Despite the season, this is not about baseball.
Pitching is also what writers do. Writers pitch to agents
and agents then pitch to editors. Editors pitch to acquisition committees. Once
acquired, publishers pitch to booksellers. Lots of pitching goes on in the world
of literature.
A pitch must be pithy and strong. Think of it as a strategic punch.
It’s a craft all its own, and many a good writer feels like a cow in a strange barn
leaning to do it. But as wordsmiths who must use evocative language, it isn’t
as far from our skillset as it feels.
Although I have a twitter account, I must confess I haven’t enjoyed
it much. But it occurred to me that the site has prepared much of tweeting
humanity for pitching. There are also pitching wars that go on regularly.
Check out #PitMad (next coming live 9/5/19, and also
12/5/19) for examples of energetic pitching. Read about it here https://pitchwars.org/pitmad/
[Disclosure: I’ve never done that^, but I have successfully pitched
to editors and later to agents.]
I now come up with a
pitch for every story I write. I do it for my own clarity and because I’ve
gotten to like it.
Have fun going to bat!
It's a good exercise to come up with a Twitter-length pitch for your book. When someone asks what your book is about, you can do it concisely.
ReplyDeleteYes, whole generations are being trained :)
DeleteInteresting analogy to Twitter. Sounds right to me.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to universal pitching :0
DeleteA wise, old editor told me early on that it's important to be able to tell people what your story is about, even if it's a 70,000-word novel, in a sentence or two. I agree, but it's tough.
ReplyDeleteI find it easier to think of a one/two sentence pitch than write a short synopsis
DeleteLol, I don't think I could ever do Twitter. But yes, good practice for pitching. But personally, I'd rather read things that are just the right length.
ReplyDelete"...the right length" ay, there's the rub :)
DeleteI tweet when I publish a new blog post, but that's about it. My dreams of having an amusing tweet go viral died long ago. According to some of my college professors, I had a talent for summing up a story in a few sentences. When I took film classes, both professors said I should write the movie descriptions on the back of what were then VHS movies, for rent in video stores. The world changes so fast.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
The need to make pithy summaries for marketing purposes is not new. But now much of humanity is in practice camp tweeting about it.
Delete