A little while ago, a writer (Jaraslawa, an accomplished circus trick rider, a part-time intelligence officer, and a highly skilled swordswoman) wrote to me to with details of a rejection letter she\u2019d had from an agent. That letter read, in part, as follows:<\/p>\n
I love the way you write, I\u2019m intrigued by the characters, but something isn\u2019t hanging together for me and I\u2019ve pored over it trying to see how I\u2019d work with it to \u2018fix\u2019 it but it\u2019s not coming to me.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019ve taken on books I feel this way about before and it\u2019s never been a good decision. I believe so strongly in agent-client fit and while I think we\u2019re ALMOST there, I think the fact I don\u2019t have a clear vision for the book means I\u2019m just not the right agent for you.<\/em><\/p>\n Having said that, I think it\u2019s an excellent novel, and I think you\u2019ll have no trouble securing representation elsewhere.<\/em><\/p>\n Jaraslawa (whose name means fierce and glorious) smote the heads off a couple of cabbages with her swordstick and asked me what I thought she should do. Try more agents? Get a manuscript assessment? Or what?<\/p>\n And look. Aside from inactivity and despair, almost any option here is a good one. The right path for you really depends very much on your circumstances and priorities. I can advise, but only you can decide.<\/p>\n That said, this particular combination of agent enthusiasm with agent rejection is very often a sign that you have an excellent novel that doesn\u2019t yet know quite what it is. So I wrote back to say, among other things:<\/p>\n What\u2019s your elevator pitch? Very often a failure to get an agent comes from a core offer that isn\u2019t quite strong enough. There are plenty of flawed books that did superbly, just because they nailed their pitch. (Hello, Dan Brown, and many others.) So: what\u2019s the pitch? 12 words or less, please \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n Jaraslawa rode out into the forest that spreads for thousands of hectares about her castle and slew a stag, two foxes, three promiscuous badgers, and an animal that possessed the head and body of a boar, but the tail of an ordinary woodland squirrel. She wrote back to me thus:<\/p>\n Arrgh I hate this. I\u2019ve been tussling with an elevator pitch for 18 months and I\u2019m useless at it. This is the best I have come up with:<\/em><\/p>\n Young man learns that sex and Beethoven are no cure for grief<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n That sort of sounds like an elevator pitch ought to sound like, right? It has a certain salesiness to it. A certain spring.<\/p>\n But salesiness isn\u2019t the point. Hard-hearted as I am, I said:<\/p>\n I have no idea why I\u2019d want to pick up that book. But you\u2019re trying too hard. You\u2019re trying to encapsulate the whole book in a few words. You can\u2019t, so don\u2019t try. What\u2019s the one single element of the book you\u2019d pick out for a reader?<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0One element. You\u2019re trying to tell me about the man (young), his issue (grief) and what doesn\u2019t work (sex + music). Result is an incoherent pitch. Your book may be coherent enough, but why would I pick it up?<\/em><\/p>\n Jaroslawa uttered a great roar, the roar of a bull elk in fighting season. Saddling her best horse, she galloped east to the Ukrainian steppe, where, in a single day, she brought about the destruction of twelve Russian tanks, two self-propelled howitzers, one anti-aircraft battery and three slightly moth-eaten Cossack colonels. She wrote:<\/p>\n I know this is crucial but I actually think it would be easier to write an entire new book!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n What I want to get across is that it\u2019s a story about an immature young man in a casual relationship whose parents die horribly. His grief forces the relationship onto a more serious level than it was ever supposed to be and inevitably it cracks. He then spends the rest of the novel trying to win her back\/not win her back\/win her back, but it only comes together at the end when they\u2019re both battle-hardened and ready for the full-on, proper serious thing. Lots of other stuff happens alongside, but this is the centre of the story.<\/em><\/p>\n But how to encapsulate that? Everything I try sounds either too convoluted or too bland. How about this:<\/em><\/p>\n Jamie and Zoe\u2019s relationship is all about fun. But what happens when one of them suffers a terrible, life-altering loss?\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n I know it\u2019s 20 words, but is it any better?<\/em><\/p>\n I wrote back \u2013 happily this time \u2013 to say:<\/p>\n Yep! That\u2019s it, or roughly:<\/em><\/p>\n A man\u2019s casual relationship gets rammed by the life-altering loss of both his parents.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n You\u2019re not looking for a shoutline or piece of blurb. This line is only really for you. It connects you to the heart of why people might want to read this thing. You don\u2019t have to say how things finish (\u201corphan goes to wizard school\u201d explains the first few chapters of the entire HP series and nothing else.) The pitch doesn\u2019t have to bring out all the other elements \u2013 readers will encounter those in the book, or via the \u201ctell me more\u201d conversation with a friend, etc. You just want to understand the heart of the reader appeal: why people might pick up the book in the first place.<\/em><\/p>\n Then I think it\u2019s worth you thinking about whether every page of your book and every significant development somehow honours that basic promise to the reader. It really may be that the answer is \u201cyes\u201d — in which case, it\u2019s really quite likely that another agent will pick the book up. Or it may be \u2013 it quite often is \u2013 that the book\u2019s premise gets a bit muddled through the course of the plot. So (for example) a musical subplot might take on a weight that it wouldn\u2019t have if the \u201ccasual relationship rammed by tragedy\u201d was always foremost in your mind. It\u2019s those cases, I think, where an agent most often loves a book but can\u2019t quite commit to taking it on. It\u2019s there but not-there. If the actual book lines up perfectly with a pitch to the reader, that \u201chow would I market this?\u201d question is solved<\/em><\/p>\n As I say, all this MAY be helpful, but it also really might not be. I haven\u2019t read your book and good books are rejected for more than one reason. But the one we\u2019ve been talking about is, I think, usually the commonest [so far as good, well-written novels are concerned.]<\/em><\/p>\n Jaroslawa uprooted fourteen oak trees, tore the top off a mountain, hurled a cloud as far as Ireland, and quenched her thirst by swallowing a waterfall. She wrote:<\/p>\n I can\u2019t thank you enough. Everything you say makes total sense and I can almost feel the path clearing before me. I shall leave you alone now and get to work.<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s obviously nice to be of value, but \u2013 now that Jaroslawa has finally stopped throwing clouds around \u2013 a few sober reflections too:<\/p>\n That\u2019s more or less it from me, except I did have to quote one more email from a reader who is sick the back teeth of everything to do with elevator pitches. Tuck into her rage in the PSes below.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n PPPS<\/strong>: Emma wrote to me (in relation to last week\u2019s \u201cround and round, round and round\u201d email.) She said:<\/p>\n Yes, I absolutely agree with you about the usefulness of repetition. Apart from one notable, infuriating exception.<\/em><\/p>\n The concept of the elevator pitch.<\/em><\/p>\n It is explained in detail (often giving the same ‘Aliens’ example)\u00a0in practically every ****ing workshop\/webinar\/video on novel writing ever.<\/em><\/p>\n It is akin to the presenter holding up a biro and showing the pointy end.<\/em><\/p>\n And uh, yes. This is another email about the pointy end of the biro. To all the Emmas out there, I beg your pardon. By way of compensation, I shall get Jaroslawa to steal, flay and roast you a herd of bullocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A little while ago, a writer (Jaraslawa, an accomplished circus trick rider, a part-time intelligence officer, and a highly skilled swordswoman) wrote to me to with details of a rejection letter she\u2019d had from an agent. That letter read, in part, as follows: I love the way you write, I\u2019m intrigued by the characters, but<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":6799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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