When I got ready to query my thesis for my DIY MFA, the inevitable moment came where I had to development the key marketing materials agents want to see: the elevator pitch, the query letter, and the synopsis. Like many writers who have come before me, I dreaded the process. After spending two and a half years writing my thesis, the last thing I wanted to do was take the 89,000 word manuscript and narrow it down to a three-paragraph pitch and a one-page summary. It felt like high school English class, and my synopsis draft carried the same tone as a high school book report.
For Baggage, I flipped the process and started with the end in mind. I’ve always known I wanted to be traditionally published, and that requires pitch materials. So instead of waiting until I finished writing my manuscript and condensing it down, I started by writing my query and synopsis and then fleshed them out into an outline.
The benefit of this approach? I was able to workshop my pitch materials and get feedback from critique partners on story flow, plot, and characters from the beginning. If something didn’t work, if the internal and external goals didn’t mesh (as was the case with my first draft), I hadn’t wasted two years writing something that would never work without serious overhauls. By getting overall story feedback before writing the story itself, I saved myself countless months of work and thousands of unneeded words.
This approach also helps me come at the materials with a creative spin and the story tone in mind, instead of from an analytical slant trying to condense, condense, condense. I’ll confess, these materials still aren’t my favorite. But, for me, this process is easier. I changed around primary and secondary goals between my outlines and my first draft of Baggage, so while the elevator pitch remained the same, I had to rewrite and get the query and synopsis recritiqued to make sure the endgame made sense to the outside observer.
My first and second round query hooks I sent to critique partners are included below for example. In my first outline, the main plot revolved around Ainsley’s toxic relationship with her mother, which linked to the internal GMC but left the external GMC unfocused throughout the novel. Critique feedback came back that the mother’s subplot was the least favorite of the story lines. So instead, I shifted my focus on finding financial freedom as the main story line, with a desire for stability/a break from chaos as her emotional goal. This way, her mother’s subplot is still a focus in the novel, because it is a large motivation for her internal goal, but it is trimmed down to allow time for the plots readers enjoyed more.
How about you? When in your writing process do you start thinking about your marketing/pitch materials?
ELEVATOR PITCH:
After dumping her controlling fiancé, Ainsley resolves to leave behind her dumpster fire twenties and dig herself out of debt. She attempts overtime, dating, and hiking Colorado Fourteeners, but she quickly learns that to define her future, she first has to accept her past.
QUERY HOOK – ORIGINAL:
With no money, no career, and no plans, thirty-year-old Ainsley Barrett’s life is nothing like she planned. Instead of jet-setting world wide as a flight attendant, she works customer service at the Denver International Airport for just enough to cover monthly minimums on her bills. And instead of marrying her gaslighting long-term boyfriend and giving her overbearing, busy-body mother grandchildren, she left him a month before the wedding.
Ainsley longs for something to break her out of the monotony that defined her twenties. With her mother constantly nagging her to repeat past mistakes by getting back with her ex, she decides to overcorrect by agreeing to date the smoking hot but self-centered pilot putting the moves on her. She’s determined to get over her ex and through the mountain of debt left from their breakup, no matter how disastrous her dates turn out or how much her mother pressures that she’s wasting her prime childbearing years by working nonstop.
But as Ainsley soon learns, losing herself in a new relationship and in her work doesn’t help her find the one thing she’s desperately seeking: her own sense of self. As both her new beau and her ex—who’s still her boss—pressure her to decide what she wants from her career and her relationships, she must first answer what she wants for herself.
QUERY HOOK – REVISED:
Ainsley Barrett was supposed to be getting hitched and leaving Colorado for the first time for her honeymoon on her thirtieth birthday. Instead, she’s stuck in Denver, ending up homeless as her sister announces she’ll be moving and taking the couch Ainsley’s been crashing on since calling off her engagement. Living in her broken down Corolla seems like a better alternative than moving back to the trailer park with her guilt-tripping, alcoholic mother.
With only a few^ months to find a new home, Ainsley resolves to escape her mother, her ex, and Colorado by digging herself out of debt and building up a small nest egg. But finding a better paying job than working at the airport for just enough to cover her bills’ monthly minimums proves difficult as an “under qualified” high school drop out. So even though it means dealing more one-on-one with her controlling ex-fiancé, the regional manager, she requests a promotion at work for more experience.
Ainsley takes to the Fourteeners surrounding her hometown to escape the chaos as she scrambles to find a job outside of the city and away from her pain. In the mountains, she befriends the outdoorsy Brandon (No Name Last like a pop star). As their friendship blossoms in the world of wanderlust, she starts to wonder if she should be running toward something instead of away from her problems. And that perhaps what she’s running toward has been in Colorado all along.
COMPS:
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry meets Enjoy the View by Sarah Morgenthaler
Note: the ^ was an internal note to myself to come back and give a more specific number once I finalized my timeline for my manuscript.