Edit like an Editor: A Wattpad Featured Guide ✔

Part iv. Pitching & Querying Agents & Editors

In order to interest an agent in representing your novel or an editor in publishing it, you need to prepare a pitch. A perfect pitch contains between one and three sentences that encapsulates the essence of your novel in such a compelling way that the listener (or reader) will ask to hear more and can hardly wait to read the manuscript.

Crafting Your Pitch

Agents and editors have notoriously short attention spans, so the perfect pitch for a novel can be delivered in less time than it takes to ride an elevator from the first floor to the sixth.

A well-crafted pitch communicates the essence of your novel. Just as the agent who listens to your pitch can judge whether or not he is interested in reading a manuscript, you use your pitch to separate the agents who resonate to the kind of novel you've written from the ones who don't. Finding the right agent, the one who loves your work and the kinds of books you write, is critical to your long-term career.

A pitch is not a retelling of your story. "You see, there's this woman, she's very lonely, and she lives in the desert with her pet iguana, and one day a man shows up and wants to sell her something and she knows something is up and... and... and...." Keep going like that and you'll put your listener to sleep.

A pitch is supposed to interest and intrigue, not tell the whole story of your novel. It's okay to start with the event that gets your story started, but after that stick to the high points.

A pitch has to be a grabber, a short description in just a few sentences that intrigues and engages. It should be brief, punchy, specific, and you should have more to say when you hook your listener and he says, "Boy, that sure sounds interesting. Tell me more."

Are you thinking: "But I couldn't possibly do my novel justice in a few sentences?" That may be, but if you want a top agent or editor to be interested in reading your manuscript, you need to make your best effort.

Elements of a Pitch

Beyond all the artistry in your pitch, it should also contain these basic elements:

1. The title of your novel.

2. The genre (literary novel, romance, woman's fiction, etc.)

3. The name of the main character and the character's problem, desire, or goal.

4. The bad guy, obstacle, or situation that stands in the way of your main character getting what she wants.

Examples of Pitches

A pitch should be short, specific, and intriguing. Take this, for example: "Going for the Jugular is an adventure novel that tells the story of Vincent Pride, a recently divorced man who searches for adventure and finds love." This pitch is plenty short, but it's too generic. It could fit any hundreds of books published this year, last year, and the year before.

An improved version might begin: "Going for the Jugular is an adventure novel that tells the story of Vincent Pride, a recently divorced linguist who travels to India seeking enlightenment and instead finds the woman of his dreams." Specifics help; be sure to include those special things that make your book unique—in this case, linguistics and travel to India.

Here are examples of pitches for some familiar novels:

• The Wizard of Oz is a young adult fantasy novel in which a cyclone transports Dorothy Gale, a Kansas farm girl, to the magical land of Oz where she sets out on a dangerous journey to find a wizard with the power to send her home.

• In the thriller The Da Vinci Code, symbologist Robert Langdon travels across France and England in a race to decode a secret, zealously guarded by a clandestine society since the days of Christ.