From the Pitching Mound: Writing a Successful Pitch

This week I had to do something I had yet to do in my writing career. I had to write a pitch for my current book, Lost and Found. How was I supposed to summarize 80,000 words in a few short sentences? I’ve always wondered how some authors could pitch their stories with easy and confidence, the words sounding like they came straight from the jacket flap. It's like having to climb up on a pitching mound in front of thousands of people and throw that first pitch. Hard? Of course! Doable? For sure!

Luckily, I had the help of Author X, a friend of YAedge. “Conflict,” she told me. “The conflict of your story is the key.”

Conflict. Couldn’t be too hard, right? Actually, I sat there, even though I know my plot so well, and couldn’t even tell her exactly what my conflict was at first. Then I thought of my main characters, Madison and Pence, and what their purpose is in the story. I realized I needed to explain not only the conflict, but also their purpose.

Quickly, I jotted down a few sentences. I came up with the conflict and plot in a nutshell, but it was missing the WOW factor. It was drab, boring. It needed a hook, something to grab an agent’s attention.

Author X took what I wrote and used her magic. She pulled in aspects of my story that didn’t even occur to me. The traits and personality of my characters shone through in four short sentences. With a few tweaks from myself and Tracy, I now have something that WOWs (or at least I think so).

The next time I have to write a pitch and/or query, I don’t think I’ll be able to do it with ease and grace, but at least I’ll know where to start. It’s all about the conflict.

Batter up!

The Princess Diaries--a thank you.

Ten or so years ago, I picked up a bright pink book in the bookstore. It wasn't the kind of thing that I normally would get--at 12 I was vehemently opposed to the color pink just for the sake of it. But I liked the book-flap, so I made my Dad buy it for me. (At 12, my Dad was the easiest person to bribe into buying me books. The man has bought me about 50 % of my library throughout the years--thanks Dad). 

I was awkward at 12. Hell, I was awkward through all my teen years and I still have my many moments at 22. I spent a lot of time writing in notebooks and ignoring other people (still do, but I've gotten better about apologizing for it). I was gawky and unsure of myself and generally said the wrong thing at the wrong time and ended up agonizing over my mistakes. I felt like a complete and total freak.

I'm telling y'all this because when I say that Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries books changed my life as well as my writing, I want to be clear that I am totally 100% serious about that statement.

I just finished Forever Princess, the last book in the series, and I fully admit that I cried through the last 100 pages out of pure sentimentality. For me, this is an end of an era, practically the end of my teenagerdom. This is the finish of books that I've faithfully read for 10 years, books I have read over and over again when I've had a bad day or a bad date or a bad ANYTHING at all. These are the books that, as a teenager, made me feel a little less freakish and awkward. Mia was like a friend--someone I could relate to on so many levels.  I loved her adventures and I loved the way she saw the world, because it was so much like the way I saw it as a teen. 

I bought the first book when it just came out--before the movies, before it hit the best-sellers list. I loved it so much that I instantly started tracking down anything else that Meg Cabot had written (her historical romances especially, because who doesn't love feisty girls in corsets?). I also wrote Meg herself and she ended up doing an interview for my teen e-zine, unladylike. She signed books for us and was such a wonderful, nice author and that's always really stuck with me.

What also has stuck with me is my sheer admiration for Meg Cabot as a writer and as a person. Not only is she wildly successful and has a career that all us YA writers dream about, but she has written several books and donated the proceeds to charity. She's a wonderful, imaginative writer whose ability to cross over genres I really envy.

Thank you, Meg, for letting us share Mia's world. The awkward 12 year old girl inside me thanks you from the bottom of my heart. You made my teenaged years much easier and your books inspired me to write YA. They made me think outside the children's book box--to think about characters who were going through real and fantastical things at the same time. Characters who were like real teenagers.

I'm grateful, because I'm not sure I'd be writing this if I hadn't, by chance, relinquished my hatred for the color pink and picked up that book 10 years ago.

Ah…Booktrailers.

I decided to plug a few of the titles currently on my TBR shelf or on my can’t-wait-to-read list. Okay – here we go. (Warning, I read a ton of YA paranormal stuff.)

TBR List Trailers:

Parties and Potions by Sarah Mlynowski. This was the winner at the 2008 Teen Book Video Awards. This award goes to student filmmakers who create trailers for upcoming books.



The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong – there was a trailer for this on Youtube but it had no backing music ?? so I wasn’t sure if it was the official trailer and didn’t post it, but there is a cute site for the main character: http://www.chloesaunders.com/

Soulless by Christopher Golden - gotta love those zombies.



Love, Meg by C. Leigh Purtill – hey it’s not paranormal!




Can’t Wait to Read’m Trailers:

Evermore by Alyson Noel - looks magical.



Freaksville by Kitty Keswick - coming soon from The Wild Rose Press. I'm currently reading the galleys and loving it.



Got any awesome trailers we should be watching?

Eye of the Tiger- A look to the new year

Most people set out at the start of a new year with some kind of resolution. New Year’s Day is for hopes and dreams to seem like they could become reality in the coming year, and they can!

Yesterday I put my 2008 journal on the shelf for good. It was ratty around the edges, holding memories of a roller coaster year. 2008 brought me a layoff from my job that was happily accepted, a book finished and another book start (which is now officially half way written…WOOT), a great critique group, and a new job. Overall, 2008 was a good year. I didn’t hit all of my resolution goals, but feel success in the ones I accomplished.

A start of the new year feels clean as I crack open a new journal, looking at the fresh pages and thinking about how I’d like to see 2009 unfold. I hope to finish Lost and Found, my WIP, by January 31. I want to edit it and submit to at least a handful of agents. I look forward to starting a new book, coming up with new ideas. I would like to beat last year’s number of books read (71), but that may be hard to do. The great thing is, right now, anything seems possible.

What do you plan for the new year?

Going through my database of books read in 2008 (yes, I keep track. I am that big of a nerd), I thought it would be fun to share with you my top 5 favorite YA books I read this year. I won’t put them in order, just the group of 5.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
How to be Bad by E. Lockhart, Sarah Mlynowski and Lauren Myracle
Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen
Paper Towns by John Green
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

What were your favorite YA books read in 2008?

Pimp My Line - WINNER

Okay - we promised the winner would be announced early today. And so our winning entry belongs to ... EMILY!

Thanks to both Lisa and Emily for participating in our contest. We'll try this again sometime. Keep watch for announcements here, and on Twitter. (http://twitter.com/yaedge).

Emily - please email us YAedge@yahoo.com with your prize choice and address so we can mail it out to you.

Happy New Year from all of us at YAedge!

Pimp My Line VOTE TIME

Alright – we’ve got two entries for our first ever Pimp My Line contest….and during the Christmas break, too – not bad.

It’s now up to our readers to vote for their favourite line. Just comment with kudos to either Lisa or Emily. If we don’t get any voters, the YAedge crew will decide. This is your chance to hold the power!

Contestants are vying for a free, gently read copy of a title from the following list:

Sweep #1: Book of Shadows by Cate Tiernan

Being by Kevin Brooks

The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp by Rick Yancey


Here’s the original line contestants had to pimp:

“I don’t know how long I was out for, but I woke to an odd sight.”

Lisa’s entry:

"it wasn't until i opened the door that i realized i was dead."

Emily’s entry:

"I could have been unconscious for three seconds or three years, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I opened my eyes."

READY - SET - VOTE!

YAedge Pimp My Line Contest!

There comes a time in every writer’s life when you learn a stark truth. That brilliant sentence you just wrote - sucks the big one.

You know another writer could lean over your shoulder, tap on your keyboard and crank out THE BESTEST zooped-up version of your original line in the whole world.

And so the YAedge Pimp My Line contest begins. We’ll post a ho-hum line for you to wordsmith. You can make the line cheesy, snarky, fantastical or just punctuate the darn thing properly, all we ask is you keep it YA appropriate and retain the general “idea” behind the sentence. It’s your honey now.

Contest will be up for a week (from Monday to Sunday). Pimped lines are to be submitted as comments – at the end of the week they will be compiled into a single post and YAedge readers will vote for their favourite pimped line. (Contestants may vote as well – let’s face it – you’re probably our only readers…lol…) NOTE: If you have a line you want pimped – please email it to us.

The winning author will win a badge of honour to display online for all to see - and - a gently read, recently released YA novel from our collections.

Can you dig it?

Let’s get started….pimp – my – line:

I don’t know how long I was out for, but I woke to an odd sight.