On Saturday, November 10, I attended a sweet workshop at Case Western Reserve University’s Writing Center. The presenter was Linda Robertson, and the topic was “Speculative Fiction: From Concept to Pitch.” Attendees were asked to submit a brief (one page) story concept, and in addition to taking us through the steps of creating a pitch, Ms. Robertson would also offer her personal version of what a pitch for our project might look like.
So like, there’s this novel I wrote like a decade ago? I can’t figure out how to pitch it after all these years. It’s called “The Gods Awoke” and it’s a secondary world novel about telepathy and faith and how hard it is to talk to your family about stuff you care about. It doesn’t have the zing of my other novel, “Girl motorcycle gang in space rescues a gay prince.”
I’m going to go through my notes for the workshop and as I do so, talk about this book and its nascent pitch. The idea is you’ll be watching me make the pitch right here!
First Linda Robertson took us through What Makes a Good Plot:
A good plot promises that shit is going to happen. Choices are made amid the ominous foreshadowing of something worse, and worse shit happens because of those choices leaving the protagonist inescapably bound to see this through to the end. [italics mine, from where I underlined my notes]
“A good plot is like a skeleton: vital but invisible. Think of the hinge-points where your skeleton moves, these are your outline points.”
First Step: come up with a one-sentence plot summary for your story, regardless of how silly or flat said sentence would end up. For inspiration we were shown a series of “Bad Plot Twitter” posts. Like “A group of midgets take three movies to return unwanted jewelry” as a summary of the plot of The Lord of the Rings.
This is a pretty awesome starting point, actually. First, give yourself permission to write a bad first draft of the pitch.
Here’s mine:
“An atheist convinces an omniscient alien she is not a god by rejecting her romantic advances.”
It’s technically correct, as that is one motion in the plot, involving two of the main characters, though it’s not everything the story is, and that’s okay.
Now that we tried that, we talked about what goes into a one-sentence concept. We were shown one-sentence summaries that were NOT jokes. “A group of common people must destroy a terrible weapon before a powerful evil enemy uses it.”
(Good advice on anything: Try first, then learn from your try. As adults we forget to “just try” like children do.)
“Your concept and pitch are your resume for the job of novel writer. You can apply for a job without a resume, but that’s really like applying with a blank resume.”
Here are the parts of a concept, according to Ms. Robertson:
an essential idea [Theme? I wrote in notes]
a time /place /culture [Setting, I wrote more confidently]
a perception, situation, scheme, or circumstance [Plot hook?]
- Notice we haven’t named a character yet! Ms. Robertson smiled mischievously, but that might have been caused by the puns in her powerpoint.
Example:
essential idea: a boy discovers he has magical abilities
situation: he is invited to attend a school for wizards
location: that exists in a parallel world.
So “A boy discovers he has magical abilities and is invited to attend a school for wizards in a world parallel to our own.” is a concept sentence for Harry Potter.
NB: try to include something intriguing, terrifying, weird… whatever it is in your story that is the most hooking, emotionally intriguing, that should be in there if you can help it.
What is inherently interesting, challenging, or provocative about your story?
Right, so obviously, I picked “atheist turns down god” for a reason. That’s good, right?
But I notice my one sentence concept doesn’t have a location in it. I don’t mention it’s a secondary world.
Improved try:
In a world full of telepaths, an omniscient alien learns she isn’t a god when an atheist rejects her romantic advances.
“Your concept is your foundation — it will resonate through every scene.”
Ut-oh, does it though? The romantic conflict between Senne and Illoe isn’t the through-line is it? When I was writing, I thought of the through-line as Senne’s journey of self-discovery.
Hrm maybe it works with the failed romance, though. Senne starts her narration with noticing Illoe, and her decisions are largely in pursuit of him. Okay, feeling okay about this and moving on.
Once you have your one line concept, it’s time to add the premise. This is where it gets specific, and where you introduce your Hero, Opposition, Problem and Stakes. (Linda R. had HOSPital –the presentation was full of medical puns– I used HOPS — could also be SHOP or POSH but I like IPAs so I’ll remember HOPS)
Of these the greatest is stakes. These four elements can be in any order, but put the one with the most oomph last.
So what do I have?
Hero(s): Omniscient alien who thinks she is a trickster goddess (Senne), young atheist servant of a priestess (Illoe), his priestess-boss (Hitra)
Opposition: other omniscient alien “gods”, Hitra’s superiors and mother, Illoe’s father, this one nasty donatrix who has the hots for Illoe, a heretic priest who actually started all this by telepathically contacting the aliens
Problem: Senne doesn’t know what she is. The “gods” are breaking shit and killing people. Illoe needs his contract renegotiated before his birthday. Hitra needs to handle involuntary celebrity status and her mother’s expectations as she tries to become Head Priestess of her order.
Stakes: Illoe could die. The church could split. A holy war could start. Hitra’s pretty much going to lose her job.
UGH what a mess.
So, take a hero, an opposition, a problem, and some stakes, and mix them together in a way that grabs attention and shows why the protagonist must take action.
Let’s just pick the most interesting of each part, huh?
Best stakes I think are: holy war.
Best problem: Gods are breaking shit and killing people.
Best opposition: hrm I admit I like the donatrix the best in the story, but heretic sounds cool and well, if the problem is the other gods breaking shit, I guess they gotta be the opposition
Best Hero: Yeah I think I’ll stick with Senne, she’s the pov character (in omniscient first)
So that gives us:
An omniscient alien who thinks she is a trickster goddess must figure out what she is and reign in her sister-goddesses, who are breaking shit and killing people in their confusion, which could result in a holy war destroying the local culture.
I’m not happy with that. Also, the tone of the novel is literary, lots of rich description of awkward emotions, not “breaking shit”.
So let’s try it with Arel in the mix.
An omniscient alien is dragged into a holy war by a heretic priest who convinces her and her sisters they are gods. She falls for an atheist servant and this spurs her to learn who or what she is. Her journey of self-discovery has to happen quickly: her sisters are tearing the city apart.
Better? I can’t even tell.
Now the idea is to take the one-sentence concept and put it with the longer premise to make a unified Elevator Pitch.
In a world full of telepaths, an omniscient alien is convinced she is a trickster goddess until an atheist rejects her romantic advances. Meanwhile other beings like herself are destroying mountains and killing people as they confusedly try to meet the mental images of gods the local people have. She must learn what she is and help the others before they spark a holy war and destroy everything around them.
Is this working? I’m not even sure.
Let’s try again:
On a planet full of telepaths, a heretic priest contacts omniscient aliens, convincing them they are gods. The resulting chaos sparks unrest, violence, and holy war. Someone needs to take responsibility, and it may as well be a trickster goddess and the atheist servant who resists her charms.
UGH. I’m losing it.
However, there’s still one more step: the Response.
You have your Concept, your Premise, you give them as a pitch in an elevator, so what do you say after they say, “Great! Tell me more!”
Response should be succinct and end with another hook. Give them the through-line and where it’s going.
For example: It’s like [trope] with [other trope] and [theme.]
So, mine would be: it’s like Star Trek’s Q in a steampunk setting learning about personal responsibility and communication.
Concept Premise and Response are the CPR to resuscitate your novel! (groan pun groan)
I asked about, well, what if you don’t have one hero? What if it’s important to see the novel from all three main character’s points of view? She said to be upfront about it – don’t try to make the pitch for a different novel!
That hit me hard. A lot of my attempts to pitch this novel have been attempts to re-shape it to look more like a traditional hero narrative.
Well, that’s me going over my in-class notes. Here are the written notes Linda gave me on my plot summary, which, now I look over it, I had written as though this were a traditional action hero narrative with Senne as the protagonist, because someone told me not to have more than two names in a summary.
“I’m not sure I understand the character’s progression. Does she become physical at the end or is she at least in control of appearing to people when she wants to?”
Straightforward, for the plot summary at least, I need to be clear that she doesn’t gain a corporeal form so much as control over her ability to appear and disappear, through practice.
“From what is in the synopsis, I worry about Senne’s arc. If she is a trickster goddess, does she truly want to make a more ‘responsible’ start on her existence or does she have a need to be tricky?”
Well, obv. the problem here is she isn’t a trickster goddess, she’s been told she is and is trying to live up to that for the first half of the book, but she’s basically decent. I’d avoided giving that piece of information, partially because I was afraid readers would find it annoying/cliche/dumb. But if your character is a werewolf, you don’t write a plot summary saying “Julie has strange cravings once a month.” You say “werewolf.” Lesson learned.
“I want to see Senne’s self-awareness compared or contrasted by Hitra’s, culminating in the priestess’s decision to do what she can to help others affected by her own actions.”
I was super happy to read this, because that is essentially the climax of the plot. Watching Hitra take responsibility teaches Senne to take responsibility. Oh damn, I should put that in, huh? It’s amazing how much of the story I was afraid to put in my own plot summary. I got distracted by the surface motions–the explosions and fights. I thought people would be more interested in that than the parts of the book that are actually interesting. 😛 Don’t insult your audience!
Potential Concept:
“The world of __ is afraid that its gods have all gone to sleep, but a trickster goddess has awakened without any memories, and — amid the growing political and religious hostilities around the temple of ___ — she must rediscover herself and her power before it’s too late.”
And as I read that I realized “Oh dear, I never mentioned in the plot summary that she’s not really a goddess at all, and good gravy is that first clause incorrect – the people aren’t afraid the gods are gone, they are shocked by gods suddenly appearing in a properly normal secular world.”
SO there’s a bit of setting I need to clarify: This is a world without gods. A world like our own. Maybe I’m afraid of saying it like that, because as an atheist I am used to people being very unhappy with any hint that religion is, well, just a social construct and cultural phenomenon.
But this is what the book is about. I essentially said “Wait, tho, even if there were real god-like beings, it’d still be the most sensible thing not to worship them” and then set out to write the book that showed that without overtly stating it.
Potential pitch from Linda:
“Senne, the goddess, and Hitra, the priestess, are both struggling to define their personal truths about life and the afterlife. The trouble is, –OPPOSITION– + –STAKES”
If I revised Linda’s pitch to the actual novel it would be:
“Senne, an alien who thinks she is a goddess, and Hitra, a priestess campaigning for promotion, are both struggling to define who they are and what they have faith in. The trouble is, great harm, including death, befalls others while they dither on their personal struggles.”
That’s… actually getting closer to what the novel really is about, come to think of it. All the characters are in contrasting pairs. Illoe and his brother, Hitra and Senne, the pope and the heretic, the donatrix and Hitra’s mother. A major theme is having someone in your life you’re very different from, but the same as, and not quite being able to communicate across that gap, mostly because you understand each other TOO WELL to listen.
So let’s try re-writing her concept:
The Casu are a telepathic people with a religion and sciences and cultural differences. Their gods are as real to them as any on our world–meaning that no one expects them to do anything, really. Until one day miracles start happening. A trickster goddess has awakened without any memories, and amid political and religious hostilities, she must rediscover herself and her power before it’s too late.
Maybe let’s smush this together for the query, and punch it up:
The Casu are a telepathic nation. Their gods are as real to them as any in our world–meaning real to some, but even the most devout don’t expect them to show up and make miracles in public. Until they do. Enter Senne, trickster goddess of the night and magic, or so she thinks. Her memories are missing, her powers unreliable, and chaos breaks out as other goddesses meddle in mortal affairs, badly. Senne needs to figure out who she is and get herself under control soon, or there won’t be a people left to worship her.
She finds a model in a young priestess who had been angling for promotion, and the priestess’ servant, an atheist. Traveling from mind to mind, Senne hears the words people do not speak, their secrets and lusts. Somewhere in there, she’ll find the answer to who awoke the gods.
…what is the take-away from this exercise (which was far more exhausting than I expected?)
I guess it’s: Don’t be afraid to revise your pitch, to re-write it completely. Turn it inside out and upside-down, ask yourself:
- Am I being honest? Is this really what the story is about? (Don’t be those pulp publishers who put a badass chick with a broadsword on the cover and then she shows up for one paragraph.)
- What excited me about this project? Why did I start writing it at all?
- Does this plot really make sense? (I get the feeling this exercise would be great for identifying places to revise the novel, too.)
I admit, I had hoped by the time I’d finished writing this blog post, I would have a new query letter for “The Gods Awoke” and it would Make Sense and SING.
And not so much. But I’m glad I took this time to examine the materials after the class.
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