Pittsburgh Writing Workshop Review
It’s a goal of mine to learn about the work and business of writing. So far this year I’ve taken a few steps in that direction. One was attending BOSKONE 2024, where I was able to hear a bit about the state of SF and Fantasy today, as well as attend a number of writing-oriented panel sessions. Another step was taking the Fiction Forge: Write a Novel in 45 days course from Autocrit. While I didn’t finish a book in 45 days, I did create a good outline and some starting chapters. (BTW I am now at the 70,000 word mark in that book.)
Today I want to talk about my latest step on this path, attending the Pittsburgh Writing Workshop and giving my first pitch session.
First off, this was a great workshop. The sessions were very different from BOSKONE, in that they were all hosted by agents or editors, and were all aimed at specific writing topics. A convention like BOSKONE of course has to have content for fans primarily, and writers secondarily. I attended six sessions and I got some value from every last one. Some highlights:
Sinfully Simple Synopsis, by Marlo Berliner. In this context a synopsis is a *short* summary (1,000 words or less) of the characters and events in your book. This is becoming the most important thing in attracting an agent. Query letters are even shorter and there’s so much internet info about how to make a good one their average quality is going up. But with your synopsis there’s no hiding – it has to tell a story that is intriguing to the agent. Lots of great advice here, the standout one was this: A good synopsis does not just recount the things that happen in sequence, it states that B happens because of A, and C because of B and so on. This lets the agent assess the credibility of the story and whether readers will engage with it.
The Pro Ten: Techniques to Take Your Novel from OK to “Oh Wow!”, by Lorin Oberweger. The presenter here, Lorin, was fantastic – her decades of experience were evident in everything she said. Just one of the ten techniques was “Go Deep on POV”. What’s that mean? Writers, myself included, have a tendency to adopt a “reportorial” style in our writing – what we write is like describing what is seen at a play. Sometimes that’s a good choice – noir in particular can really work using a “just the facts”, gritty style of describing action. But the trap here is this detached style risks losing the reader, the descriptions are too distant. “Go Deep on POV” means put yourself in the literal shoes of your protagonist and ask: What are they feeling? Wanting? Even, smelling? For example, if your character encounters a formidable looking dog, don’t write something like:
The dog’s shaggy coat couldn’t hide the powerful muscles in its neck and jaws.
Instead try:
Tom couldn’t help but imagine the dog’s jaws clamping onto his forearm and the powerful neck trying to tear Tom’s arm from his body.
Yes, it’s florid and melodramatic – but sometimes that’s what you need.
Crafting Satisfying Endings with the Story Endings Matrix, by Jes Trudel. I guess I never thought about it, but there are really only five possible endings to any story. The point of this talk was, understand those five types, then tips on how to make sure you use them properly. What drives the types are the story goals – in a heist book, the goal is to steal the boodle – and the story outcome – how did things turn out? In many heist books, the goal is not achieved – even though there was a plan with split-second timing, a fluke event happens and the boodle falls overboard, or whatever – but that turns out to be a good thing – like maybe we find the boodle wasn’t what we thought and getting it would have been disastrous. This kind of ending is called the Sweet Surprise. Other possibilities: The gang does steal the boodle, but then they fall out and their friendship is broken – that’s the Tragic Turnabout; The gang loses the boodle, and someone dies because of that – the Dismal Failure; lastly, the boodle is stolen (hopefully from a mustache-twirling billionaire), and the gang goes off to live on a desert island – the Happily Ever After. Lastly there’s an “open-ended” ending, where either the goal, the outcome, or both, are unclear. Literary works, or books that are parts of series often end this way.
These endings sound cliché, and they are. But they also work. No one will buy a romance that doesn’t have a happily-ever-after ending. Yes, there’s some romantic tragedies out there, but when a reader goes to the shelves marked “ROMANCE”, happily-ever-after is what they expect. That brings me to my main overall takeaway from the sessions, namely: Being a published writer means writing what readers want to read. Seems self-evident, but I believe I never really admitted that to myself. What I’ve been doing so far is write to please myself, and then hope that also pleases others. Now I don’t intend to make radical changes or to stop writing what I like. But I need to learn more about what works in this industry and, maybe, I can do both. But I’m convinced that nowadays, with so much competition out there, its going to be rare that a writer creates a work that meets industry expectations of character, plot, and ending – you have to know the rules to effectively play the game.
A little bit about my pitch meeting. This is where you meet 1-1 with an agent and try and interest them in your book. At this workshop these meetings were ten minutes; sometimes they can be as short as five. Anyway, it’s on a Zoom call, you both say “hello”, then you start talking. I took my existing query letter and enhanced it to be more conversational. I also added a few cool-sounding details, like “the ENTERTAINERS, a band of actor-assassins”. I started the pitch with a logline – a single-sentence summary. Probably the most famous logline of all time was created by Ridley Scott for ALIEN: “It’s Jaws, in space!” My original logline was this:
An irreverent investigator finds herself through a struggle with a galactic master-criminal.
In the hour or so before I was rehearsing, something wasn’t clicking, so I changed it to this:
An irreverent investigator finds her power and purpose through a struggle with a galactic master-criminal.
I think the change was way better – to “find oneself” is kind of a meh outcome. But “power and purpose” – cool, everyone wants those!
For whatever reason, my pitch was successful. The agent asked for my query letter and full manuscript to be sent to her direct email. Yay!
To wrap up I’ll leave you with a Pitch Meeting video. I love this guy, as he shows how lame the plots and contrivances are in successful moves. Enjoy.