The Power of the Pitch—Who, not What

Please welcome my Wednesday guest, Terry Shames, author of the highly acclaimed Samuel Craddock series set in the fictional town of Jarrett Creek, Texas. Terry grew up in Texas and has great affection for the town where her grandparents lived, the model for Jarrett Creek. She lives in Berkeley, California with her husband and two rowdy terriers. Find out more about A Killing at Cotton Hill, The Last Death of Jack Harbin, and Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek on Terry’s website: www.Terryshames.com.

          "There may be no protagonist in our genre today as decently compelling as Samuel Craddock.  And there may be no better chronicler of the character and complexity of small town America than Terry Shames.  With Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek, she absolutely won my heart." William Kent Krueger, author of Ordinary Grace

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Just because I’m now a published author doesn’t mean I don’t still have to think about “the pitch.” That’s the dreaded 30-second statement telling what a book is about. I need it to tell my editor what my next book is going to be about. I need it when I introduce myself at bookstore and library events, or when I meet someone new and they ask what my book is about.

I’m thinking about this because recently I was at Thrillerfest and I was interested to know what books people were working on. So I asked. And the answers were all over the place. In essence, I was asking, “What’s your pitch?” Only the most seasoned writers seemed able to spout their pitches in relaxed, complete sentences: “In the next book, I’m sending My Hero to Cambodia to get to the bottom of a human trafficking ring.” Or “I’m writing a stand-alone about a woman lawyer whose husband is accused of murder—and she thinks he might have done it.”

 

The less experienced might pause, shoot me a look of panic and then say something like, “Well…the idea is that there is a group of people doing human trafficking. They’re in Asia and my hero has to investigate.” Or “A guy’s friend gets killed and he’s accused. His wife is a lawyer, and she has to decide whether to help him, since she’s suspicious of him.”

And then there are those (a substantial number) who really do not understand the power of the pitch. Their reply might be something like, “Oh, wow. This is hard. Okay. It’s about human trafficking and how terrible that is. It’s set in Asia.” Or “It’s about a guy getting killed and the cops think his best friend did it. The wife doesn’t know what to think.”

 To boil it down, an effective pitch needs to emphasize “who” not “what.” In the first two pitches, the hero is introduced first, and then it tells what they are up against. In the second two, although the “what” is introduced first, there is still a reference to the hero. In the third, it’s all about “what,” and there is no “who.”

One man I talked to said, with great drama, “My story is about the idea that nobody is who they seem to be.” I ached to tell him that this was the most generic pitch in history—every book of fiction ever written has an element of that in it; especially thrillers.

Your pitch needs to start with your hero—man or woman—and tell what they are up against. “Mr. X’s child is kidnapped after he makes a big mistake. He has to fight the mafia to get the child back.”  “Ms. Y finds that her bank account has been wiped out and her identity stolen. To get her life back, she has to confront a brilliant hacker who has ruined many lives.” Notice, these sentences don’t take 30 seconds. You can always add a sentence to sharpen the focus, but even if that’s all you say, your listener understands what your story is about. And that’s what a pitch is supposed to do.

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Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek:  With Jarrett Creek bankrupt and the police department in disarray, former police chief Samuel Craddock takes on a murder investigation. He discovers that the town’s financial woes had nothing to do with incompetence and that murder is only one of the crimes he must solve.

 



 

 

Thoughts on A Killing at Cotton Hill by Terry Shames

I don’t often review books on this blog, but this book had some lessons for me and did some unusual things with the so-called cozy genre of mysteries. Maybe Terry Shames would not call her new novel a cozy, but I would, and I find it remarkable for the way it breaks the “rules” of the sub-genre. There’s been a lot of talk among mystery writers about rules since Elmore Leonard’s death prompted the re-circulation of his list of rules. The general consensus seems to be you have to know the rules in order to break them successfully.

I was drawn into A Killing at Cotton Hill immediately by the voice of the narrator/lead character. Samuel Craddock is perhaps someone you’d not expect a woman writer to create. Once a small-town sheriff, he spent the rest of his professional life as a land man in Texas. He’s widowed, lives in a nondescript house in a small town—except inside is a fantastic collection of original art. He owes the collection, and his knowledge and taste, to the late wife he still misses.

Craddock is remarkable because he opens up his mind to us as readers. He ruminates, looking at a murder and at suspects from all angles but pretty much going on his instinct about people. It’s the rumination that intrigues me. I have been told by my mentor to stop rushing through my novels, slow down, and really let us see how people think and feel. Shames does this capably in what I believe is her first novel, and she’s sending me back to my work-in-progress in a new frame of mind.

I call this a cozy because it’s a slow, gentle mystery. The murder takes place off-screen at the opening of the book—one of the hallmarks of the cozy. But cozies are almost always narrated by women, amateur sleuths who happen onto murder in the course of their daily life. Craddock is not only obviously male but he’s no amateur—he has that background as a sheriff, and he has connections. There’s no love interest, though one widow in particular would like to latch on to him. Craddock doesn’t want to mess with the emotional swirls and tangles of romance—he’s still misses his wife, but he’s content with life as it is.

The other remarkable thing Shames does is to tell her story in present tense. I am impressed beyond words that she can maintain that point of view and make it work. Samuel Craddock, talking in the present, takes the reader every step of the way with him as he investigates the stabbing of his old friend, Dora Lee Parjeter.

Read this book. You’ll be drawn in as I was by Craddock’s slow, deliberate country wisdom. As I wrote last night, I just spent a couple days with my brother. He’s a Chicago kid who went “country” long ago, and he has that same quiet wisdom, that same instinct about who the good guys are and who are the bad guys, that sense of moral obligation, far different from religious piety. I admire it in my brother and in Samuel Craddock.

I’ve learned a lot reading this book (alas, editing called me away and I’ve not finished it) and from my brother. The “rule” they tell you about constant action, no description, just isn’t always true. Character carries the day—in fiction and in life.