What is an elevator pitch?

An elevator pitch is a short description of the book you’re writing—about a sentence or two. The idea behind an elevator pitch is, if you were ever riding an elevator with, say, an editor, you could pitch your idea in the time it takes to climb or descend a few floors. Which doesn’t leave much room for a rambling, “…it’s about this guy who has loved cars since he was a kid and one day inherits his grandfather’s car lot after a tornado blows his house down…”

It’s harder than it looks to be concise, so I’ve broken down the elevator pitch into 3 easy steps.

1. What is the most interesting thing happening to your character?

   • Are they an alien who crash-landed onto earth?

   • Does a recent bout of amnesia have them forgetting their boyfriend is actually their ex?

   • Like in One Night, White Lies, is your heroine pretending to be someone she’s not when the hero doesn’t recognize her?

2. What problem are they about to encounter?

   • Is there a hurricane?

   • Were they just fired?

   • Or, back to my own book, is that hero about to realize he’s taken his best friend’s younger sister to his hotel room without knowing her real name?

3. Now write a juicy hook that leaves us wanting more…

   • Introduce more problems

   • Introduce a solution guaranteed not to work

I’ll work up an elevator pitch for One Night, White Lies to show you what I mean.

From Reid’s POV:

(1) Interesting happening:

Reid Singleton doesn’t recognize his best friend’s little sister

(2) Problem:

…until after they’ve shared a steamy night between the sheets.

(3) A solution guaranteed to backfire:

Now he must choose: keep pursuing her in secret, or play it safe and try and forget the best sex he’s ever had…

Put it together:

Reid Singleton doesn’t recognize his best friend’s little sister until after they’ve shared a steamy night between the sheets. Now he must choose: keep pursuing her in secret, or play it safe and try and forget the best sex he’s ever had…

Now, let’s try it from Drew’s POV:

Drew Fleming just lied about her identity to her older brother’s best friend in order to fulfill her fantasy of taking him to bed. Now that he’s figured out who she is, she makes him a promise: if they continue sleeping together, she’ll take their secret to her grave…

Now it’s your turn!

Grab your current work in progress and go through these three steps in a notebook, or download the attached PDF I've created for you. It doesn’t have to be perfect! Feel like sharing? I’d love to see it. Leave your elevator pitch in the comments!