Saturday, January 1, 2011

The Elevator Pitch, My Nemesis

They said I had to write a three page summary of my book. I said, "How in the world?"

They said I had to write a one page summary of my book. I said, "Impossible."

They said I had to write a one-sentence summary of my book, and I ran.

The elevator pitch is supposedly the one-sentence hook you put in your query, the one golden chance you have to catch an agent's or a publisher's eye. 

That's a lot of pressure to put on one little sentence!

Here are my first four feeble attempts:


1.    Apprentice gardener Miles, who has loved Princess Rosamelia for as long as he can remember, never dreamed he would find himself at her side on a perilous quest to rescue her kidnapped sister from the villainous Balfor, whose plan to awake an ancient evil could destroy their world.
2.    Miles Alduin, a young apprentice gardener, is thrown into a dangerous quest with the princess he loves and the prince to whom she is promised, in order to face the ancient evil that threatens his world, entangling them all in a web of prophecies and powers they never dreamed existed.
3.    The peaceful world Miles has always known as an apprentice gardener is destroyed the day Princess Brianette of Thorn is kidnapped, and Miles, together with the runaway princess whom he loves and the prince to whom she is promised, must face ancient evils, ominous prophecies, and foes he has not yet imagined to save her.
4.    Miles is torn from his life as a simple apprentice and entangled in the affairs of proud princes and lost princesses, mad kings and ancient powers, never dreaming that the greatest evil to be unleashed on the world is himself.

Now how in the world am I to know which to use? If any of them???

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