Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Pitching Links

I am gearing up for the SCBWI-Carolina's fall conference (only 19 days away!). I've sent my pages for critique, I've signed up for red-eye crit sessions, and now I'm turning my attention to the pitch practice.

Some helpful links:

The SCBWI-C Pitch Practice Worksheet

(Not sure if this link will work if you're not signed in as a member of SCBWI-C)

Christy's Creative Space
On the importance of pitches (with a great analogy):
Lets play pretend. Look at each scenario. What would REALLY happen?
1. You are at the bookstore. You have no idea what book you want, but you want a book that will draw you in and captivate you. To make your decision you . . .

A. Take every book off the shelf, read the first chapter, maybe two, of every book. I mean hey! There's only thirty books in your pile and you've got all day. Right?

B. Place each book next to your ear to see if one "speaks" to you

C. Read that jacketflap, maybe the first page too.

Helene Boudreau
With some pretty good ideas of constructing a pitch (with some good examples):
So, it seems to me that when perfecting your pitch paragraph (pes-ghetti!) your goal is to distill your story in three to five sentences with these three things (character/conflict/hint of outcome) in mind while maintaining the personality of the story in the pitch.

7 comments:

PJ Hoover said...

I can't wait to hear about the conference! I love conferences!
And pitching is so important. I think with my book coming out and my need to visit and meet librarians and such, I'll have to get much better at this. Thanks for the links!

Unknown said...

You and me both...conferences are a time of learning and rejuvination. I can't wait until the 19th!!!!

Angie Frazier said...

good luck with your pitch session! I look forward to conferences so much that I've started to volunteer for my local chapter's annual conference :-) I need some pitch advice too for when I need to start talking about my book, so thanks for the link!

Tabitha said...

"maintaining the personality of the story in the pitch"

I think this is key. This is what I tried so hard to change in my query to add that spark, though it's not exactly a pitch. I added my query to the original post, if you still want to look at it.

Unknown said...

Angie--I'd love to get to the point where I can volunteer, but I'm just not at that level yet. One day! :)

Tabitha--I meant to link back to your query post, dang it! I just plum forgot. But you're right...trying to inject personality into something that is space-constrained is mind-numbingly hard.

Vivian Mahoney said...

Good luck at the conference...and the pitch!

Unknown said...

Susan, I'm so jealous! I wanna go to the NYC one!!!

Thanks Vivian :)