How to Write an Elevator Pitch

Hi community of awesome, I'm Ava Jae and this is bookishpixie.
So last week I mentioned the helpfulness of memorizing your elevator pitch, and a lot
of people seemed interested in doing just that, so I thought today I'd talk about how
to write an elevator pitch.
The idea of an elevator pitch is to sum up your book in a sentence.
The reality is you're not going to be able to fit your _whole_ book into a sentence;
some details are going to be left out, and that's okay.
You don't have to squeeze your whole book into the elevator pitch, the goal is to capture
the main idea of your story.
One thing you must do, however, is include the conflict or at least a major conflict.
Another thing you must include is the stakes, that is, what your protagonist has to lose
if they fail to achieve their goal.
And of course you must at least hint at your protagonist's goal, which is kind of the point of the book.
I like to include the category, so that's YA, Middle Grade, etc. and the genre, so fantasy,
contemporary, sci-fi, etc., if at all possible in the pitch because you'll often be pitching
your book to people who know nothing about it, so it helps if you can categorize your
book so they know what to expect.
So when I'm sitting down to work on an elevator pitch, I like to start with the back cover
copy, so if you haven't written that yet, write that first.
Why?
Because I find it's a lot easier to condense off of something that's already condensed.
So for BEYOND THE RED I condensed off of just the first paragraph of the back cover copy, which is:
"Alien queen Kora has a problem as vast as the endless crimson deserts.
She’s the first female ruler of her territory in generations, but her people are rioting
and call for her violent younger twin brother to take the throne.
Despite assassination attempts, a mounting uprising of nomadic human rebels, and pressure
to find a mate to help her rule, she’s determined to protect her people from her brother’s
would-be tyrannical rule."
And I condensed that to: "BEYOND THE RED is a Young Adult Sci-Fi novel about an uprising
on a distant, alien planet, that threatens the reign of a teen, alien queen."
Which you heard last week.
You've now heard that one, like, a million times though, so I figured I would write the
elevator pitch for INTO THE BLACK, both because I just hadn't done it yet, and because I figured
it'd be good practice to talk about here.
Warning though!
If you haven't read BEYOND THE RED yet, I'm about to read the back cover copy for INTO
THE BLACK, which is slightly spoilery, so if you haven't read it yet, and you don't
want to be spoiled then skip ahead, and I'm gonna put somewhere around here where to skip to.
[SKIP TO 2:35]
Okay, INTO THE BLACK's back cover copy, here we go.
"The world ruler is dead, technology foundational to their society destroyed,
and Safara is on the brink of collapse.
Half-human, half-alien Eros is the rightful heir to the world throne, but before he can
return to the capital, he's abducted by a rebel group of humans who call themselves
The Remnant—and won't release him until he swears to help them overthrow the very
government he's inheriting.
"With Eros missing, ex-queen Kora is determined to stave off mad grabs for the throne.
But as royalty from across the territories flock to the capital, and a new charismatic
candidate takes the spotlight, Kora sets off into the desert with a skilled prince-turned-bounty
hunter to find Eros before it's too late for both the future king and his kingdom."
So remember when writing your elevator pitch, the people you're talking to usually don't
know anything about your book, as I mentioned before.
So that's why I like to use general titles over names, so "teen alien queen" instead of Kora.
So when writing my elevator pitch, I wanted to focus on the conflict introduced by the
back cover copy: Eros is missing and the time is ticking for him to be able to claim his
future kingdom, and his people are depending on him.
I also wanted to hint at some conflict that the current back cover copy doesn't talk about
yet, and that's that his kingdom won't just be handed to him.
So I ended up with—and I haven't memorized this yet, so I am gonna read it off my phone.
"INTO THE BLACK is a Young Adult Sci-Fi novel about a future king who goes missing before
he can claim what's his, and the alien ex-queen who must find him and prepare him to fight for his throne."
So conflict: missing future king, fighting for the throne.
The stakes—that is, what they have to lose—is the throne.
I'll probably still work on that and tweak it as I go along, but it's a good start.
And I think I could use it at events and not be overly spoilery when talking about my books,
which is a big bonus.
So those are some tips on writing your elevator pitch—now get to work.
So that's what I've got for today!
If you liked what you saw, don't forget to subscribe and comment, and I'll see you guise next week!

How to Write an Elevator Pitch

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