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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Imperfect Pitch

19/1/2014

11 Comments

 
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With another choral concert in the offing, I’ve been conscious recently of my far-from-perfect pitch. Alas, it’s not just musically I’m challenged, but I’ve been struggling with pitching my fiction since an agent workshop around eighteen months ago when I failed dismally to reduce my oeuvre to three sentences, despite my novel being in a not-at-all-desperate state of health. Although I’ve improved dramatically since then, I still find pitching difficult and I’m reassured when bloggers such as Clare O’Dea confirm I’m not alone in this. We don’t all possess the talents of Fay Weldon, coining and promoting advertising slogans like Go to work on an egg alongside writing literary fiction but, in this highly commercialised era, it’s incumbent on writers to try.

While a pitch to publishers and agents is not the same as a blurb, and both are distinct from a 140-character enticement to click on the link to a blog post, I’ve learnt a bit on pitching from observing how others market their work on Twitter. It takes a lot of discipline and focus to whittle down the gist of one’s outpourings into a few captivating words.

But the ideal pitch isn’t solely down to the writer’s capacity to précis. I don’t think I’m making excuses when I say that some fiction is easier to pitch than others. In an effort to convince you this isn’t only me being precious about my own stuff, I’ll illustrate this but by comparing my Twitter pitches for two of the stories I especially enjoyed from a recent anthology in which my story “A House for the Wazungu” also appears. I’m interested in your views, but I think my first pitch:

Imagine a world where sight is a handicap – captivating #shortstory by @DeborahKlee from @ChuffedBuffBks

— Anne Goodwin (@Annecdotist) October 23, 2013
is more enticing than my second:

Lily is rather mesmerising in this moving #flashfiction by @HettieAshwin http://t.co/jgXpKZabqo

— Anne Goodwin (@Annecdotist) November 14, 2013
although I thought the stories themselves were equally strong. The first story, “A World of Difference”, practically pitches itself through the intriguing setup that is spelt out on the first page. “Lily” has an equally fascinating issue at its core, but its essence isn’t obvious until the end and to flag this up prematurely would destroy the reading pleasure. I had a similar experience reading Zarina Zabrinsky’s  “Ava, Leigh, Sarah, Minnie, Annie, and Me”, which turns out to be another clever take on the ‘we’ theme but, as yet, I haven’t even tried to pitch it!

It could be that my pitching still isn’t sufficiently sophisticated to embrace it, but I think fiction with an embedded secret or twist is the more difficult to promote. This was something I was keen to explore in my Q&A with Claire King because one of the things that especially delighted me about her novel can’t be discussed with anyone who hasn’t yet read it. (If you haven’t, though, why not?) Here’s part of what Claire said regarding the marketing ofThe Night Rainbow:
the crux of the novel is the unreliable narration of Pea, rather than any specific ‘twist’, so we tried to avoid bigging that up (and having people trying to second guess, which would spoil their read).
Fortunately for Claire – and her readers – Pea’s voice is sufficiently beguiling to sell the novel from the first page, but I do wonder if other fiction might be disadvantaged because some of its pleasures can only be discovered on further reading. Am I right, or do I just need to work harder at my pitch?


So that’s my post finished. Now, should I spend the rest of the day pitching it, researching #PitMad on Twitter, or would I be better devoting the time to trying to get to grips with this score?

If you’re interested, the music is Mozart’s Mass in C minor and you can listen to a perfectly pitched version of it here and, yay, there's a female conductor.


Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
11 Comments
Clare O'Dea link
20/1/2014 12:09:22 pm

Can't believe your timing! Many months after writing my post about how not to pitch/describe your novel, I realise I haven't evolved much since then. A work colleague asked me what the book was about the other day and I dissolved into a rambling mess. But at least the book has evolved in the meantime and the answer to that cursed question, if I could get it right, would be different now.

Reply
Safia link
20/1/2014 10:00:56 pm

Ye are not alone! Writers Digest did an interesting article a while back on the difference between a blurb and a pitch. Inspired, I worked on my pitch and sent it to a US agent (never done that before - only British). It hooked him and he asked for more - he held onto my submission for several weeks, but then, unfortunately replied that he would have to pass. Okay, disappointed of course, but I couldn't help thinking that my pitch was too good and the actual submission was a let down for the agent. And there was me thinking I was on the final edit - LOL. The lesson I guess is the same as usual - don't bother submitting until the writing lives up to the pitch. Here's what I said:

Salma and Rosario share the same goal – motherhood. Their lives in Abu Dhabi and Dubai are linked but they meet only when a hospital blunder forces them to decide what secrets to keep. ‘Dreams of Yasmeen’ unlocks the door to an Arab woman’s world and exposes the underbelly of ex-pat life in a city of dreams. This book will change how you think about the Middle East.

What do you think, Anne, Clare, and anyone else reading this?

I think your 'imagine a world where sight is a handicap' is a pretty perfect pitch BTW, Anne. :-)

Reply
Clare O'Dea link
21/1/2014 02:18:50 pm

Safia, it's excellent. All the more interesting that you are introducing two different worlds - Arab and ex-pat, which people have lots of vague ideas about and most likely curiosity too. I like motherhood as a theme too. Hope you get more bites with this.
I'm at the end of my second draft now and my pitch has changed with the story but I'm still not happy with it. Cooking up my next blog post about this very topic.

Reply
Clare O'Dea link
21/1/2014 02:25:07 pm

By the way, there is no reason to jump to the conclusion that your pitch outshone the manuscript. There are 101 reasons why agents might say no in the end.

Annecdotist
22/1/2014 12:51:13 am

Agreeing with you here, Clare, and look forward to your post developing the theme

Annecdotist
21/1/2014 12:52:03 am

via @tim_neville on Twitter -- similar issues for non-fiction writers with articles and their pitches here: http://www.theopennotebook.com/pitch-database/

Reply
Annecdotist
21/1/2014 01:03:22 am

Thanks, Clare and Safia for your interesting comments that seem to me to represent both sides of the same coin, that the pitch might develop at a different pace to the writing, with the potential for problems both ways (I think). We might be in the position of not being able to attract attention to fiction because we don't pitch it strongly enough, but it can work the other way with raising overly high expectations (which is often my sense on reading a published book's blurb).
Anyway, I'm intrigued by both your pitches and interested to see how the novels work out.

Reply
sophie
24/1/2014 05:53:58 am

Anne, I wonder how any literary fiction gets published at all. It's almost impossible to pitch and the first few pages often break the 'rules.' Are you tempted to splash out on help from the Writer's workshop or similar?

Reply
Annecdotist
24/1/2014 08:26:38 am

Good point, Sophie. Are you writing literary fiction yourself? Mine's more commercial literary than literary literary, but not sure that helps! (Need to do a post on what's literary fiction soon.) I went to the York conference in 2012 and found it really useful and have also used critique services, but they don't necessarily help with pitch. What about you?

Reply
Charli Mills
22/7/2014 08:09:03 am

Great points on pitching! I find that some topics are easier to embrace in a flow of language than others. For instance, it was easy to be flooded with flash responses to water! We all drank a good dose of it and whet our whistles.

Reply
Annecdotist
22/7/2014 10:56:58 am

Thanks, Charli, you've certainly got the knack of pitching ... or maybe choosing topics that are good to pitch?

Reply



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