Keep it snappy and keep it interesting
I follow the excellent @LettersOfNote on Twitter and enjoy reading snapshots of people’s lives – sometimes famous, sometimes just regular people caught up in life.
Today’s seemed particularly apt. I’m running a workshop with Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook this week on submission, and how to get your novel idea and flavour across succinctly. Most authors seem to take a little warm-up run before they get to the crux of what they want to say, so a pitch would sound like ‘it’s about a woman who is in the 19th century and has discovered something serious about the Royal Family – oh – and there are murders’.
If this is you (and to be honest,it’s all of us really!) try transcribing what you’re saying and then see how you can make it pithy. For my mythical author above that would be something like ‘Murder linked to the Royal Family, set in the 19th Century’..
Today’s Letter of Note is from Harvey Weinstein and is aimed at a film director, but he’s making the same point. Have a look and see what you think – there’s also the original ‘boring’ interview for comparison purposes!
March 22, 2012
Comments are closed.