Comments on: “It’s HBO-style epic fantasy”

By: John Joseph Adams » Blog Archive » links for 2007-10-19

John Joseph Adams » Blog Archive » links for 2007-10-19 — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:30:42 +0000

[…] SF Novelists: “It’s HBO-style epic fantasy” What’s your elevator pitch? (tags: writing novels) […]

By: Simon Haynes

Simon Haynes — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 03:47:47 +0000

If I was stuck in an elevator with a producer, I’d be more likely to give them a serve for the way so many books are butchered to fit a particular movie-watching demographic.

(Which, to this cynic, is either teen boys or teen girls. Not that there’s no crossover, of course … my daughters love action movies and puke loudly at the kissy stuff. But then, since when did actual live human beings fit into convenient marketing slots?)

By: Kate Elliott

Kate Elliott — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 01:47:15 +0000

Oh, I completely agree there are problems with the elevator pitch in the larger sense, although I rather like Deadwood meets My Little Pony. The only thing is that it is useful to have a succinct and interesting description at hand - however difficult it is to come up with one.

because many people do want to know but they don’t want to hear an entire plot synopsis. they want a sense if they’ll like the story. Oh well. No one said it wouldn’t be hard!

By: Simon Haynes

Simon Haynes — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:39:19 +0000

Having a one-liner ready for odd occasions IS useful. I sometimes get chatting to people (e.g. the person checking in my mail at the post office) and if the subject happens to get around to books (inevitable, when I’m posting them) I end up giving them the one-liner to describe what I write. They often mention a relative who enjoys that kind of thing, and I hand over a bookmark.

I don’t mean I verbally spam everyone I come into contact with - it might only be one person every three weeks - but when it happens I don’t want to look like I’m uncertain about the content of my own books.

By: Marie Brennan

Marie Brennan — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:09:59 +0000

I should add, btw, that I’ve always kind of hated the Elevator Pitch notion. I think it’s good to have a condensed nugget of “here’s what my book is about,” but the kind of approach described here — which I believe is unpleasantly common in Hollywood — reduces everything to a new kind of cliche. (”It’s Deadwood meets My Little Pony! It’s Gilgamesh as written by Jane Austen!”)

I’d rather have “It’s HBO-style epic fantasy,” which gives me a feel for the type of story it is, rather than an unholy mashup that tells me nothing.

By: Alma Alexander

Alma Alexander — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 19:21:11 +0000

Heh. Okay, I’ll play, with the three YA books

Worldweavers 1: Gift of the Unmage - It’s a magical coming-of-age story about the Girl Who Couldn’t… and then began to suspect otherwise.

Worldweavers 2: Spellspam - When Email Attacks!

Worldweavers 3: Cybermage - Elemental magic, resurrection, and the realisation that only when you are willing to freely give are you completely whole.

Yargh.

I hope nobody ever stops me in an elevator and asks.

I’d probably just tell them to go to www.worldweaversweb.com and read about it themselves.[grin]

By: Constance

Constance — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:51:28 +0000

We’ve been forced into saying things like: A Year in Provence meets The Midnight Garden of Good and Evil for the next one — The Year Before the Flood.

Love, C.

By: S.C. Butler

S.C. Butler — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:44:35 +0000

I think I’m like Diana on this - I doubt I’ll ever master the art of the elevator pitch. (Gives me motion sickness, just thinking about it.) I had the same problem writing English papers in school. I always wanted to say, “You want to know what Emma is about? Read the damn book.”

But I’ll give it a try. In the first book of The Stoneways we find out how Reiffen chose magic. In the second book we learn what he did with magic. And in the last book we learn what magic did to him.

By: Bran fan

Bran fan — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:35:39 +0000

It is interesting because as a pre-pubbed writer, I thought you only needed a good pitch to sell your book to agents and editors. Now I know that you need it for the whole life of the book because you need to tell it to the fans too.

In my writer’s group, we come up with pitches for each other’s books. It is somehow easier to summarize someone else’s book than our own.

By: Diana Pharaoh Francis

Diana Pharaoh Francis — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:20:50 +0000

You know, I still haven’t figured out any for any of my books. I’m a dork. I really need to work on it though, because I do the same thing . . . stumble, burble, there’s a girl you see, and then bad things happen to her, and people get killed and the world is saved. Uh huh. Brilliant.