Elevator Pitches for Books

Happy Wednesday Scribblers and Happy Pride 2025! I hope you’re all having a wonderful week. Today I wanted to talk to you about something we authors don’t always do well; explaining our novels to potential readers. When we talk to someone about our book or books, we want to tell them the entire story. We want to explain the characters and the nuances. We are so excited to engage with someone about our novel that we ‘info dump’ on them. And that’s the best way to kill a potential buyer and turn off a potential reader. The sad truth is we all do this. I can’t count the number of times I start to explain my book to someone (including my husband) and I see the glassy look and vacant expression form. In Brittney’s words, ‘ops, I’ve done it again.”.

There is a solution.

The Elevator Pitch.

Every author needs to describe their book in one sentence (this is not a compound sentence either). You need to sum up your novel in as few words as possible. A group of us were at a book event this last weekend and we went around the group and asked each other to describe their books in one sentence. If someone struggled, we helped them. Here are some descriptions we came up with to help sell each other’s books:

  • Sapphic Nancy Drew mystery thriller with fade to black romance.

  • Contemporary historical Italian family gay drama

  • Mother Nature kills humans in thirty short stories

  • MM college roommate summer romance

  • Historical French steam punk novel where the French Revolution doesn’t happen

  • Dungeons and dragons meet AI

And the list goes on, but this should give you an idea of what I mean when I say, Elevator Pitch. Are these descriptions perfect? No. But what this information does, or should do, is peak the potential reader’s interest. The goal is for the reader to get enough information to want to ask more about your story if they’re interested. If they aren’t interested, you didn’t ‘info dump’ on them to where they will never ask you about your writing or your books again.

If you still aren’t sure what an Elevator Pitch is, this is how Harvard University, Writing and Communication Center (learn more here) defines a general Elevator Pitch:

What is an Elevator Pitch?

An elevator pitch is a compelling introduction about who you are, what you do, and why it matters. It is a teaser that lasts 60 seconds or less to begin a conversation and make meaningful connections with confidence when meeting new people.

Why Do We Need an Elevator Pitch?

First impressions matter. Impressions about people are formed immediately after meeting them.

I hope this helps. Now go write an Elevator Pitch for each of your books and practice that Elevator Pitch with your family and friends until next time have a great week and a great Pride 2025.

Five Tips on Character Creation

Happy Wednesday Scribblers. I hope you are all having a wonderful week despite all the bad news. It seems things keep getting darker and darker. I have to believe the light will come soon. I hope we can all hang in there until then. This week I wanted to share a new writing tip with you. I realized I haven’t shared any writing tips in a while and I figured today would be a good day to do so. This week I want to share my five tips on character creation. Keep in mind this is going to vary for everyone, but these are my tips that I use for all my characters, when I’m starting a new story. Or, sometimes, I discover I need an additional character in the story I’m working on.

Let’s jump into it:

  1. Create a bio for your character. Think about all the general things that are important for your character. Name. Date of birth. Age. Astrological sign. Where they work. What their education was like. How old they are? What do they do in their free time? What scares them? What is their religion? Are they religious? Did they have a terrible experience with their faith? Do they have any goals? Giving your characters some goals is always a good thing. It makes the character more three dimensional and gives you an opportunity to either help them with their goals throughout the story, or makes them reevaluate the importants of their goals. Is your character likeable? Are they kind?

  2. What do they look like? Often what I will do is find an image on line of what I think the character may look like. An actor. A model. Even a cartoon character (I know weird, but true). If you don’t want to find an image, then describe the characters and write it all down; eye-color, hair-color, height, weight, do they wear glasses, are they fat, are they thin, etc. The more details you can write up about your characters appearance, the more real that character will become to you. This also has the added benefit of giving you actions you can do with your character as you write. If they wear glasses, you can have them take them off, put them on, etc. If they are thin or overweight, you might have them play with their clothes as they may not fit right. If they are tall, you might have them hit their head. If they are short, they might not reach things.

  3. Describe their family. Are their parents alive? Are their parents dead? Do they have siblings? Do they have an extended family? What about Grandparents? Is their family religious? Does the lack of faith or too much faith cause tension in the family?

  4. Where are they from? What is their race/nationality? This will help you figure out how they speak and if they have any kind of accent. This will also tell you how the world responds to them. People don’t always treat foreigners very well. So, if your character isn’t a local, then you have that to play and work with. Also, when it comes to how they speak, if they have an accent this will give you a chance for variation in your dialog.

  5. This last one may not be hugely important for everyone, but I find it helpful with my character's creation. What is your character’s sexual orientation and identity? It may never come into play, but it is another opportunity to learn about your character and figure out how the world interacts with them.

Bonus: I find it helpful to create a character sheet for each of my main characters. That way I can easily pull it up as I’m writing the story. I can also, quickly, add to it as the need arises.

Those are my five tips and one bonus tip on creating and getting to know your characters in your story. I hope this helps. Also, if you are looking for more writing tips, check out these past blogs. I chalked them full of advice and helpful tips and tricks:

Events (What you didn’t know, you need to know)

Creating Audiobooks – Why and How?

Writing Process and How Writing Works… For me Now.

What it’s like being an author in a small publishing house?

What I Look for When I’m Judging Books for Book Awards.

Book Editing; Overly Used Words, Filtering and Filler Words.

Word Police and Word Censorship.

What is the Hardest part about Writing a Book – The Marketing.

Well Scribblers that is all I have for now. I really hope you found this all helpful. Let me know if you have any character creation tips in the comments below. Until next time have a great week.