is forced to reexamine his thoughts.

Can these two people ever get passed their fears, failures, and grief from the past in order to start anew together. Will Alexis finally find the HOME she has been seeking for years?

I don’t know if I need to include this in the work up or not. I was trying to minimize it.

(It is revealed in the story that Alexis is a medical student who was interning. Ryan's mother-in-law collapses in front  of her, and her training kicks in so she saves her.  This is the first place anyone really learns of her past, because she has been avoiding talking about it. So I didn't know whether to include it in the 2 paragraphs or not? She goes to check on a cancer patient. The patient codes in front of her, and she freezes reliving flashbacks from when her mother died the same way. IT isn’t until she moves and runs away to start over that she meets Ryan’s son Tyler, and through him she starts to deal with some of her own demons. )

(Grief, leaving her career, her desire to want to help people is all examined.)

The two have a fight and she leaves to return to medical school in the next town, while Ryan tries to get past his grief. So it took them a lot of soul searching, and one grieving little boy to realize they can find a HOME together, which is something neither of them thought they would have again.

Definition of HOME for them is a safe, loving environment, where they can trust and relax enough to be themselves. It is where love exists in vast proportions.

Thank you for your help.  This is very fun and infomrative!  Donya

Looks like you folks have been hard at it since I last checked in.  I'm going to slip a couple of posts in while I'm waiting for my conference call to start, then maybe get another couple done on my lunch hour.

Hi Winnie.  Thanks for the feedback.  Does this one cover all the bases and sound more interesting?

Wealthy, city socialite and single mom of twin boys is faced with danger from a crazed stalker and turns to her estranged and bitter cowboy husband for help.

Do you lead off with your log line in the blurb, for example:

A modern day demon hunter, whose soul is eaten up by revenge, finds redemption in the arms of an unlikely savior.  Healer has been searching for the demon who brutally murdered his sister two years ago.  Now his closest lead is the demon's next victim, Krystina Hall, who has come to him in need of protection.

That's where I am at so far, but is that the correct way to start?

Thanks,

Melinda 

That sounds like a great story, Susan!

In reading over your notes (story sounds great BTW!) there is a lot of information here.  And that's a problem because it is too much to really focus the editor in on the heart of your story.  We need to take the information , boil it down and really focus it.

Based on what you have here, I came up with this rough draft off the top of my head.

Having been shuffled from place to place as she grew up in the foster care system, Alexis, now a medical intern,  has allowed ‘moving on’ to become her default way of life.  Though she longs for the security and love of a  home and family of her own, she nevertheless faces life’s roadblocks and tragedies by severing old connections and looking for a fresh start elsewhere.    Ryan, a widower and single parent, is trying to run two businesses and raise his seven year old son on his own.  Still grieving over the loss of his wife, he refuses to let anything - or anyone - else into his life.

That gives us the first part of our character paragraph.  (Again, this is rough and based on my interpretation of your story.  You’ll want to work with it and make it your own).  I wasn’t able to tell from your information what the inciting incident is for each of your protagonists.  What is it that happens to each of them to set their life on a new path, one that will result in them finally achieving their Happily Ever After?  Why don’t you work with it and see what you can come up with. 

By the way, some of the other info you have here will come in handy when we look at the next part of our pitch - the conflict and wrap-up paragraph.

Hi Rae and Joanna!  Thanks for stopping by to check things out and for your kind words.

You wrote:

Do you lead off with your log line in the blurb, for example: A modern day demon hunter, whose soul is eaten up by revenge, finds redemption in the arms of an unlikely savior.  Healer has been searching for the demon who brutally murdered his sister two years ago.  Now his closest lead is the demon's next victim, Krystina Hall, who has come to him in need of protection.

I suppose technically you could do it either way.  But to give it true power as a logline, I'd set it off by itself.