How To Use A One-Sentence Pitch To Write Your Novel
Plus, a downloadable guide
Paid subscribers can download a full-color, pdf guide to writing your one sentence pitch. Check the bottom of this post and click to download.
Before I start a draft of a novel, I write a one-sentence pitch that might look something like this: “A teen wakes to find he is trapped in a mysterious shelter and stuck in a time loop with a girl who is either sabotaging his every escape or holds the key to his freedom.”
A short, focused description of the project I’m working helps me decide what’s most important to me about the manuscript. And when it’s time to query an agent, or post a deal announcement, or promote the book, I can use my pitch again for those purposes.
Whether you’re brainstorming ideas for a novel, drafting your manuscript, searching for an agent or publisher, or promoting your published novel, a one-sentence pitch can help you convey your vision for the story.
Let’s look at which four elements you can use to write a one-sentence pitch.
4 Crucial Elements of the One-Sentence Pitch
I’ve found lots of different templates for one-sentence pitches floating around the internet. But I’ve realized that templates don’t work very well for pitches. Writing instructors tend to torture story descriptions into odd shapes just to make them fit their pitch template, so that they end up with a pitch that does nothing to convey the feel of the story.
And that’s what we want out of a pitch: the story’s feel.
When I write a pitch that helps me pinpoint the feel of the story I’m trying to write, I have a guide for my draft. And when, over the course of writing several chapters, I start to stray from my original idea for my story, rewriting the pitch helps me decide which elements of my idea are truly important to me—what I can let go of and what I want to stick with.
A one-sentence pitch does best when it includes these four crucial elements, which contribute to the feel of a novel:
Character. Who will the reader get attached to?
Plot. What is it like for the reader to live in the pages?
Try including any of the following in your one-sentence pitch:
Inciting incident
Goal
Conflict
Uniqueness. Why shouldn’t the reader read another book in this genre instead?
Optional: Stakes. Why is it urgent that the reader read this story?
Three Iterations Of The One-Sentence Pitch: The Echo Room
There isn’t one correct pitch for your novel. You could write several different pitches, each highlighting a different strength of the story, in order to guide your writing process.
For a novel I’m writing at the moment, I’ve written two different pitches, one that focuses on character motivation and one that focuses on plot. Both help me stick to the feel that I’m going for as I’m drafting. And later, either of these pitches might be helpful for promoting the novel.
Let’s look at three different pitches for my YA science fiction novel, The Echo Room. Each has a slightly different focus and serves a different purpose. I’ve labeled the four crucial elements from our list.
Here is the pitch that my agent used to announce the book deal on Publisher’s Marketplace:
A teen [character] wakes to find he is trapped in a mysterious shelter [plot: inciting incident] and stuck in a time loop [plot: conflict] with a girl who is either sabotaging his every escape [plot: conflict] or holds the key to his freedom [stakes].
This pitch is meant to generate interest in sub rights (audio book, film, etc.), and to excite anyone involved in helping the book succeed (booksellers, publishing teams, etc.). The unique details (the mysterious shelter, the time loop) not only signal the novel’s genre but also help set it apart from other YA novels. Below, you can see how the pitch appeared online. (The novel was originally called Scatterling but my publisher thought the word was too obscure for teen readers.)
My publishing team at Tor later changed the pitch to focus less on the dynamic between Rett and Bryn and more on the plot. Because they wanted to market the novel as a thriller more so than a science fiction novel, their pitch highlights physical danger and mysterious intrigue. This pitch appeared on Publishers Weekly, in a post highlighting exciting upcoming books:
Two strangers with fractured memories [character] escape a mysterious prison [plot: goal] only to realize they weren’t locked in—but locking someone, or something, out [stakes].
The specific details in my publisher’s pitch are really tantalizing: fractured memories, a mysterious prison, and the irony of escaping danger only to find yourself in worse danger!
I ended up using a slightly altered version of this pitch to describe my book to anyone who asked me about the novel in person—and it worked very well. I once appeared at a book festival, where I was stationed near a popular author whose signing line inadvertently blocked access to my booth. At first, I was pretty disappointed that no one could get to me or take a look at my book. But then I realized I had a captive audience. I went down the line passing out swag to generate questions about my book, and then I delivered this plot-heavy pitch to anyone who would listen:
Two teens [character] wake to find themselves locked in a strange room [plot: inciting incident], and every time they fail to escape [plot: goal], they loop back in time [plot: conflict], until they start to realize that they aren’t locked in so much as they’ve locked someone—or something—out. [stakes]
It’s a bit clunky as a single sentence, but this pitch worked so well that everyone who heard it left the other author’s line to go buy my book. (I held their place in line so they didn’t miss out on meeting the other author!) The festival sold out of The Echo Room.
Your Genre Shapes Your One-Sentence Pitch
The unique details you include in your pitch depend heavily on genre. When I critique manuscripts, I’m often surprised to find novels missing elements that are crucial to genre: love interests who come into a rom-com far too late, magic that feels too generic to hold up a fantasy premise, unclear stakes in a thriller. A pitch can remind you that the strength of your novel depends on how well it makes use of its genre.
For each pitch below, you can see how genre determines which elements to include:
Romance
The Lodge by Kayla Olson
An entertainment writer [character] on location at a luxurious ski resort finds an unexpected lead [plot: inciting incident] on a famous pop star who disappeared from public life at the very pinnacle of his fame—right after doing a revelatory interview with her. [plot: conflict]
The romance pitch needs to answer this question: Why do we want these two to get together, and what might stand in their way?
An entertainment writer and a pop star make a perfect pair, but for their relationship to work, they’ll have to overcome the fact that the writer was the one who pushed the star to vanish from the public eye.
Fantasy
A Forbidden Alchemy by Stacey McEwan
An elite earth mage [character] is captured by enemy rebels [plot: conflict]—one of whom she recognizes from childhood [stakes]—and must decide [plot: goal] whether to uphold the ruling regime or help burn it to the ground [stakes].
A fantasy pitch gives us an idea of a storyworld and hints at magic.
We don’t need to know what an earth mage is—we jut need that phrase to signal the genre to us. This particular storyworld features an evil regime, rebels, and mages, which aren’t the most unique details, but might be enough to intrigue genre enthusiasts.
Character-Driven Fantasy
Habits of the Sea by Shea Earnshaw
A young woman [character] rediscovers the floating island [plot: inciting incident] where she went missing for week as a child [stakes]—and its lone dweller, who hasn’t aged a day since she met him [plot: conflict].
A pitch for a character-driven story usually focuses on personal stakes or growth.
Rediscovering a magical land from childhood, and reconnecting with a lost friend (possibly a love interest?), hints at personal stakes. The young woman will likely feel powerful emotions at finding this lost land, and she’ll likely face conflict in reconnecting with someone who hasn’t aged while she has.
Psychological Suspense
Take Me Apart by Sarah Sligar
A young archivist [character] takes a job [plot: inciting incident] cataloging the estate of a famous photographer who committed suicide twenty years earlier, only to find her work turning into a dangerous obsession [stakes] when she starts to question the circumstances surrounding the artist’s death [plot: conflict].
A pitch for a psychological suspense novel also focuses on personal stakes, usually alongside powerful, negative feelings. Any suspense novel also should hint at danger, whether a danger to the mind or the body.
The young archivist’s work will force her to face dark feelings since she’s investigating a suicide that might have been murder. Uncovering the truth also implies the archivist will face conflict, and probably danger.
Thriller
Shaw Connolly Lives To Tell by Gillian French
A latent fingerprint examiner’s [character] life spirals out of control when a man claiming responsibility [plot: inciting incident] for her sister’s murder 16 years earlier [stakes] surfaces and begins stalking her family [stakes].
A pitch for a thriller should revolve around physical danger and focus on high-stakes plot points.
Here, the stakes are both psychological (the examiner must face the past tragedy of her sister’s murder) and physical (she’ll need to evade a stalker and save her family).
Your Best Tool: Irony
If you really want to level up your one-sentence pitch, the best thing you can do is focus on the irony central to your story. Irony hints at deeper themes—but it’s also where your novel is most fun, exciting, juicy. When you’re looking for irony in your story, consider the novel’s most surprising contrasts, the seeming contradictions and impossibilities.
Here are the ironic elements of some of the pitches above:
escaping a prison only to realize it wasn’t a prison but a safe place (The Echo Room)
meeting a pop star who went into hiding after you interviewed him (The Lodge)
joining the cause of the rebels who kidnapped you (A Forbidden Alchemy)
rediscovering a childhood companion—who hasn’t aged since childhood (Habits of the Sea)
Each of these ironic elements excites curiosity and points toward a complex situation that the novel will try to resolve. And the specific details of an ironic twist are the biggest way to set apart your novel from other novels. ●
Your Turn
If you’re looking to make your one-sentence pitch more powerful, ask yourself these questions:
Which element of my book do I love the most? Which made me most excited to write my book?
Which phrases in my pitch reveal my novel’s genre? Which specifics set my novel apart from other novels in the genre?
When I read my pitch to someone unfamiliar with my novel, what do they guess my novel is like?
PDF Guide
Paid subscribers can download a full-color, pdf guide to writing your one sentence pitch. Check the bottom of this post and click to download.
Workshopping The One-Sentence Pitch: Virch by Laura Resau
Recently, I helped author Laura Resau write a once-sentence pitch for her YA science fiction novel Virch. Her agent used the pitch in the deal announcement on Publisher’s Marketplace. Let’s look at how I created the pitch and what makes it work.