Gimme a cure for this bad case of pitchin’ blues!

Author Annie Neugebauer pitched her topic at this spring’s Writer’s Guild of Texas workshop as Troubleshoot Your Novel, Simplified: The Pitch as a Tool. As in, diagnostic tool. Truly, if I hadn’t already been to a condensed version of her workshop at last year’s DFW Writers Conference, I might have chickened out of attending an expanded version. Because if there’s anything this almost pathologically introverted writer hates, it’s pitching. As in, rhymes with you know. . .

In a literary sense, pitching has nothing to do with balls. Always the last one picked for softball, I spent my school’s physical education periods assigned to far-left field, where I could exercise my talents for imagining stories instead of chasing and throwing things.

No, pitching in the literary sense is spouting a condensed version of the interesting parts of your story. To agents, editors, readers. And if that still sounds scary, Neugebauer’s got the diagnostic tools for you. And prescriptions for cures.

A pitch includes: 

·       Attention-grabber (hook)

·       Essential premise (what’s necessary to make sense of the story)

·       Protagonist, and his/her goal, motivation, obstacle, and stakes

·       Antagonist and his/her goal, motivation, and stakes

·       Supporting character, with motivation

·       Closing hook

image: pixabay

A pitch is the heart of any query letter a writer uses to try to secure literary representation, publication or readership. Notice, it’s the heart of the letter, not the whole letter. Check your dream agent’s website for what else she/he wants included. Also notice, the pitch is not a synopsis. The closing hook is only what will make the agent/editor/reader want more, not the actual story ending. Leave that for the synopsis, if the agent/editor asks for one. And like a good casserole recipe, it can be stretched or shortened to suit almost any number of dinner guests, i.e., listeners/readers.

A dinner-for-one version is the elevator pitch—supposedly able to be completed within the duration of an elevator ride with whatever agent you find yourself with. In this, the supporting character is generally eliminated, discussions of motivations are shortened or eliminated completely, and the remainder reduced to single sentences. Think of the old “in a world where” voice-overs of filmdom.

However, Neugebauer’s aim is to teach writers to find still more uses for their pitches. 

Consider using it to diagnose weak spots in a story. And even to avoid weak spots and excessive rewriting in the first place by using the pitch structure to outline the novel.

“I used to hate pitches,” she said, “but I love them now. If you master this, it will change your writing life.”

As we work through that list of pitch items, are there places we find ourselves leaving blanks? Maybe a series of blanks?

Those are the spots where we need to pull out our pitch doctor stethoscopes and go below the surface of the story. 

·       Symptom: does the pitch sound boring no matter how you frame it? The most likely diagnosis is “meandering main character syndrome.” Prescription: give the protagonist a concrete goal. Note: World peace it’s not! 

·       Symptom: are you unable to narrow that gazillion-word epic into a cohesive pitch? If so, the story suffers from a classic case of “sprawl disorder.” Prescription: choose one story line and strengthen it. Subplots should bolster the main plot, not compete with it.

·       Symptom: you can’t figure out what your antagonist wants. If so, he/she possibly has been infected with “burn the world syndrome” or become a dysfunctional cardboard cutout villain, with no goal except badness for its own sake. Prescription: give that antagonist a believable, important and concrete goal. World domination as an antagonist’s goal is as fuzzily abstract as world peace is for protagonists.

·       Symptom: can’t find the story’s closing hook? The diagnosis most likely is “wha-wha disease.” In this dread ailment, the ending fails to satisfy the initial promise made by the story. Prescription: create a desire and set up an outcome from the start, if necessary reviewing the protagonist’s initial goal, obstacles and stakes. “However neat or messy or tragic the ending is,” Neugebauer said, “it has to satisfy the reader.” 

Dealing with these symptoms and syndromes (and even more you may come to characterize) isn’t easy. 

It requires practice—a lot!—on multiple books. Among Neugebauer’s suggestions is studying back cover blurbs for books and writing pitches for books other than our own. After all, doctors  don’t want to start by performing major surgery on their nearest and dearest. Try it on strangers first, where there’s less emotional involvement. And see her site for more of her super organizational tools.

To that end, I grabbed a half dozen or so beloved books by other writers from my shelves. Over the coming week, I’ll be peppering these posts with my own version of query pitches for them. Let’s see if I can tempt you to read those classic tales!