I tried to put together a couple for my beta wip and my next project. It took a while - I've never done this before and brevity isn't my strong suit Spoiler: Blue A jaded paranormal investigator desperate to vindicate her own inexplicable childhood experiences believes she’s finally found proof of an invisible world, but has to contend with whispering voices and a sense of dread that could support her case - or indicate the return of her psychosis. Spoiler: Love At First Smite Blade-for-hire Merric is captivated by Sham from the moment he sees them, but when he willingly drops his life to follow them across the country on a quest that they refuse to give him any details on, it slowly becomes apparent that something else is influencing him. Can he trust the wizard? Can he trust himself?
A trail of blood is trailing up to the ultimate showdown between a renegade, and two alien races as allies heading into a head to head with Terra. With a bit of persuasion the Martian Colonials join the renegade. From there the boldest if not ill advised assault on the entirety of Terra begins. Into hell they go, uncertain if Terra is worth saving from itself. This is a sequel that is currently around 51K. The trio is really getting the screws though.
I like it! The "them/they" for Sham is jarring, especially since 'wizard' is much more associated with males than females. I assume it was deliberate, and Sham isn't male or female? Shame that the English language still doesn't have an elegant genderless pronoun. Looking beyond that, this one doesn't grab me. Merric sounds passive and kinda stupid for going on a quest he knows nothing about, so I'm thinking, "Well if it turns out he CAN'T trust the wizard, it serves him right for being a fool."
Alexander was simple man of a noble household, with the best of intentions and a bright day ahead. But sometimes the sun becomes to bright and in a chance encounter with a pack of religious zealots; poor Alexander finds himself burning to death. Only to rise from the grave five years later as a walking corpse, bound to fulfil the quest of an incompetent necromancer. Leaving Alexander with that day you just want to piss on the cruel world. Fortunately for the world, he is no longer equipped to do so.
I think this was great, except the bit in red seems a little vague for me. Like literal whispering voices? Voices inside her head? If it's the latter, you could just say that (the voices inside her head must be proof of paranormal? Or a prelude to a psychosis?). If it's the former, it makes me wonder if you're being cryptic on purpose and "whispering voices" are a supernatural entity. This may just be my personal opinion, but especially in case of fantasy, the fantastical concepts need to be explained a little bit, be it in the blurb, logline/elevator pitch, or synopsis. As an example, from the description of A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab: "Kell is one of the last Antari--magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons". Now imagine if it just read "Kell is one of the last Antari and he must stop the evil cult of Evil that wants him dead." I know the objective of the story, but I'm left wondering, what are the Antari? Why was it mentioned? Should I know this? If that makes sense. So I might rephrase, maybe something like "the whispers inside her head" (because if no one else hears them, they might as well be inside her head). Does the invisible world refer to things of paranormal nature in general? Or is it a specific place she's been looking for? If she's a paranormal investigator, she already has proof of the supernatural, it's just most people won't believe her and think her proof is faked.
How about: College student [Fyen Caradas] shoots a rapist to death in self-defense but is framed for murder by the victim's friends and the media. Now she must either find a way to prove her innocence or flee the country. I could omit the name, of course. I'd kinda want to mention in the pitch the media, though. When the womanhunt begins, the old and new media, including social media, see the situation as a crazed woman killing a star athlete (yes, she kills an athlete... Again, the first draft was written before Steubenville. I'm basically an oracle) because the witnesses (the rapist's friends) give the same witness accounts, and she's afraid of going to the cops to tell the truth because she doesn't trust them at all due to her difficult childhood, plus she'd be up against very powerful people who want a certain kind of narrative to prevail and definitely don't need half of the college football team have their budding careers ruined. The story shows the struggle of her trying to find a way out, coming to grips with her life being ruined, and eventually trying to flee the country (which isn't simple, she needs help, and receives it from the three friends who are in one way or another involved with the case). Thanks for your thoughts @OJB, and also thanks @Simpson17866 for your suggestions. I'd also rather not use the participle. It's not incorrect or anything, but I'd prefer to begin by mentioning the main character straight away.
She isn't framed. Every killing is, prima facie, unjustified. When you are tried for the "killing", you would then make your plea, be it justification, be it on the grounds of diminished responsibility. You may get charged with the lesser crime of manslaughter if there doesn't appear to be malice aforethought.
I'd definitely mention that he was a star athlete - ups the stakes again. I still don't think the last half works. I mean, is that really her choice? Surely even if she flees she will still be wanted? Isn't the real conflict Fyen vs a witch hunt, not a trial vs running away?
Deliberate, yep. The "something else influencing him" bit is supposed to imply that his dumb actions aren't really his choice, but that's fair - I'll see how I can make it more clear. I think I just need to redo this one entirely, now that I'm looking at it again. The whispering voices and invisible world were kinda copied from a larger synopsis - I was worried they might not make sense out of a larger context, hahah. "The whispers inside her head" is a good work around for that one, though, I'll definitely have to use that! I mean, she is framed for murder, as opposed to another crime - I don't think anyone's going "Hey, you dirty manslaughterer, you," eh? She's framed for murder when what she committed was a justified homicide.
I don't know what the better option is, but I was definitely thrown off by the pronoun. Left me wondering what Sham was--I thought maybe a rock band and he'd become a groupie--and confused by the rest.
Are you guys all operating from the same understanding of what an elevator pitch is? Like, the requirements? (I've never had to do this exercise, thank god!) Is the goal to get everything into one sentence, like a logline? (which I've also never had to do, thank god!) If not, I think a lot of these could benefit from being broken into two sentences. But if the goal is one sentence, then... well, then clearly some of them aren't meeting that goal... ?
This one needs to be tightened up a bit - I'd try to get it down to only a couple sentences, and my understanding of these things is you want as much real information packed in there with little flourish. Maybe something more like: "Alexander was a [approximate time period?] noble until a pack of religious zealots burned him to death. Five years later, he rises from the grave, bound to an incompetent necromancer." But that doesn't really give any indication of the plot itself, it's only set-up / initial premise. When I did mine I tried to reference what @OJB brought up about lead, objective, conflict, and situation - you've got your lead and situation, but not a conflict or objective. I don't really think the better option is to just not refer to Sham as 'them' in the synopsis, because they're referred to as 'them' throughout the novel (I know how you feel about singular 'they' ) - but I totally didn't think of the band confusion! Now I kinda want to write that story ...
Are you talking about defending yourself against being raped or against being killed? There can be an important difference. If you had a reasonable belief that your life may have been threatened, you could definitely plead self-defense, but you don't get to kill someone for trying to rape you if that's all it is. I say this as someone who's been through that... it's a horrific experience, but I wouldn't have been justified in killing the guy I knew had no intention of killing me. I really object to the idea that it's fine to kill someone for anything other than trying to kill you, or someone else. Rapists can also be victims. Victim doesn't mean good guy, it means someone who's been wronged in some way. Anyone who's done something unjustifiable can also have something unjustifiable done to them. That doesn't mean they deserve sympathy, or that they don't deserve due punishment and prevention from harming others, but they don't deserve to die for it. Death is something different than being raped, something even worse, as anyone who's recovered for the experience and gone on to live their life will tell you. I feel the same way about Thelma and Louise. Louise was not completely innocent when she killed her friend's almost-rapist, and she knew it. She could have fairly pleaded temporary insanity and not been charged with full murder, but she did not have to shoot that guy dead and ideally, she shouldn't have. It doesn't make her as bad a person as the rapist, but she still did something awful that she didn't need to, granted, in extreme circumstances. That's why it's a complex and interesting story: good/evil, right/wrong, victimhood/criminality isn't that simple.
I understood it to be a one liner / one sentence - something you could say before the elevator reached the next floor. But I guess we can just talk fast. Or stop the elevator. Maybe we can not turn this thread into a debate about rape and self-defense? The debate forum is over there somewhere... follow the smell of gas.
Sorry, it's relevant to my response to the pitch. I'm curious whether I'm asked to sympathise with a character who killed someone who wasn't threatening her life. I mean, I can sympathise with her distress and her making a bad decision, but I'm not going to wholeheartedly accept that she did the right thing, if that's what's meant. The question of what's meant by self-defense is relevant, and I was explaining why I think so.
Maybe just avoid pronoun use, or introduce the character more clearly before using the pronoun? Like the first sentence could be something like: Blade-for-hire Merric is captivated by the mysterious wizard he encounters at ZYX, but when Merric willingly drops his life to follow Sham across the country on a mysterious quest, it slowly becomes apparent that something else is influencing him. Can he trust the wizard? Can he trust himself?
There are legal differences between jurisdictions that will determine what "self-defense" means in any individual situation - I agree that the question is probably too broad to be solved without significant discussion. But I agree with you that playing up the moral ambiguity of her actions may make the pitch more intriguing.
Lead: Your MC. Try to use nouns and verbs when you describe your MC and a single-well-picked adjective. Objective: What is his or her goal? It should be a physical goal that serves to satisfy a spiritual goal. Conflict: What stands in his or her way? Knockout: What would victory look like? What would defeat look like? Situation: With as few words as possible, what is your character's life like before the start of the story? A little bit of Background info works here. (This one is actually optional) A note on irony: Either the goal or the conflict (or both) should be Ironic in terms of your MC. An example of this would be "A serial killer who tries to save someone's life." A note on the Spiritual goal: While you need to know what the spiritual goal is, you don't need to state in the logline. Spiritual goals are mostly for subtext and theme purposes, not so much for plotting. A Note on Groups: A group counts as one character (in terms of plot) if they all share the same physical goal. What separates this cast of characters in terms of character development is that they each have a different spiritual goal; however, if you have a few main characters each with a different physical and spiritual goal then you must do the five points for each character.
And you're using "logline" and "elevator pitch" as exact synonyms? They should both be one sentence long? ETA: No, I must have misunderstood somewhere - you couldn't fit the five points for several different characters all into one sentence, not unless you wanted to create something totally ridiculous... Do you guys ever feel like you're being asked to jump through some pretty strange hoops?
What I was taught, Object, conflict, and lead sentence one (and situation if you have it). The knockout second sentence, as the knockout is phrased in question.
Those aren't the requirements though - that's just one way of structuring an elevator pitch / logline / whatever. It's more what is the definition of an elevator pitch.
Oh, well in essence, basically you pitch an idea at someone you don't know, and by like yah or nah. = Elevator pitch.
Yeah, I might just omit them. I'm going to rewrite the entire thing anyway, so I'll keep that in mind. There's definitely a cultural difference here. I mean, in the US you can kill someone for breaking into your house, and the law will say "Yep, that makes sense". I don't know what the culture/law is like where @KaTrian lives, but it's worth taking into account. As far as the requirements go, I was thinking in terms of the shortest but most information-heavy synopsis possible - if someone asked me "What's this story about?" what could I tell them in a breath that would be fast and hopefully intriguing. Luckily, my lung capacity is pretty great.
So after Googling "difference between elevator pitch and logline," I'm thinking that what I had thought of as Elevator Pitch is actually Logline. Tagline: generally less than 10 words Logline: generally 25 to 30 words Short synopsis: generally a few sentences Elevator pitch: all three of the above, in that order (tagline first, then logline...) Probably should've researched this before titling the thread Maybe we should start labeling our entries as Tagline, Logline, and/or Short Synopsis depending on which part(s) of the full Elevator Pitch we're working on (sometimes the whole thing, sometimes just 1 or 2 out of 3)?
