HOW TO DEVELOP THE PERFECT PITCH or QUERY LETTER

What is the perfect pitch? Or Query letter? It's the ability to sum up your novel in five sentences, or less. Yes. This is the perfect pitch.

Why is it important? In most pitch session, you only have 8 minutes to talk about your book. In a Query letter, you only have one page. Think about it. The idea is to generate interest to get the editor or agent to ask to see material. In this case, less is more. Basically, a pitch or query is your back cover copy. Look at advertising. Commercials are how long? 30 seconds? Not a lot of time, yet thousands of dollars are spent on them. Catchy phrases. Sexy images. And what is the purpose? Well, it's not to sell the product, but to produce name recognition and well, generate interest. That's the idea of the perfect pitch. Generate enough interest to get a request.

I use my 20 years in the Marketing and Advertising field to help writers develop the five sentance pitch based hook and the key elements in their book.

HOW TO WRITE A WINNING SYNOPSIS USING STORY STRUCTURE

Many writers agonize over writing a synopsis. I know I used to. I lost sleep over writing them. I would put them off until the last minute. How long should it be? What do include? What do I leave out? I will show writers how to breakdown their main story line using the basic narrative structure to write a short and concise synopsis.

POINT-OF-VIEW – WHY IT IS IMPORTANT

POV simply put, is the perspective of the story and as a writer you must choose the proper POV for your story. I will go over first person, second person, third person and omniscient POV, giving examples of each and how choosing the right POV and sticking with it will not only enhance your story, but your style and voice as well.

CONFLICT, MOTIVATION and REAL CHARACTERS

Characters are one of the most important, if not the most important, aspect of your story. It’s important to develop heroic, believable, sympathetic and memorable characters through the use of conflict and motivation. Characters words and actions must be consistent with how, you the author, have developed them on the page. If you fail with character, it won’t matter how great the plot is because people relate to people, not things.

BOOK DONE YET?

The one question every writer dreads. I don’t know a single author who writes one draft and then is done. Most authors will go over their manuscripts many times editing and rewriting until it’s the best that it can be. Sometimes we will delete entire scenes and write new ones. Other times it’s sprucing up dialogue, or tweaking a character’s arch. I will go through a few basic check lists and offer a few tools in how to make the rewriting process less painful.

For information regarding the above workshops please feel free to contact me at info@jenniholbrook.com