By advice guides, yes. But I think when editors ask for an elevator pitch they just mean something short and enticing, not more specific than that.
Are you sure? I was asked for elevator pitches by my agent and she definitely didn't mean a tagline, logline, and short synopsis
No, she wasn't framed. She killed a man. If somebody else had killed him, but she was blamed, and evidence was planted/manufactured to convince the authorities of her guilt, THEN she would have been framed. Only once the authorities are convinced that there is a case to answer (e.g., a man has been killed and his body has been found) and that they have found a likely perpetrator (e.g., they've found the woman whose fingerprints are all over the gun which ballistics have established was the murder weapon, and she' said "Yes, I shot the dirty perv.") do they even consider whether the charge they will make is murder.
Not anymore Spoiler: Off topic If I had permission to drive a friend's car, but if I was criminally charged with grand theft auto, would you say that I wasn't framed for the crime because I did in fact take the car?
Elevator pitches are your back cover blurb pitched face-to-face (but not verbatim) and you're looking at about thirty seconds, ideally. Tagline is the sort of thing you'd find on the front of a book, and logline is premise (one sentence). Short and long synopsis is just that. That's what I've learned, anyway. Pemise and blurb should cover character; situation; objective; opponent; disaster; conflict. Build round that and you shouldn't have a problem. She says...
I'd say you probably were framed. For a criminal charge to be brought, the police would have to be involved. Somebody had to tell them the car was stolen; presumably the friend who had previously given you permission. That is somebody (nice friends you've got!) deliberately contriving a situation whereby you are at risk of being found guilty of committing a crime. Which would be the same as me killing your wife, and then leaving evidence (your fingerprints, plus DNA traces, all over the knife that's covered with your wife's blood) connecting you to the crime; framing you. Not the same as you killing your wife, and only in court (perhaps even whilst being questioned by the police) claiming it was self-defence; where you weren't framed, you merely claimed mitigating circumstances.
Spoiler: Off topic You do see how that's not the scenario that I was talking about, right? And why I put my scenario in spoiler tags? Labelled "Off topic"? In the scenario that I came up with, I drove the car with permission, and I was accused of driving the car without permission. My friend did not go to any lengths to make it look like I used the car without permission, but other people thought that I used the car without permission anyway. Not because of anything my friend did, but just because they knew that I used the car and decided that I did not have permission. This scenario was not on-topic, and so I wrote my scenario in spoiler tags – labelled "Off topic" – so that people who wanted to focus on the original topic would easily be able to skip my contribution to the of-topic tangent. If you would like to talk about this further without putting everything in spoiler tags, then perhaps we should start a new thread in the Debate forum?
Hmmm, how about... A well-intentioned Nobleman, burned alive by religious zealots only to be dragged from death five years later. Bound to an incompetent necromancer along with his sanity and morals dwindling, Alexander must hunt down the ones who took his life away to finally receive his eternal rest.
Over the course of the story, she manages to avoid arrest even though she's eventually identified and wanted as a possible suspect, and at least framed in the sense that the witnesses tell a different story about what happened (it's true she killed a man, but she did it out of self-defense, yet this is not the story the rapist's friends are willing to corroborate for reasons detailed in the story) and she's the prime suspect. Fyen's options are to either come clean and reveal her side of the story and risk losing her freedom (charged for murder is the worst case scenario, justified homicide for sure, since her actions would be considered an overreaction, there's no Stand Your Ground law) OR stay under the radar and hope to flee the country. Her main goal is to avoid detection, but should the second sentence be vaguer? À la she's in a hopeless situation and has to find a way to put the pieces of her life back together somehow somewhere? If I even put there a second sentence... I agree, although I have to admit I'm glad to see people have opinions on this.
Hmm. I don't think you should get vaguer - you've got a brilliant conflict here, I just don't think "move country or risk prison" is a great summary. If she spends a good chunk of the book unidentified as the killer, could the second sentence be something like, "Every day the police [or FBI or whatever] get closer to identifying the killer, and Fyen has to come clean and risk a murder charge or pin her hopes on getting away with murder" only less clunky. I think that tension, of knowing that the police are getting closer to knocking on her door, is more intriguing than the flee vs stay choice. But others may disagree.
A murderer rapes a Nazi, and then kills the Nazi, but before he dies the Nazi manages one final rape in return, and the murderer is raped also. Raped Nazi is a tense legal thriller that takes the reader from the mind of a rapist murderer to the gas chamber in under 300 pages.
No, based on my domestic study of Nazis & also great introspection & 25 years of Youtube research re the Nazis & my other book 'Fields Of Rape' out of print sadly but very instructive as regards seed and chip fat temperature - the threat of lard in this respect is THE common theme, sure you'd agree.
Here's the elevator pitch of my best work so far: A young soldier named Aeron Pryce is forced to choose between duty and standing for what he truly believes in during a civil war analogous to World War I's social revolutions, especially Czarist Russia. He faces not only monsters of Celtic mythology such as Cu Sith and blood-sucking Dearg-du, but the consequences of potentially turning his back on the very people who made him what he is: his superior officers, and even his own aunt.
Too much, Also you are giving me a dilemma not a story goal. What is your character trying to accomplish?
I like it! I'd definitely pick that up. I'd probably cut out the bits I highlighted in red, just to streamline it a bit, and maybe reword the last bit because it reads a bit awkwardly to me. Maybe "his superior officers and the aunt who raised him" if that's the case? "Even his own aunt" doesn't give quite enough, I don't think.
I feel like you kinda break the fourth wall here, with directly referencing the first world war. Plus, it's not very specific. How is he forced to choose between these two options? What's the human choice here? Bad guys Vs good guys is not interesting on the back of a book; we already know the bag guys are bad.
A young soldier is forced to choose between duty and salvation of the warren burrowed inadvertently by bold rabbits seeking does. With stretcher and his sense of compassion he rushes between trenches, rushes to warn rabbits, and faces the machine-rifles of teutonic youth in his eyes, faces the rose-cheeked arrogance of the British officer class at his backside or his face. 'Onwards,' they command. Can corporal Uri Saville save rabbits, pass them to his buddy Hutch, and will he save scores of his injured countrymen isolated among the rabbits, will Sowball birth before the Bosch winter offensive?
Brevity has never been my strong suit: A disillusioned neurosurgeon and a melancholic robotics engineer go to extreme lengths to undermine the 27th century institutions that have made human bodies a commodity rather than a birthright. In so doing, they uncover a sinister history that they were never supposed to know about; shaking their beliefs of "the self" and their faith in themselves to the core.
I've done a little reworking of my idea. - Having had her face mutilated, Nerium, a former model and singer, hears rumors of a magical ring, which can restore her face, and sets out on a dangerous journey to find it. Upon obtaining it, Nerium’s dreams comes true as her face is restored, but it comes at a terrible price: Ghost of the violent dead haunt her. Will Nerium be able to escape the violent dead? Or will the price for her beauty prove too much for her to handle?
Hmmmmmm. Sounds like a neat supernatural thriller/horror, where beauty isn't always a free pass for stuff. But I'm a bit turned off by the generic phrases and words like "dangerous journey" and "dreams come true." What's more, the danger of her journey is vague. I'd rather know what kind of opposition Nerium is facing.
True. I was thinking of going into the underbelly of society, dealing with live rapist, murderers, and mutilators only to be haunted by the violent dead (which is made of the ghost of murders, rapist, suicides, and mutilators.)
