
It’s not spoilery, it’s sell-ery.
Also called the “Back-of-the-book copy”, “Query Letter Pitch Paragraph”, “Short Pitch”, or “Pitch Copy,” this is going to be the document from your Pitch Package that you will use most often when sharing your novel with the world.
While not as agony-inducing as writing a synopsis, creating pitch copy for your book is always a challenge. Even if you know your book inside and out (which–by the time you’re done writing, revising, and polishing it–you will), writing an enticing, hooky and accurate pitch is still difficult. You have to get the balance just right between intriguing and accurate, snappy and informative, and familiar but not trite.
It sounds easy, but I generally write about four different versions of a pitch before I settle on the one I’m going to use to advertise the novel—and even then, I might swap to a different version that emphasizes a different aspect of the book depending on the market. For example, If I’m pitching a romance-forward market or romance-focused agent, then I’ll use the pitch that emphasizes the romance plot and yummy tropes of the book. If I’m pitching a CanLit/Literary Fiction/Historical Fiction-forward market/agent, I’ll use the pitch that talks more about the themes and grounding in the historical/alternate history context. And of course, agents and publishers use it as the basis for their own marketing and submission materials. (I’ve never had a book published where the pitch copy I provided the marketing team for the book hasn’t then been edited and tweaked, if not completely rewritten.)
However, like everything else in the publishing industry, what makes a good book pitch is extremely subjective. There are lots, and lots, and lots, and lots of articles out there that go into greater depth on what makes a good pitch, so I’ll keep my advice short and sweet. Please also keep in mind that there is no hard and fast rules on how to write a pitch. I’m just giving you my method. It may work for you, or it may not. And if it doesn’t, that’s okay; you’ll figure it out.
(Head’s up, I’ll be using The Hobbit in my examples, so spoiler warning for a book that’s been out for nearly a century, I guess?)
The way I usually structure my pitch is like this:
Paragraph One – Who is the main character, where are they at in their life (emotionally, career wise, education, place in society, mental health, etc.)? Where is this person currently planted?
Paragraph Two – What is pulling them out of their rut/home/habits, how are they being disrupted, and what journey is this going to send them on? Why does it have to be this person who goes on this journey? (Either a real journey like a quest, or an emotional one, like falling in love, etc.)
Paragraph Three – What do they have to loose by going on this journey? What is now at stake? What will happen if they fail? What will they gain if they win? And how will this journey change them, for good or for ill?
I aim for between 250-400 words, and absolutely do not go above 500 words. This is more or less the industry standard length for this kind of pitch.
Let’s look at each of those sections in more detail.
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Tell me who the main character is:
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Introduce me to your main character. Whose shoulder will I be riding for the course of the story, and whose head will I be in? Why this person, and not someone else in the narrative? Try not to spend more than a sentence or two on this introduction.
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For Example: “Bilbo Baggins is a gentlehobbit of good breeding, and he, like the rest of his kind, is very much not interested in Adventures, thank you very much. They are nasty, dirty things that make one late for dinner.”
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And then at the end of the pitch, give me a glimpse of what the main character’s emotional arc and journey of growth will be.
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For Example: “To succeed in his mission to liberate Erebor and help his newfound friends reclaim their homeland, Bilbo will have to dig deep and find a courage that he never thought any hobbit, let alone and gentleman like himself, could ever possess.”
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Tell me what the world is like:
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What are the values and morals that your main character lives by, what’s their home and neighborhood like, what’s their relationship with their family or their employment?
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For Example: “One would think a wizard had better sense than to endanger Bilbo’s respectable reputation with his neighbors than to promise his help to these roaming dwarves as a burglar for hire, of all things.”
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Tell me what they’re risking by undertaking this change in status or going on this adventure, or in seeking to change themselves or something around them.
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For Example: “As a noble Baggins of Bagend, Bilbo is already absolutely mortified to be found in the company of such rough, brash folk; his neighbors would shun him for sure if they found out that he’d entertained dwarves, even if one of them is their handsome King Thorin Oakensheild.”
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Tell me what the major conflict is:
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What is the novel’s inciting incident? What compels your character to take their first step out the door?
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For Example: “But when Bilbo learns that the dragon in question has stolen the dwarven kingdom of Erebor from it’s rightful people, and they are looking for help reclaiming their lost homeland, Bilbo’s sympathy compels him to sign on to Thorin’s company.”
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What’s going to happen to our main character over the course of the novel?
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For Example: “Thrust into an adventure his books and armchair explorations have left Bilbo woefully unprepared for, the young gentlehobbit will follow the tragic king through troll-infested glades, ethereal elven cities, over treacherous rocky cliffsides, and through goblin-infested tunnels. All the while learning to wield a magic ring won in a perilous game of riddles with a creature twisted by it’s dire curse. A ring that may just allow Bilbo to become the burglar Gandalf had promised to the dwarves after all.”
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Entice me…
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But don’t spoil the ending.
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Try not to rely too heavily on rhetoricals aimed at the reader. A phrase like “What would you do if you were asked to steal a cursed gem from a dragon?” doesn’t tell the reader much about the novel itself and the events in it. Reframe such questions to center on the character’s personal dilemmas and the book’s world.
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For example: “Bilbo Baggins has never stolen so much as apple from his neighbor’s tree, so why has the wizard Gandalf tasked him with crossing the known world to pilfer a cursed gem from under the nose of a fearsome dragon?”
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At the same time, feel free to end on a question for the character, not the reader.
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In this case: “Will Bilbo manage to make off with the Arkenstone, and liberate The Lonely Mountain from the fire wyrm that has invaded it? Or will he end up just another charred corpse in the desolate wasteland that surrounds the embattled dwarven kingdom?”
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Where you can, echo the voice of the book.
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You can lean on the tropes of your genre while describing the inciting incidents and plot, but not so hard that your pitch is nothing but a string of buzzwords and hollow idioms.
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A synopsis is commonly written in third person present omniscient (“Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit of the Shire”), but can sometimes work in another tense and POV.
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Most importantly, use the same words, the same style of sentence structure, and the same idioms as your narrator or main POV character. The pitch should sound like the book.
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Example – Book text: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”
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Example – Pitch text: “Bilbo Baggins is a gentlehobbit of good breeding, and he, like the rest of his kind, is very much not interested in Adventures, thank you very much. They are nasty, dirty things that make one late for dinner. So when the wizard Gandalf the Grey arrives at his doorstep with thirteen dwarves looking for help reclaiming their lost homeland, Bilbo is more than a little miffed.”
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So here’s the pitch for The Hobbit that we’ve come up with (411 Words):
Bilbo Baggins is a gentlehobbit of good breeding, and he, like the rest of his kind, is not interested in Adventures, thank you very much. They are nasty, dirty things that make one late for dinner. So when the wizard Gandalf the Grey arrives at his doorstep with thirteen dwarves, Bilbo is more than a little miffed. One would think a wizard had better sense than to endanger Bilbo’s respectable reputation with his neighbors than to promise his help to these roaming ruffians as a burglar for hire, of all things. Firstly, as a noble Baggins of Bagend, Bilbo is already absolutely mortified to be found in the company of such rough, brash folk; his neighbors would shun him for sure if they found out that he’d entertained dwarves, even if one of them is their handsome King Thorin Oakensheild. Secondly, Bilbo Baggins has never stolen so much as apple from his neighbor’s tree, so why has Gandalf tasked him with crossing the known world to pilfer a cursed gem from under the nose of a fearsome dragon?
But when Bilbo learns that the dragon in question has stolen the dwarven kingdom of Erebor from it’s rightful people, and they are looking for help reclaiming their lost homeland, Bilbo’s sympathy compels him to sign on to Thorin’s company. Thrust into an adventure his books and armchair explorations have left Bilbo woefully unprepared for, the young gentlehobbit will follow the tragic king through troll-infested glades, ethereal elven cities, over treacherous rocky cliffsides, and through goblin-infested tunnels. All the while learning to wield a magic ring won in a perilous game of riddles with a creature twisted by it’s dire curse. A ring that may just allow Bilbo to become the burglar Gandalf had promised to the dwarves after all.
Will Bilbo manage to make off with the arkenstone, and liberate The Lonely Mountain from the fire wyrm that has invaded it? Or will he end up just another charred corpse in the desolate wasteland that surrounds the embattled dwarven kingdom? If Bilbo ever wants to see his snug, cozy Hobbit home again, he’s going to have to risk everything to first get his friends back theirs. Succeeding in his mission to liberate Erebor and help his newfound friends reclaim their homeland means Bilbo will have to dig deep and find a courage that he never thought any hobbit, let alone and gentleman like himself, could ever possess.
What next?
Once you’ve got a good first draft of your pitch, like the one above, it’s time to polish it up and make different versions of it. This means, yes, sometimes rewriting it to emphasize different themes and plot points (the above pitch could easily be tweaked to include a romance subplot between Bilbo and Thorin, for example, if a writer was to include that in their version of this book). But you’re also going to want to use this pitch as the basis for ones of different lengths. Even if you never use some of these versions of your pitch once you’ve created them all, no work on your book is ever wasted. If nothing else, it was a good exercise to help you understand your novel on a deeper level, and it’s practice for creating the next book’s pitch package.
Long Pitch
In certain situations, a full-page (600ish words) version of the above pitch is acceptable. This gives you the breathing room to dive into some of the secondary characters and their motivations, stakes, and the way they change. I might choose to highlight Thorin’s plight—regain his throne, but risk descending into the dragonsickness that claimed his father and grandfather. Or Gandalf’s—he knows the One Ring is out there somewhere and is distraught to realize that Bilbo, of all gentle creatures, is the person it has come to.
Short / Back of Book Pitch / Query Pitch
Roughly 2-3 paragraphs is industry standard. I always aim for around 250 words where I can, and I’d really caution you not to go above 500. The pitch above is a nice generous version, but definitely a first draft. Something tighter would shine brighter.
One Sentence Pitch
Basically sum up everything in the short/back of book pitch in one sentence.
“A mild, gentle hobbit goes on an unexpected journey to help the king of the Dwarves to reclaim his lost homeland, and discovers his own value and courage along the way.”
Elevator Pitch
This is different from a one sentence pitch because you’re looking for buy-in from whomever you’re pitching it to. There’s no limit on wordcount, but it should be easy to memorize and take no longer than 30-60 seconds for you to say out loud. (It’s called an “elevator pitch”, because it should take the length of time of a short elevator ride, should you ever have the good fortune of finding yourself on an elevator with a high-power executive or agent, and have the opportunity to speak with them about your project.)
“A mild-mannered, gentle young nobleman is swept into a fantastical and terrifying quest through a fantasy land populated with elves, dwarves, wizards, and terrible dragons that is The Chronicles of Narnia meets the His Dark Materialsseries. He learns to believe in himself and wield an ancient, terrible magic ring along the way. This is a stand-alone adventure, with the in-depth worldbuilding and engaging secondary characters that give it the potential to spin off into a series.”
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1 comment
Join the conversationtemp mail - December 22, 2024
Standing ovation! This post perfectly balances depth with accessibility. Your thorough research and expert explanations make this an invaluable resource. Keep up the amazing work!
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