Start Your Novel Planning with the Elevator Pitch
by Beth Barany — Updated August 13, 2018.
Welcome to an 8-post series on preparing or planning your novel for Nanowrimo (or anytime.)
This series is part of our PLAN YOUR NOVEL: 30-Day home study course and annual October workshop. (And forthcoming book, Plan Your Novel Like A Pro.)
In today’s post, we focus on writing your elevator pitch as your first step.
An elevator pitch is another name for book blurb. You see it on the back of books and on the online book record, usually under “Book Description” or “Overview.”
I recommend you start with your elevator pitch because it’s an activity you can do in 5–20 minutes and it’s a good way to get your brain in gear for writing your novel.
Don’t worry about your elevator pitch being perfect. You can revise it once you’re done with all your novel planning or when you’re done writing your novel after NaNoWriMo.
Start here: Take note of your genre. This will give you a general idea of your story ending.
Elevator Pitch Formula
- Situation: (Also called the Initial Action or Premise, this is the beginning of the plot.)
- Main Character(s): (Self-explanatory)
- Primary Objective: (At first, what does your main character want?)
- Antagonist Or Opponent: (or Central Conflict. Who or what is keeping your main characters from getting what they want?)
- Disaster That Could Happen: (What’s the worst that could happen, and/or what does your character want next? Often phrased as a question.)
Example: 1. Abandoned on his relatives’ doorstep as an infant, 2. Harry Potter 3. longs to understand where he came from and why he feels different. 4. He discovers that he is a wizard and that his parents were killed by Voldemort, a powerful and evil wizard,
5. who has been hunting for Harry, to kill him.
The Torah Codes by Ezra Barany
Another example: A reclusive computer programmer, Nathan Yirmorshy, pounds out ones and zeros in the quiet of his home while his landlord secretly watches from behind a two-way mirror. When an intercepted note connects the landlord to a secret society, and a detective ends up dead, Nathan must abandon his home and everything familiar to him, open his heart to a tarot reader he has never met, and trust her with his life — just as the ancient scriptures have foretold. (The Torah Codes by bestselling author, Ezra Barany)
YOUR TURN:
Draft your elevator pitch. Share in the comments below.
You can also post it on my Facebook page to enter into fun weekly giveaways.
Plan Your Novel 30-Day Writing Challenge Workshop, starts October 1st
If you’d like hands-on support to plan your novel for Nanowrimo with your peers and with experienced instructors — Beth and Ezra Barany, then join us for our next course starting October 1st: 30-Day Writing Challenge to Plan Your Novel.
All the details for the course here.
Originally published at writersfunzone.com on September 8, 2014. Updated August 13, 2018.
