By Emily Rodmell
Editor, Love Inspired
Getting published can be like fishing. You've got to hook your editor or agent and make them long to read your book. The same can be said for your future readers. But how do you get across the brilliance of your 60,000 word novel in a short pitch session or Tweet? I'm a firm believer that if your book has a defined plot and hooks (which every series romance novel should) it should be possible to share the essence of your story in a few sentences. By answering three simple questions, you should be able to hook editors and readers alike on your concept or discover the need to revise so that you can have a streamlined plot that will get you on the right track.
1. What are the hooks?
Hooks are the themes that make readers want to pick up your book. Every line has different ones that work for them. But there are many tried and true ones that romance readers love such as reunion romances, secret babies, cowboys, law enforcement heroes. For some lines, the setting could be a hook. Texas or Alaska are favorites. For a line like Love Inspired, small towns are hooks. For one like Presents, big cities and European or Mediterranean settings work. There are hundreds of hooks. Defining the hooks in your book is the first step toward getting to the heart of your story.
2. What is the plot?
Every book needs a plot that slowly builds to a climax, each scene building on the prior one until it is resolved at the end of the book. If your book doesn't have a defined plot, it can come across as episodic (a series of unrelated vignettes that are strung together but don't relate). For instance, if your hero and heroine meet, then he asks her out, then they go to dinner, then they run into each other at the grocery story, then they go out again, then the run into each other while walking their dogs, then your book is episodic. A defined plot would be the hero and heroine working together for a common goal (or against each other for opposing goals) and falling in love in the process.
3. What is the conflict?
In order for a book to keep the readers' attention, there needs to be something that is keeping the hero and heroine from falling in love right away, something that they have to overcome in order to be together. This can be both internal (his wife left him and he's sworn off relationships) or external (they can't be together because he's the judge and she's the juror on a case). Great manuscripts have both, and they establish the conflict right away and build it until it is overcome.
Now put those together and you've got your book in a nutshell, a short pitch that you can use to tempt editors, agents and readers. Here are some examples:
Small town sheriff hero is thrown for a loop when his ex-fiance moves back to town and runs against him in the election. As they fight for the town they grew up in, they rediscover the love of their youth.
Hooks: Small town, sheriff, reunion romance
Plot: Each wants to win the election without losing their hearts.
Conflict: They're fighting for the same job, and fighting feelings for each other.
Jaded Greek billionaire wants nothing to do with love after his ex-wife's betrayal, but his father's will requires him to be married by 35 or lose his inheritance. Heroine is a reporter who's been working in his company to get dirt on him, he offers a marriage of convenience for a year that she's forced to accept to keep up her cover.
Hooks: Greek billionaire, marriage of convenience, secrets, will
Plot: Couple marries for business but falls in love.
Conflict: Hero doesn't believe in love, heroine has ulterior motive. Each is using the other and has no intention of staying married but will find that love conquers all.
Texas hero discovers his ex-finance's unknown twin and vows to protect his ex from this new interloper but finds himself falling for the sister instead. (This one's an actual book: Her Surprise Sister by Marta Perry)
Hooks: secret twin, Texas, family secrets
Plot: Heroine discovers a whole new family and works with them to discover the mysteries of their pasts. Hero helps them investigate, but is doing a little digging into the past of the heroine on his own.
Conflict: The heroine is his ex-finace's sister and he doesn't trust her and works to make sure she isn't looking to take advantage of his ex.
Now that you've seen how to make a perfect pitch, feel free to share yours in the comments.
Great examples and how-to info…Love it! Thanks Emily for this insight!Very helpful indeed. Kay
I can’t believe no one else want to post–so I will. Here is goes:
A big-city intellectual property attorney returns to her Southern roots to evict a food historian who has taken up residence with her grandmother. Fighting a growing attraction for her nana’s invited guest, the attorney believes that he is stealing her grandmother’s recipes, and she files a lawsuit against him for theft.
Thanks!
This was really great! Thank you for your great article.
Many times when I’m out and someone asks me…”So whats your WIP about?” I find I stumble a bit before answering. Sometimes from being a bit flattered and/or nervous but also because in that instant I am trying to put together an explanation if just a few sentences. This exercise will be very helpful to me in creating my two sentence pitch!
Thank you Emily, this really helps.
I think Julia’s above pitch is good! It Makes me interested in reading more!
So instead of this: In sunny Florida, Grace waited in fear for years to find out why she woke up with no memory of who she was. All she had to show from her previous life was a sweet baby boy, and nightmares; until she sees Bennett’s photo. He is handsome as sin, and is the lover in her nightmares. When Grace falls back into his life things become explosive…Literally! Protecting his “family” becomes priority. Protecting his heart gets messy. Drug lords, kidnapers and secrets contrive to tear them apart. Can Grace trust Bennett with her life? Or is he the monster she’s afraid of?
You’re looking for something like this?
“Dream” the new drug on the streets of Florida is the cause for much mayhem. When our heroine stumbles onto a drug ring plot that is directly connected to her own troubles, she also meets her hero…Or maybe he is the cause of her troubles?
I’m glad this has been helpful for you all. I hope you all submit to the contest.
Julia and Crystal, thanks for sharing.
Crystal, I wouldn’t focus on the drug, but more on the hero. The best would probably be a combination of the two options.
Emily,
I second what folks are saying here. This post was very helpful–I appreciated the clarity. Thank you.
Mary, thanks for the affirmation! Make sure to come on by and vote if I enter SYTYCW!
Julia
Big city developer, who buys a town with the plans of turning it into a single’s only town, is thrown a knuckle-ball when a former resident moves back home to finish an inherited to-do list and disputes his plans for the town’s orphanage. As they spar over his plans, an unwanted love builds between them.
When the food editor for a national magazine returns to the small Florida town where her sister died, she doesn’t bargain for her growing attraction to the local pastor, a return of the faith she thought she’d lost, or a killer who’s waited twenty-five years for revenge.
Lisa,
Thanks for sharing. It definitly sounds like there’s conflict there (which is vital for a book to have), but I’d also look for a way to insert something in there that shows a reason they fall for each other. Why do they fall in love? Is the heroine irresistable? Does she change his heart?
Emily
Okay Emily – I added a line about why he’s falling in love.
Big city developer, who buys a town with the plans of turning it into a single’s only town, is thrown a knuckle-ball when a former resident moves back home to finish an inherited to-do list and disputes his plans for the town’s orphanage. As they spar over his plans, he finds himself falling in love with this former orphan who is tough-as-nails, doesn’t-believe-in-love, on the outside but vulnerable and quirky on the inside.
Nice one, Gina.
Lisa, that definitly helps. It gives it more of an upbeat mood. Good job.
Great post Emily, and very informative. You mentioned writing the essence of your plot in two sentences, is there a limit of word count? Is it better not to mention names, but a couple word description of the characters instead?
Thank you.
Thank you so much Emily. This is so helpful. I was wondering if this would work? Womanizing Russian billionaire is only interested in one thing: increasing his fortune and discarding supermodels. His cousin’s widow desperately needs financial assistance in order to provide for her son after losing her job and her savings. He needs a wife to improve his public image, she needs assistance to provide for her son and ailing mother. They agree on a short term marriage of convenience but he soon realizes that her leaving him would be very inconvenient.
Jodie,
In general, there’s not a word count limit, but I think it’s important to be able to tell the essence of your story in a few sentences. If you can’t, the story might be convoluted or episodic. Sometimes contests and such (like my speed dating pitch or the So You Think You Can Write contest) require under 100 words. It doesn’t matter if you use the names or not. You can if you want.
Kathryn, looks good (though technically increasing his fortune and discarding supermodels are two things).
Thanks so much Emily for the feedback. I added the supermodels in at the last minute. I was just curious at to whether this is the sort of pitch writers need to be aware of when writing query letters?
Good luck to everyone!
No one knows strait-laced christian Marianna used to be in a drug dealing street gang, not even the undercover cop she discovers posing as an employee in her boardwalk ice cream parlor. When the gang forcibly drafts her recently paroled brother, she uses her insider knowledge to secretly jumpstart the cop’s investigation, tangling them both in the sinister and deadly criminal underworld that she’d hoped to never return.
So far I’ve got:
Good girl Lottie Spencer will do anything to save her family auction house, even if it means engaging in a very public fling with the son of a client. Nightclub owner Josh Blakemore is used to being in the spotlight, and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep the prying eyes of the press away from his reclusive film star mother. But when chaste public kisses lead to explosive private passion, can Lottie trust her inner bad girl to stay under control?
Tedi, thanks for sharing. Looks exciting, but I don’t see the romantic conflict in there. I’d recommend finding a way to add in whatever is keeping the hero and heroine apart.
Jane, looks close, but it’s hard to tell why Josh thinks that engaging in a fling will help his mother. That makes it a tad confusing.
Emily! A huge thank you for this post. There have been entire books written about plot and conflict. As a new writer who tries to learn from those books, I just get confused and intimidated. You’ve taken these aspects of a story and made them so clear. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Bonnie’s 25th wedding anniversary is coming up and she starts to think about her life with Jim. The birth of their children, their two separations; the loss of her father; Jim’s deployment that culminates to their 25th anniversary renewal of wedding vows. Do you think there are too many conflicts?
Barbara,
Those aren’t neccessarily conflicts. Those are just past memories. Conflicts are the things that would keep the hero and heroine from being together in the book.
Emily
Thank you so much for your feedback, Emily! You are exactly right (and I am smacking my head. With some tweaks, I still had word count left to put that in!).
How about adding: “As she falls for the honorable man beneath his facade, how can she live with a daily reminder of her sinful past? And how can a man with a talent for deception envision a future with a woman of faith?”
Better?
I’m now seeing the pattern in how to polish up future pitches before you see them officially cross your desk. Thanks again for your article and the personal help! Tedi
Grace Malone needs answers. She has no memory of her life before her traumatic accident and her son’s birth. That is, until she stumbles onto a link to the Summers Family, one of the most influential families in the USA. Bennett Summers lives a tightly controlled life, while raising his daughter. When Grace shows up, chaos erupts. But not before awakening passions burgeons between the two. Now Bennett has to protect his family, while the past tries to overwhelm them. Their lives are irrevocably intertwined, in the past. Now they have to fight for a future.
This was possibly the most helpful of all the blog posts I read this week! Distilling my story has been the biggest challenge, but you’ve really helped me focus. That said, I’ll leave it to you all to see if it still needs work:
While working to build her photography career in Las Vegas, small town girl Megan runs into sexy tire store manager, Dax, who books her to shoot an upcoming ad campaign for a friend’s high-end auto line. The problem is, he isn’t really a blue collar babe—his family is wealthy as sin, and he’s got a playboy reputation. As their casual fling turns from hot and heavy to something more, he worries that the truth will send her packing—especially since the reason she left her home was to escape a lying, cheating ex.
(Also, forgive me for being the grammar police, but I can’t in good conscience let Lisa submit her pitch using “single’s resort” — the proper way to write it is “singles resort.”)
Crystal, the plot is a bit vague in your blurb and it’s hard to tell what’s going on. I think you need to specify more about what the hero’s involvment is. Is he the father of her child?
Michele, I’m glad it was helpful. I would maybe clarify why exactly he’s keeping his past a secret and why she would be turned off by a rich guy. It’s unclear.
Wow. This is an incredibly helpful post.
I had a couple of goes at making it work for me:
TAKE ONE:
Hooks: Matchmaking, mistaken identity, secret twins
Plot: Couple are matched at matchmaking festival but heroine inadvertently falls in love with match’s identical twin.
Conflict: Hero doesn’t want to jeopardise chances at reunion with long-lost brother; heroine has fear of commitment.
Serial dater seeks out her next ‘Mr Right Now’ at matchmaking festival in small-town New Zealand. Matched to a dull local farmer, she drops him mid-lunch-date only to run into him later, out dancing. He’s much more fun by night… or is he? Actually, he’s been taken unawares — he is her match’s secret twin, a cattle rancher who was adopted by another family and raised in Mexico. He has fallen hard for our heroine, but can she mend her flighty, fun-loving ways? And will their romance threaten his reunion with his brother?
TAKE TWO:
Hooks: Sperm donor, secrets, boardroom romance
Plot: Heroine learns that the company CEO donated the sperm that fathered her child.
Conflict: Heroine is fiercely independent and doesn’t want hero to feel any obligation to her or to freak out so tries to keep fact that he is her baby-daddy from him. He is pursuing her and can’t understand what’s holding her back.
Spunky Silicon Valley designer Evie never thought she needed a man… until she clapped eyes on the new CEO. Trouble is, it turns out he’s the father of her child, by way of a sperm donation he made years ago. He’s fallen for her hard — but can she relinquish her independence, and trust him with her biggest secret?
Thanks for sharing Apple. Those sound great, especially #1.
Helpful, concise, to the point. Thank you.