The Quick Pitch

That's what my friend Jim Fisher calls the elevator pitch. But whatever you call it, wherever you deliver the essence of your story idea-elevator, writers' conference, coffee shop, or cocktail party-if you can't hook the listener in a minute, one-and-a-half at the outside, the story hasn't hit its mark. And if the story doesn't hit its mark, the book won't get published and film won't get produced.

The art of the quick pitch shares some of the same skills as writing a full-length fiction piece, because it requires a precise sense of what makes a story work. But, from my experience it's a tough form for many writers. Creative types have so many ideas flying around, it's sometimes hard to focus on the few elements that create a dynamic situation, full of ironic possibilities for the main character. The many ingredients that serve to create a rich fictional world and a dimensional cast of characters, can get in the way of boiling the story down to its most basic dramatic question.

The Guide to Literary Agents has a series of articles called "What's In a Pitch?" The most recent examine successful pitches for two new novels, The Undomestic Goddess, chick-lit, and Alibi Junior High, middle-grade.

Each article reprints the book's pitch, and then unpacks the "promise of the premise" (term courtesy of Screenwriter Blake Snyder). Greg Logsted managed to distill his book for young people in six sweet sentences. Scroll down to September 7, 2009, of the "What's In a Pitch?" series to read about a kid who's grown up with his undercover spy dad. He's faced danger all over the world. The question is--can he survive junior high?

What Is It?

After the introduction of Save the Cat, in which Blake Snyder tips us off about the importance of an early scene that will build empathy for our main character, no matter how anti-hero-ish he or she may be, the first chapter asks the deceptively simple question, "What is it?"

What is it that will invite me into a movie theatre, to the rental store or kiosk, to a listing on television or Hulu? Even if I'm not spending any hard-earned cash on the unit of entertainment, what will entice me to spend my time, which is scarce, with a set of characters? What is there about this story that leaps off a page and into my imagination. What will snag my interest? What will make me care?

Here's the real kicker. How is it possible to distill all the delicious stuff--images, sounds, scraps of dialog--swirling in a writer's mind into one solid sentence?

Loglines. Deceptively simple. Good thing Snyder gives us some benchmarks.