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20.48: Now Go Write- How to Pitch Your Work · Writing Excuses

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey everybody, this is Erin, and I've got a question for you.
0:05
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0:33
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0:38
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0:48
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0:52
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0:57
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1:12
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1:47
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1:59
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2:05
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2:11
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2:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Season 20, Episode 48.
2:22
[SPEAKER_01]: This is Writing Excuses.
2:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Now go right, how to pitch your work.
2:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Mary Rubinette.
2:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Galon, I'm Dan.
2:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Aaron, and I'm Howard.
2:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And this week, we are continuing our series talking about our upcoming craft book.
2:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is another one of the business topics that we're getting into.
2:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to talk about one of my very favorite things to talk about, which is pitching, which is fundamentally just how do you, as a writer, talk about your own work in a compelling way, right?
2:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I think this idea of pitching can feel very stressful to writers for a number of reasons and there's a lot of pressure around it because it's an important skill, right?
3:06
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, when we think of pitching, we think of going to try to find a literary agent trying to find an editor and writing up the copy for your book and having your perfect elevator pitch and all of these things, right?
3:17
[SPEAKER_03]: these are stressful moments, and I'm not denying that.
3:20
[SPEAKER_03]: But also, I want everyone to realize one, what a career skill pitching will be that it's not just confined to these little moments that it is something you will continue to return to over and over again as an important skill.
3:35
[SPEAKER_03]: As you meet readers and trying to convince them to buy your books, as you talk to librarians, as you talk to booksellers, and as you talk to your publishing team about future books you
3:46
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I'll be a example, so when you'll be pitching, before we start recording error now we're chatting about even just going into, you know, a freelance job and having to say, yeah, here's the idea I came up with, here's what I want to work on here.
4:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is also a form of pitching, right?
4:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Once you start to understand the principles of how to pitch, you'll start seeing it in a number of other places and start being able to apply that.
4:11
[SPEAKER_03]: So the first lesson I want to get across here is that pitching, like any other thing, is a skill.
4:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And because it's a skill, that means you can train it, you can practice it, and you can get better at it.
4:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Right now, you're probably pretty bad at it, because everyone is bad at it.
4:28
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really hard to do, right?
4:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And right now, you just haven't done it before, it's on a normal way to talk sort of.
4:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm gonna get more into how you can start thinking of integrating it into your daily life.
4:40
[SPEAKER_03]: But what you're doing is figuring out some specific strategies and some specific processes to start talking about pitching.
4:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to say a thing and then I'm going to invite you to hear me unsay it and that is that the skill set for pitching is
5:00
[SPEAKER_04]: 99%.
5:00
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like coffee coaster, venn diagram overlap with the skill set for sales.
5:07
[SPEAKER_04]: If you are a good sales person, you already know how to pitch.
5:11
[SPEAKER_04]: You just need the right content.
5:13
[SPEAKER_04]: If sales terrifies you and makes you feel filthy and you don't want to be in sales, you don't even want to think about sales.
5:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Then I am now unsaid and you can pretend that
5:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Because what you're pitching is something you made, not something someone else made and invited you to sell, right?
5:33
[SPEAKER_03]: But at the end of the day, if you want to make your money from being a writer, you're selling your work, right?
5:38
[SPEAKER_03]: At the end of the day, you are to some extent in sales, because to get paid for your books, you got to sell a lot of books, right?
5:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So having that core skill of being able to pitch is sort of as a baseline, how you're interacting with the world,
5:55
[SPEAKER_03]: right.
5:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So what is a good pitch is where I kind of want to start with.
6:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Well actually let's back a second.
6:02
[SPEAKER_03]: For each of you, like what was the place where you guys started when you were on your journey of like learning how to pitch your projects?
6:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Like that first query letter that first talking to a friend about your book, what was the thing that you felt like was the first key where you're like, oh wait, I'm starting to get how I was supposed to talk about this.
6:17
[SPEAKER_04]: WorldCon Denver, I think it was 2007, we were trying to figure out how to hand-sell Shlock mercenary to science fiction fans, and we came up with epic science fiction for panels at a time.
6:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, was the bitch.
6:36
[SPEAKER_04]: It is an epic and four panels.
6:39
[SPEAKER_04]: What does four panels at a time mean?
6:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, that evokes thoughts of newspaper comics, which says comedy without necessarily saying comedy out loud, because declaring that something is funny is inherently unfunny and is a challenge.
6:56
[SPEAKER_04]: You're challenging people to believe you when you say it's funny.
7:00
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you say four panels at a time, they tell themselves it's funny.
7:04
[SPEAKER_04]: And yes, there's this whole strategy that goes into what you say versus the actual message that comes across.
7:11
[SPEAKER_04]: we sold so many books at that convention, we ended up printing slicks that said epic science fiction four panels at a time on them so that we could talk less and hand people things and we moved a lot of books.
7:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Well to unpack why that works right is you tell people what the thing is very clearly it's epic science fiction here's the category here's how we think about it then you're giving me the thing that gives it texture it makes it interesting which is a juxtaposition that's unexpected which is the fourth pen out of the time.
7:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not expecting epic science fiction to be broken up that way and you've structured the whole thing as a joke and
7:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And therefore, what you've communicated to me is that this is humor by the form of the pitch itself.
7:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
7:53
[SPEAKER_03]: So the density of information in that one sentence incredibly high comprehension very easy.
7:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's one of the things that makes great pitch is getting as much information across as possible, very quickly and you're using all the tools in your game.
8:07
[SPEAKER_04]: And just so we're clear.
8:08
[SPEAKER_04]: That was the first pitch that really worked.
8:12
[SPEAKER_04]: That was where we started to see traction.
8:15
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't remember how many other pitches we had, how many other conventions I did, where the hand-selling was just a chore, but it was definitely iterative.
8:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And I,
8:29
[SPEAKER_04]: One of those other things, I may want to, on the say, you don't want to hear that you're going to have to iterate this and work on it until you figure out that it works, but that's not my central theme here.
8:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
8:40
[SPEAKER_03]: You can practice it and get better at it, right?
8:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
8:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Your first pitch is going to suck and then you try it on somebody and see how they respond and then you find it better one.
8:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, it makes you think about karaoke a bit.
8:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't actually think that I'm great at pitching.
8:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I just tend to
8:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a hard time doing it in the world, but what I've learned about pitching is that like being who you are is helpful, like in in some ways like you have to be able to carry off the pitch that you're giving you give somebody else's pitch and will feel like weird and wrong and off because it's not you and I think about when you sing a song that you really like it karaoke sometimes what will happen is you'll try something in the moment.
9:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll be like, oh, I'm going to go up for that note and sit down or I'm going to try to like add this little flourish and sometimes it lands and people react to it.
9:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And you go, oh, that was good.
9:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was something I came up with on my own.
9:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I should try that again next time.
9:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And like over time, you can build the best version of the song in some ways.
9:36
[SPEAKER_00]: You still never know how to go on the day, but you have a sense of like, I've tried this and it works for me.
9:42
[SPEAKER_00]: because it comes somewhat organically from how I would do this, but I'm still adjusting to match what my audience is reacting to, because a pitch only works if it lands to a certain extent.
9:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's still an expression of you, right?
9:56
[SPEAKER_03]: When you're doing karaoke, you're making that song yours in some way, finding some way to add yours.
10:01
[SPEAKER_03]: But you're doing an in-context where people still can easily understand what's happening with the main is, is recognizable.
10:07
[SPEAKER_03]: I know that this is science fiction.
10:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I know that this is fantasy.
10:10
[SPEAKER_03]: but also this is coming from a person who has a perspective and that's coming across.
10:15
[SPEAKER_03]: If you tried to use Howard's pitch of epic fantasy four panels at a time, it would fall so flat because the cadence would be wrong.
10:21
[SPEAKER_03]: The deliverment may wrong.
10:22
[SPEAKER_03]: The type of thing you're doing is wrong.
10:24
[SPEAKER_03]: You have to find your own voice in it.
10:27
[SPEAKER_01]: For me, it depends on kind of what we're talking about when we talk about pitching because I started with pitching puppet shows and pitching them in person or cold calls and so there I was always trying to figure out how does this feel someone's need.
10:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And when people ask me which of my books they should read, the first question I ask them is, what are you reading now?
10:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I pick a book that that seems most closely aligned with what I'm guessing their taste is.
10:56
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I'm doing the novels like, hello, we're going to send them out into the world.
11:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I found that if I can figure out what a tagline is for it before I start writing the book,
11:08
[SPEAKER_01]: that it helps me focus the thing and I figured that out with shades of milk and honey which I described as Jane Austen with magic and and every time I needed to make a decision I would go back to it's like oh I want an evil overload but that's not Jane Austen so it helped me there.
11:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Jane Austen writes, Oceans 11 was the one that probably made that cemented that, oh, this is a very helpful thing to have in the world, the books that I have the hardest time selling and describing are the ones and honestly the one that I have
11:45
[SPEAKER_01]: the hardest time writing was Martian contingency.
11:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I did not come up with any kind of tagline for it before I started writing.
11:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I love the book, but I have a hard time telling you what it's about.
12:00
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like, we're on Mars!
12:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, just I think a really real thing about as you get deeper into the series, the pitch is this is more of the series.
12:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
12:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
12:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think it makes a lot of sense that for marching in the industry, there isn't like a clear external pitch because it's not a standalone.
12:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
12:17
[SPEAKER_03]: It's this is the new book in the series.
12:19
[SPEAKER_03]: If you like the series, you're going to like this, the pitch that you have, that's really specifically honed is for the series itself.
12:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
12:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, and that is, and that has shifted also, because the available comps have shifted.
12:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
12:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I was writing it before Apple's for all mankind came out.
12:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was describing it as Apollo era science fiction with a hundred percent more women in people of color, and that I was
12:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It begins with an asteroid hitting Washington DC in 1952, which is not a particularly compressed pitch, but it's one of those things that gives people the sense of, oh, it's going to be hard science fiction.
13:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And oh, I like the idea of destroying Washington DC.
13:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's also an important thing that a really pithy pitch can be helpful in one sentence thing, but also sometimes you're packing so much information to that that it's hard to parse, you know?
13:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's okay for to breathe a little bit.
13:19
[SPEAKER_03]: You can have a little bit longer of a pitch provided it's still engaging, provided people are so excited and bought in on it.
13:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Then you have that space to talk about a little bit more.
13:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, one thing I want to sort of emphasize is
13:32
[SPEAKER_03]: As we're talking about in all of these, it's an iterative process.
13:36
[SPEAKER_03]: You're practicing it, you're trying it out, and you're doing all these different things over time to learn how to get better at it.
13:42
[SPEAKER_03]: But I want to talk a little bit more about what that process looks like and how you actually do that, and we'll do that after the break.
13:50
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15:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so before the break we were talking about like how people sort of came to learn how to pitch and a little bit about what that is I want to start getting more into the nuts and bolts of it now of how do you actually get good at it and the thing I really want to emphasize is we are surrounded by pitches all day long.
15:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Never commercially here, every movie poster, every book jacket, every, you know, the copy on the back of that book.
15:29
[SPEAKER_03]: All of that is trying to convince you to engage with media, right?
15:33
[SPEAKER_03]: You are watching video game trailers.
15:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Your friends are telling you, hey, you should play this thing.
15:39
[SPEAKER_03]: You should go watch this thing, right?
15:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And you are also engaging this.
15:42
[SPEAKER_03]: You're trying to tell your friends about media.
15:45
[SPEAKER_03]: You consume things that you like.
15:47
[SPEAKER_03]: of like, I ate it this restaurant, here's what I liked about it.
15:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I watched this TV show, here's what I liked about it, right?
15:53
[SPEAKER_03]: That's all pitching.
15:54
[SPEAKER_03]: You're already doing this every day to the people around you.
15:58
[SPEAKER_03]: All I want you to do is start noticing when you're doing that, in noticing when you're consuming it and start getting intentional about it, right?
16:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Getting a little bit more focused about how do I convince my friend to watch this TV show I love?
16:11
[SPEAKER_04]: There are two aspects for me to the pitching skill set.
16:17
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just break them out as content and presentation.
16:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Content, what are the words that I'm gonna say?
16:24
[SPEAKER_04]: How do I come up with epic science fiction for panels at a time?
16:29
[SPEAKER_04]: How do I come up with, what is there a formula?
16:32
[SPEAKER_04]: A magic, no there isn't a magic.
16:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I do have a formula, but it doesn't always work.
16:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And on the other side,
16:39
[SPEAKER_04]: How do I bring myself to say that thing in a way that's natural and convincing and conversational if I'm in an environment where that's appropriate versus when an agent or an editor has come up to me and said, pitch me your novel?
16:56
[SPEAKER_04]: how do I called start that?
16:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, because that's an opportunity that you may get once or twice.
17:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you're not ready for it, boy, you'll be reliving that moment for your whole life.
17:08
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's for me it has always come down to take whatever content I think works and practice saying those words until I've memorized them and then just bank it.
17:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
17:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I think one thing, Mira Rabin, I was saying, when you were talking, getting good at this, in terms of pitching puppet shows, and you know, when talking to a reader about which book should you read, is thinking about your audience, right?
17:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And remembering that these conversations first and foremost, right?
17:33
[SPEAKER_03]: So even we in an editor is coming you me, like, pitching me a project, I think it is a conversation that you're trying to get into and making it feel like a personal connection.
17:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And what Aaron was saying by karaoke, where are you in this is really, really important for making that really effective as a
17:49
[SPEAKER_03]: So when you're thinking about pitching this why I like this model of thinking about like oh, how do you tell your friend about something that you like?
17:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And now you just need to do that for something that you wrote, which is a recognized harder, but still is bringing that same energy to it, that same consideration of who's my audience?
18:06
[SPEAKER_03]: What did they excited about?
18:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, why would they like this?
18:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Am I trying to get them to watch Star Wars or watch Andor?
18:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, do they like Star Wars great?
18:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to go this way.
18:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Do they hate Star Wars?
18:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I'm going to be like, oh, you don't need to know a thing about Star Wars watch.
18:17
[SPEAKER_03]: and aren't kids about politics of revolution, right?
18:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Like how you're pitching that thing depends on your audience and knowing that can be really, really helpful to start honing in on how do you put English on that ball?
18:29
[SPEAKER_01]: You just reminded me of something that I was talking to an agent, you know, our an editor, I was saying this in, anyway years ago, I didn't have a novel out in the world and he wanted to know what I was working on
18:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you know this thing, and he's like, no, no, no, no, you're telling me the plot.
18:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to know what it's about.
18:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
18:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you said and or it's about politics and revolution, I'm like, yes, that's often the key is that we try to distill down the plot, but it's really about this is the tone, this is the ride you're going to be on, these are the things you're going to think about.
19:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
19:10
[SPEAKER_03]: The three things I want to know when I hear a pitch are what category are we in?
19:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Is the science fiction fantasy?
19:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Is this adults kids, right?
19:17
[SPEAKER_03]: That's just like baseline thing I need to know.
19:19
[SPEAKER_03]: The second thing I need to know is what's the vibe?
19:23
[SPEAKER_03]: What kind of tone are we going for?
19:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Is it comedic?
19:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Is it super serious?
19:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Is it really epic?
19:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Is it, you know, I think getting that and then the third thing is why did you write this?
19:31
[SPEAKER_03]: What's the why of this thing?
19:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Why are we talking about this?
19:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Why am I spending my time listening to you talk about this?
19:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And that has nothing to do with who your protagonist says and everything to do with who you are and what you brought to it.
19:42
[SPEAKER_02]: The thing that really changed the way I pitch stuff is something Mary Robinette already touched on with Jane Austen is using comp titles.
19:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember when I first started pitching, I'm not a serial killer, first two agents and editors, and then eventually two audiences when it got published.
20:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And I have a pitch,
20:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, it used to be long and and kind of twisty and windy and I've got it honed much more better now, but my agent, I was with her while she was pitching it to someone and all she said was it's teenage dexter in an episode of the X files.
20:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And I changed the way I think about it these days just because time has passed.
20:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I usually say teenage Dexter in an episode of Supernatural because more people are likely to have seen it more recently.
20:38
[SPEAKER_02]: That's one of my favorite games to play now is how can I find the right things that this person is going to be familiar with that will let them know.
20:49
[SPEAKER_02]: What is the vibe of this story?
20:51
[SPEAKER_02]: What, you know, how does it feel to read this book and comp titles are really useful too for them?
20:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for the perfect segue, because this is the thing that I also want to talk about in this back half is the importance of comp titles, especially when you're talking to industry professionals and this is if you're talking to science fiction fantasy or publishing professionals editors and agents, we think in comp titles because when we are taking a project on when an editor is acquiring a book, they have to fill out a thing called a PNL, a profit and loss statement.
21:23
[SPEAKER_03]: When they fill that out, they will say, I think this book will sell X copies.
21:29
[SPEAKER_03]: The way they make the argument for why it's that number of copies is they're saying it's like these other books.
21:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So you on at the time of acquisition, when you fill out your P&L, you have to say, this book A is like book B and C, B and C both sold at this level.
21:48
[SPEAKER_03]: So reasonably, we can expect that book A will sell at the same level.
21:52
[SPEAKER_03]: do not come to you about the logic of this that are many problems.
21:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And I will say that one of the things about this is that the comp titles that you can use in industry are very different than the ones you can use out of industry.
22:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So, for instance, I'm working on a new book now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I would come up to you as Becky Chambers to be taught if fortunate meets Ray Naylor's mountain in the sea.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But to someone outside of industry, I would be like,
22:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It's when the Vulcan's first to arrive on Earth.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's optimistic science fiction, but the Vulcan's are quite exactly.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You don't need to be using the strict form of cops in the way that we do in-house, right?
22:30
[SPEAKER_03]: But I'm telling you that part.
22:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So you understand why when you talk to a publisher, they're always thinking in-comt titles, because it's literally baked into how we do our jobs, right?
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[SPEAKER_03]: The entire job, every part of it, comes down to a comp.
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[SPEAKER_03]: What does the cover look like?
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[SPEAKER_03]: What's the copy like?
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[SPEAKER_03]: What is the, what are we editing for?
22:48
[SPEAKER_03]: All that is driven by the cops and so a couple things I want to get across here.
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[SPEAKER_03]: One is you can be way looser than then, you know, your Becky Chambers and Ray Nailo comp, right?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Great comp, by the way, this is.
22:59
[SPEAKER_03]: very fun.
23:03
[SPEAKER_03]: You can, you don't have to be that specific because that's like inside baseball stuff.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You can be looser in terms of, you know, what Dan was saying was a great one.
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[SPEAKER_03]: What your, your broader one was the, the Vulcan one was also a great one, right?
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[SPEAKER_03]: One thing I want to get across and the first mistake I see people make when they talk about comp titles is,
23:22
[SPEAKER_03]: that they think it's about all of A and all of B.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And it's not that it's the venn diagram.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's the overlap space is defining what your book is.
23:31
[SPEAKER_03]: So what you want to do when you're picking your comps is pick two things that do overlap with each other in in a way that's.
23:39
[SPEAKER_03]: narrowly defined enough that of a clear idea of what it is, right?
23:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's this idea of like, oh, I shouldn't use Star Wars or Game of Thrones as a comp because they're too big and I'll seem like I'm getting ahead of myself and being cocky and it's like, no, no, that's not the issue there at all.
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[SPEAKER_03]: The issue there is that every person on the planet has seen Star Wars.
23:58
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you say that and then you say plus B, whatever the B is as a subset of Star Wars, right?
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[SPEAKER_03]: So the audience of A plus the audience would be that defined overlap is what we're looking for.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So if your A is so big that anything else you say will just be a subset, it doesn't really add information for us in a useful way.
24:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Another really helpful tool that I think comp titles bring is
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[SPEAKER_02]: Similar to what Mary Robinette said about getting your pitch ready before you start writing.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I wrote a cyberpunk series in 2014 and I thought to myself, this is great.
24:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I love cyberpunk.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's not much out there right now.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So maybe I can get some attention.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And
24:50
[SPEAKER_02]: If I had taken the time to come up with a pitch beforehand, I would have realized that there is no recognizable comptile forciver punk for the majority of my YA audience.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What am I possibly going to compare this to?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Um, because, you know, the Cyberpunk video game hadn't come out yet, uh, all the cyberpunk that I read was 20 something years old, um, there's a handful of anime titles, but I can't rely on every member of my audience being familiar with bubble gum, crisis, or whatever, and so,
25:27
[SPEAKER_02]: That book was insanely hard to pitch to people, especially to a YA audience because they had zero frame of reference for what cyberpunk was.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that per se is a little bit the fact that that's here is flopped really hard.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It can be really hard to be the only one out there, right?
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[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, there's a big conversation on this about, what does that mean for marginalized authors?
25:51
[SPEAKER_03]: What does that mean for innovation in genre?
25:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, that's a separate conversation that I would love to have at other points.
25:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just flagging, I see all the problems with cops as a system, it's deeply flawed.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But this is how it works right now.
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[SPEAKER_03]: The other thing I want to get across when you're thinking about combs is going back to kind of what we're saying about your sort of more narrative pitch.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Is it is more important to get across?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Category vibe and why, then it is plot, right?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Where I see people get stuck on comps, they're like, oh, but it's kind of like this plot twist that happens in this movie.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm like, that's not what I think of when I think of that movie.
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[SPEAKER_03]: What I think of is an overall energy and tone from that movie and a genre category from that movie.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So when you're thinking about your comps, really think about, yeah, vibe and category and sort of like the why of the story.
26:44
[SPEAKER_04]: I mentioned, you know, there's no formula, but I have a formula, my back cover copy formula is character conflict setting hook.
26:57
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's wildly flexible if I have 20 characters in a book, I can't tell you about 20 of them.
27:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not going to tell you there are 20 of them.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I need to pick an interesting character and I need to pick an interesting conflict and
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[SPEAKER_04]: that illuminates the setting and that sets me up at the end to deliver hook.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And as formulas go, that's a little bit like the bare soup recipe, you know, step one, kill a live, grizzly bear with your bare hands, step two makes soup.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's the first part is really difficult.
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[SPEAKER_04]: What is a hook?
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[SPEAKER_04]: How do I illuminate the setting in 10 words while talking about the conflict?
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[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You're a writer.
27:40
[SPEAKER_04]: You're good at that.
27:40
[SPEAKER_04]: You'll figure that out because once you have this sort of a framework and you can come up with your own that sort of a simple framework you can write half a dozen pitches for your work
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[SPEAKER_04]: that and you realize, oh gosh, I've just I've just put a great big flag on this character's character arc and suddenly the book is more interesting to me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have a formula that I use when I'm doing when I have to do summarize a thing for a query.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But that is that kind of pitching is so completely different than the kind of pitching that we're talking about here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
28:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I think Corey pitching is, you know, I think you're you.
28:24
[SPEAKER_03]: have like a really good structure there.
28:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I tend to invert it in terms of starting with the hook, but again, that's like a whole conversation.
28:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, the thing that I want to get to though about what you were saying there is so often when I'm giving critiques on a copy or on a pitch, what I'm saying is, do twice as much and cut 30% of the words, right?
28:43
[SPEAKER_03]: It's hard to overstate how efficient you have to be, and to be efficient when I encourage you all to do,
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[SPEAKER_03]: What's the minimum thing I need to talk about here?
28:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
28:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't tell me about your whole book.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Don't tell me about all your characters.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Think about the one thing you want me to walk away from that I'm going to be like, damn, I need to know more.
29:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
29:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And so don't tell me about all your characters.
29:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't tell me about all your world, all those things.
29:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Think of it as looking through a keyhole and letting me see one thing about your book.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So when you're pitching and encourage you to, as much as you can, let go a plot, let go of the grand scope of the thing, and focus on what is so cool and compelling about the thing that you did.
29:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And with that, I think we're going to end it there.
29:29
[SPEAKER_03]: We could be talking about this for many hours.
29:31
[SPEAKER_03]: It's one of my favorite topics.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Fortunately, people can pick up the book and read it in depth.
29:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
29:38
[SPEAKER_03]: OK, so I have a little bit of homework for you.
29:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Here's what I want you to do.
29:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I want you to write three pitches, two, three sentence things.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Just real quick, elevator pitches for your book.
29:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I want you to write three of them that take wildly different approaches, focus on different aspects, focus on sort of the world building, focus one on a character, focus one on a plot hook, whatever it is, just riff in three different approaches, don't let them overlap.
30:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And then practice them on another willing subject, find a friend, find a partner, find somebody who's writing buddy, and
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[SPEAKER_03]: Just practice it, say it out loud to them, and then watch them as they hear it.
30:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Where do they get interested?
30:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Where do they get bored?
30:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Where do their eyes slide off and where are they like, oh, that seems interesting and exciting.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Practice and observation are the things gonna help you get better at this.
30:33
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30:46
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30:48
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30:57
[SPEAKER_01]: For this episode, your hosts were Mary Robinette Koal,
31:02
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