B&N Week 152: Engaging Two Types of Readers

[Steven Forbes]

We have another Tuesday upon us! Was I missed? I certainly missed you. Let’s get into some Bolts & Nuts, shall we?

This week, I want to discuss engaging the reader. However, there are two types of readers that you have to do this for: the editor, and the audience.

So, really, this week I want to talk about pitch writing as well as script writing. Just because you can write a script does not mean you can write an effective pitch. These are two distinctly different muscles that have to be used.

Many writers find pitching difficult, and I don’t blame them at all. Face it: you’ve lovingly crafted this entire world, you’ve got all these relationships between characters and places to deal with, you’ve got snazzy things going on that you want to show off. Tons of backstory and explanations you want to stuff into the pitch, because it’s all important.

But then, you’ve heard a lot of misinformation as to what exactly a pitch is. You’ve been told to be brief, you’ve been told that it’s no more than two lines, you’ve been told that it has to be interesting.

I’ve already spoken about what a pitch is and isn’t, but sometimes a reminder is needed. But even with that, it’s still difficult and nerve wracking to actually write a pitch.

I can’t take that anxiety away from you. Pitching is a difficult thing. There are several reasons for this.

A lot of times, you don’t know whom you’re pitching to. Is it a submissions editor? For smaller companies, is it the publisher? What are they looking for? Will they be interested in your proposal at all? How can you make your pitch interesting to them?

That’s a lot of angst and uncertainty, isn’t it? You look around the publishing landscape, and you see some books getting published and you ask yourself, how the hell did that happen? Or, when you see certain books get published, you wonder what the pitch for that book looked like, right?

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