Pitching at Midnight: The Layers of Your Pitch

By Diane Holmes,
Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University

It Began When an Author Got a Pitch From an Editor

This is a story about pitching. But it doesn’t begin with an author pitching to an editor. This story begins with an editor pitching to an author.

It’s a story about how an author set out to learn a genre she knew nothing about and discovered a very unique way of looking at story-development in layers. And how this technique can be used to create a kick-butt pitch for your own book.

Genre Jumping – Pitch From an Editor

Bestselling author Christie Craig (Yes the same ultra-funny, rom-com author who sold four books in one day) is now also a bestselling Young Adult author. The first in her new Shadow Falls series, Born at Midnight, written as C. C. Hunter, was just released on March 29, 2011.

Why did Christie suddenly decide to write paranormal YA? Because her editor at St. Martin’s, Rose Hilliard, called her with a three word idea.

Yes, a three word pitch.

What are the three words that so captivated the editor she wanted one of her best writers to take it on? “Paranormal summer camp.” (Those of you who don’t think you can pitch short are looking at how it’s done.)

As Christie says, “That's all she gave me.  I took it and wrote a synopsis.”  The synopsis was her written “pitch” back to St. Martin’s. It was her chance to sell them on a multi-book deal. And if you know Christie, you know she did just that. In fact, she and her agent ended up with a three-book deal, plus foreign rights sales, plus film potential.

But, in order to write the synopsis, Christie Craig, who has a thriving career in adult fiction and who’d never considered jumping genres, had to figure out exactly what Young Adult was all about.

Genre Layers

Christie shared what she learned about switching genres a couple months ago at a workshop she gave to the Northwest Houston RWA chapter. Put a challenge in front of that girl, and she will take names, rope it, and make it her mascot. That’s just Christie. So, she read and read YA books, asking herself, “What are the story constructs that make a YA paranormal romance different from an adult paranormal romance?”

She made what she calls her “big wonderful leap” when she realized that each YA book dealt with five layers:

1. Romance

2. Paranormal

3. Teen Angst

4. Parents/Family Relationships

5. Friends/Peers Relationships

And, while each book might stress a different amount of each layer, each layer was not only present, it also had built-in, inherent conflict.

So, simple. It’s like you’ve always known this, right? That’s what genius looks like. ;)

In fact, no matter what genre you’re writing, you can explore it in this way. This isn’t about sub-plots or multiple-plots, which have their own “life” within the story. This is about the complexity of your story and the facets of character experience and characterization, itself.

This became her understanding of YA fiction, specifically paranormal romance. And she embraced this as she developed her own story series and the resulting synopsis.

Build Layers into Your Pitch

As I was listening to Christie talk with such enthusiasm about her craft and her newfound passion for writing YA, I was struck by the application in what she’d learned about layers for creating a pitch. Yes, a layered pitch!

One of the things a pitch does best is set a story expectation. And one of the biggest challenges in a pitch (and query letter) is including additional details in a way that sounds related to the expectation.

It’s just true that, when pitching, the more you say, the more confusion you can create as one piece of information leads to another bit of explanation, that then jumps over to a whole other tangent.

But pitching in layers? That had the potential to keep things unified, simply because you could start by focusing on a single character layer/conflict, then add the next. And everything you added would go to reinforce the story’s genre as well. You’d be surprised how often pitches and query letters convey the story in a way that sounds like “it’s every genre, all thrown together like a food fight.”

I emailed Christie and told her my thoughts (“Christie, you’re a genius!”). She sent me the pitch she’d written to sell Born At Midnight, and gosh darn-it if I wasn’t right. It has all 5 layers. Take a look:

Kylie Galen has had a lot of crap tossed in her lap lately. Her parents are getting a divorce for who the heck knows why. Her boyfriend broke up with her because she wouldn’t put out.  And her grandmother died because . . . well, older people do that. 

But now, Kylie’s acquired a stalker, and she hasn’t a clue what he wants or how to get rid of him . . . and she really wants to get rid of him because apparently she’s the only one who sees him. 

Thinking she may be losing it, her parents send her off to see a psychologist who gets Kylie sent to Shadow Falls Camp.  Kylie and her parents think it’s a camp for troubled teens.
They thought wrong.

Kylie’s surrounded by vampires, werewolves, fairies, witches, and shapeshifters.  And if she believes what they say, she’s one of them.  They’re just not sure exactly how she fits in.

As Kylie struggles to cope with the realization that these creatures even exist and the fact that she might not be human, she‘s got two hot guys, a werewolf and a half-fairy, vying for her attention. And they can just keep vying.  Kylie’s determined that before she lets her heart loose on love again, she needs to unearth the truth. 

What does the ghost want?  Who can and can’t she trust?  And most of all . . . What is she?

Born At Midnight . . . It’s not your average identity crisis.

* * *

Let’s review her five layers:

1. Romance (two hot guys want her and she doesn’t want her heart broken again)

2. Paranormal (visions of stalker, paranormal summer camp)

3. Teen Angst (not human, boyfriend broke up with her, needs truth)

4. Parents/Family Relationships (parent’s divorce, granny dead, family will never be the same)

5. Friends/Peers Relationships (whole new set of friends, needs to fit in, they’re not human)

Unifying Character: Kylie

Unifying Theme for all Layers: Identify Crisis (a.k.a. “Everything I used to count on being true about me and my life is over!”)

Conflict in all 5 layers: Check

Everything sounds like it belongs in a YA Paranormal Romance: Check

Kick-Butt Pitch of complex situation that makes sense: Check

Series: Sold!

How to Apply This to Your Story

1. What are the key layers in your genre/sub-genre?

2. How do you transform each genre layer into your main character’s life?

3. What is the conflict found in each layer?

4. Is there a unifying theme that binds these layers?

5. Write a sentence or two about each layer and conflict, as it links to the main situation or as it imposes a hurdle in your story.

6. Try moving these sentences around until you find a way they fit together. In Christie’s pitch, she used a problem/goal structure.

7. Come to Pitch University and try it out! That’s what we’re here for, helping you create a pitch that works, and then practicing that pitch. You can do it.

----

Diane Holmes is the founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University, the first online, no-cost resource where writers who "suck at pitching" can learn to pitch their books from the agents and editors who make their living doing it.

Diane brings her background in marketing, writing, and community building to Pitch University.

She’s founded writers’ groups, co-owned a small press, had plays produced, written novels and scripts, run writer's contests, held offices in writing organizations, taught writing… and just like you, she sucks at pitching her own books.  Okay, wait.  She used to suck.  Now she rocks.  This is the journey you can make at Pitch University.

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