Saturday, February 27, 2010

The Pitch


I'm registered for a pitch session with an agent at the upcoming LDS Storymakers conference in April and just received an email from author/editor Josi Kilpack, one of the organizers, providing a link to a blog post she wrote to help those who are preparing to pitch.

Being an often verbose person, I've been starting to practice whittling my words down to create a concise pitch and make the most of my 10 minutes with an agent. Hopefully Josi's tips will help others in the same boat.

I'm also looking forward to hearing from Inker Kirk (a.k.a. The S.E.) at our next meeting about effective pitches.

Just to practice, I've been creating pitches for existing works, either movies or books.

Guess the title or create one of your own:

Star-crossed lovers on a doomed ocean liner

In a post-apocalyptic U.S., a group of survivors fight for free will against a new government implanting mind control chips to create a "perfect" society.

A young orphan boy discovers he is really a wizard, destined to either save or destroy an alternate wizarding universe.

4 comments:

  1. Love it. Can't wait to hear what Sir-Kirk-A-Lot has to say about it. Sometimes it's just not fair that we have to work so hard to write the book and then we have to work so hard to sell it.

    I have a brother-in-law who is an amazing new age musician. But he doesn't have the skills to sell himself. So, his amazing music is passed around the family and now he's given it up.

    So we can't give up on the selling part, but oh its scary. ;)

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  2. Pretty good job! Although I have no idea what the middle movie is. I wonder if I've seen it.

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  3. Very concise, Linda.

    Honestly I worry most about writing the dang book more than I do the pitching, because if you have a great story, you've all but made it. Agents/Editors will pick out a good story easily, even if an author's nervous in a pitch. As long as you have that hook (like in Linda's good examples above), the agent/editor will be able to tell right away if it's something he/she can do with their publisher and can move on to actually reading the manuscript.

    I'm excited for all of you who are pitching. Hope to be there soon with you.

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  4. You'll do great, Linda! But truth be told, I'm a little nervous for my meeting as well :)

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