The One-Sentence Pitch

"Shiny happy people holding hands..." -R.E.M., Shiny Happy People

I have a great breakthrough to report: I have finally, finally, finally nailed the one-sentence pitch for my story down. And I have some news to share regarding how I did it.

For years, the one-sentence pitch has been one of the things I struggled with most when describing Soulwoven. What is it really about? Like, really, really about? At its broadest, its most basic, in one sentence? For a long time I fiddled around trying to sum up the first book and wound up with very broad, very bland descriptions: "A group of characters has to save the world from necromancers trying to release a dragon."

And I looked at the sentence and thought, well, yes, that happens. But it's not really what the book is about, is it?

So after a writer's conference and my time working in publishing and my experience writing reader's reports I decided to try focusing on one character, and I wound up with this: "A 2o year-old swordsman fights to save the world even as he discovers that the power he has to do so comes from that which is destroying it in the first place."

Better! Serviceable, even. But that's a thick, meaty sentence. It's a little convoluted, hard to understand. You have to read it twice. If I were telling it to you out loud you might say, "Wait, what?"

Then I decided to treat all four books of the story as what they are: one story. I zoomed way out, and asked myself not what the first book of the story was about but what the whole story was about, and I came up with this: "The choices of three brothers shape the destiny of a world torn between loving and hating itself."

Mmm. Yummy. Vague but interesting. The kind of thing that sticks out as you read through the zillions of one-sentence synopses on Publisher's Marketplace every day.

And it came from zooming out. Way out. As far out as I could get. Because I was out that far, there's so much more packed into every part of the sentence: "What choices? Who are the brothers? What destiny? What world? Loving and hating itself? Explain!"

And questions lead to page-turn, and page-turn is what the craft of writing is all about.