Twice a year The New York Times provides a great bounty.
The Summer Movies and Holiday Movies special sections [registration required] offer a master class in pitching and querying. (A shout-out to the mighty Dave Kehr for doing the work.) If you’re serious about selling your book, then you must read every single one. (I’m not joking. Not even a little bit.)
Let’s take the synopsis for a film called WHEN IN ROME as our case study for why:
A romantically disillusioned New Yorker (Kristen Bell) decides to get away from it all by taking a Roman holiday, but when she plucks a handful of coins from a magic fountain, she finds herself with more suitors than she can handle. With Danny DeVito, Jon Heder, Will Arnett, Dax Shepard, Anjelica Huston and Josh Duhamel; Mark Steven Johnson directed.
What’s brilliant about this synopsis is that your Internal Agent/Editor can immediately start anticipating scenes:
- Some kind of opening that shows that life as she knows it isn’t working for our Romantically Disillusioned New Yorker (RDNY).
- Arrival in Magical Rome. It’s magical! (If our RDNY has developed a hard shell, perhaps it softens a bit?).
- We need a New Friend, perhaps a nosy but wise hotelier who can be there to witness/facilitate the RDNY’s journey.
- Magical coin fountain scene. What’s that funny feeling? Is a change coming?
- An escalating flood of suitors (first one or two, then many) and the complications (serenading! jealousy!) that ensue.
- The (unwitting?) rejection by the RDNY of the One True One (OTO) and subsequent realization of said rejection.
- RDNY goes back to the fountain to see if there’s more magic that can be used to recapture the OTO.
- Don’t be a fool! There’s no more magic in that magic fountain! Sister must do it for herself.
- RDNY is going to need some kind of personal transformation, perhaps involving a makeover/trials/montage.
- Final confrontation between RDNY and OTO, with RDNY winning over OTO (with no magical aid).
- Kicker that perhaps hints at how the fountain is about to help its next charge.
This is an admittedly conventional plot, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Even within this trusty framework there’s room for this movie to explore some interesting territory.
For example, what’s the nature of the magic? Does it create a general aphrodisiac that makes her irresistible to all men? Or does each coin (the synopsis says a handful) correspond to a single man? Or does the fountain work as a kind of curse? She’s plagued by false suitors and can only set herself free by she opening herself to true love?
You could also use the same synopsis to do black comedy. She is beset by suitors, each one worse than the last, and decides in the end to reject love entirely because all men are worthless pigs and it’s better to be alone. (For the record, that the actual movie stars Josh Duhamel makes this highly unlikely, but a guy can dream.)
Your pitch session/query letter will certainly go beyond the one-liner, but think about the power of having this kind of a boil-down at your disposal. It gives you the option to either meet, frustrate or toy with expectations.
Consider, also, your other option: a long, meandering “synopsis” that fails to excite the imagination, that requires all kinds of explanations and digressions and backtrackings. I know from experience that it can be painful to reduce your work to a single line, but believe me when I tell you that the alternative is worse.
I needed the homework. I’ve hardly a clue how to pitch.
Very good ideas. I like to study the structure of it:
a character–often identified by gender, age or job–situation, and complication.
A pitch is the first step in my creative process. It’s not worth going to the trouble unless the one sentence pitch sounds interesting.
Wonderful expansion of that forty-word pitch into so many suggestive possibilities. Great illustration. Years ago in film school I had a heck of a time reducing the epic in my head to a riveting synopsis of a couple paragraphs. It’s still difficult as I attempt writing nonfiction and finding a home for it. From my experience the creative process is well along before the dramatic center of the story reveals itself and then becomes the armature of the query.
Wonderful expansion of that forty-word pitch into so many suggestive possiblities. Great illustration. Years ago in film school I had a heck of a time reducing the epic in my head to a riveting synopsis of a couple paragraphs. Still do as I attempt writing nonfiction and then finding a home for it. From my experience the creative process is well along before the dramatic center of the story reveals itself (I wonder if I do things backwards) and then becomes the armature of the query.
Sorry–Please feel free to disregard one (or both) of entries immediately above. I thought version 1 had disappeared into cyberspace.