tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8939951804632494408.post1421412916535859696..comments2023-08-06T04:09:05.980-05:00Comments on Cornell DeVille : Amazon Breakthrough Novel PitchUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8939951804632494408.post-29236954041929102422011-01-23T06:01:49.442-06:002011-01-23T06:01:49.442-06:00I really like the simple, effective opening line. ...I really like the simple, effective opening line. We know immediately what the objective of the story is.<br /><br />What I would do with a pitch like this is treat it as any query should be. What I’ve learned from Query Shark is that a query is too short to fully engage the reader with the main character, so it’s better to write in the third person objective narrator than the first person main character. Here you write in the first person, but we don’t ‘meet’ the narrator until halfway through and even at the end we don’t know anything more about him.<br /><br />So if you take out the protagonist as the narrator what we want to learn from a pitch is; who is the protagonist, what does he want, why does he want it and what stands in his way, or what are the conflicts he is going to encounter.<br /><br />What I would do with this pitch is take out most of the back story. Although it’s great in the book, it doesn’t work as planned here because it tells us nothing about the protagonist’s who and why. To me, the back story starts with the third sentence. So I would start:<br /><br />‘The Golden Disk was legend.<br /><br />And, as is often the fate of legendary objects, it vanished.<br /><br />(INSERT PROTAG NAME) was fourteen when…’<br /><br />I changed the wording a little bit to reinforce the legend and take out adjectives that weaken the impact. I think the sentence is stronger this way, feel free to disagree.<br /><br />The thing that is great about this premise is that the protagonist has a clear motivation for wanting to find the disk. It was what his father wanted and now his father can’t. What I think is a missed chance is the emotional blow that is the death of the father. At the moment this loss (and motivational driver) is not reaching its maximum impact; it’s almost an afterthought tucked away in a paragraph. The readers could have a very simple protag’s motive early on in the pitch that would make them sympathise with and perhaps relate to the main character. I would use that sooner!<br /><br />Hope I didn’t step on your toes too much. I really like your premise and it’s got a lot going for it! It’s really good to see a straight-forward (so far, at least) adventure with a clear objective and some great action hinted at. I think if you make this pitch more about the character’s wants and less about the back story, you would have a really good chance at it!VDGriesdoornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06436257045054246261noreply@blogger.com