HE WROTE: Pitching

So I was thinking about pitching. And realized, hell, I’m going to be talking to my agent at National about CHASING THE DEAD, my latest, 112,000 word opus, that’s been in development for over ten years. And I didn’t really have a pitch. So how the hell was I was going to give you words of wisdom about pitching if I wasn’t ready to do it?

So I’m sitting here and putting together my pitch.
First thing is to capture the essence of what kind of book is it? The last book I gave my agent was science fiction, not really her field, but it was going to a specific editor who had handled previous books like it, so that wasn’t that big a problem. Although the book did end up getting rejected, so maybe you shouldn’t listen to me. But Chasing is a brand new book that’s hopefully going to be my first Mayer book, so different ball game. I need to figure out what genre and type of book it is right away so she can put it in a framework.

Which is a problem—yet, every problem is an opportunity. Because CTD appears at first glance to be both a thriller and a mystery. Argghhhh. When I teach, I tell people that thrillers and mysteries are very opposite books. In a mystery the bad thing happens in the beginning and the protagonist has to figure who and why. In a thriller the bad thing is going to happen and the protagonist has to stop it from happening. So how can I possibly have a book that is both?

Well, the first scene is my protagonist in a thriller situation facing down bad guys. And he fails. So we know they’re up to something, but we don’t know what—a thriller. The second scene is my protagonist discovering a body and having to find who killed her—a mystery. Throughout the book, both story-lines seem un-related other than my protagonist, who actually does wear two hats, being involved in both. Yet at the end, we find out one event initiated the other event. Because the mystery being solved is not the climactic scene—that occurs 150 pages before the end of the book. Thus, issue solved, the book is a thriller. See how you can solve your problems if you WRITE them out?

Ok. So I have a thriller, which is good, because I am not a mystery writer. Whew.

So. I need a log line: Horace Chase has been chasing the dead his entire life.
Which is true both literally and figuratively.

All right, so I’ve got a start.

Now I’ve got an advantage because I already have an agent. I’m not doing a blind, appointment. I already have been published so I have some sort of track record, both good and bad. If I was going blindly to an agent, what I would be trying to do is to communicate what is unique and exciting about my book to the agent. Every agent I’ve had—and I’ve had four—has said essentially the same thing although my current one put it in a way that makes sense: she said you can have a character idea or a situational idea. A character idea focuses on, duh, character. A situational one, focuses on plot. I used to be very much a situational writer. Thus I would pitch plot. I would try to have both. An interesting character involved in a very unique situation. There has got to be something that stands out, that catches the interest. Look at readers in a bookstore perusing the racks. They pick up a book, they look at the cover copy. They don’t know your name (most buy off author name, but you’re a new author). What is it in that cover copy that will cause them to want to buy the book?

Then there are the books that are hard to pitch. I don’t think Jenny and I could pitch DON’T LOOK DOWN or even AGNES. It’s the writing that draws people in. But in that case there’s writing a short synopsis that an example of the writing, that’s funny and witty and makes someone laugh out loud and go, hey, I want to see more of this. I was looking at a bunch of letters for a scholarship and one of them made me laugh so much because the author had done something that normally I would highly recommend against, but it worked this time: she had her heroine ‘write’ the letter recommending the author for the scholarship. But this was that one of a hundred times where it worked and it was funny.

Which brings me to the point of taking chances. I think you have to. I already know CHASING THE DEAD breaks some ‘rules’ of writing. Some of which I’m going to have rewrite and fix, but some of which I think are good. You can’t be like everyone else. Your ‘pitch’ can’t be like everyone else’s. So if I gave you a formula for it, you’d be like everyone else reading this blog and it would be boring and generic.

So I’ve been of little help other than to say relax, have confidence in yourself, and remember the person you’re talking to is just a person trying to do their job.