Perfect Pitch
This is getting a little discussion in a private thread, but I think it would be a good topic to go over in general. What do you include in a pitch to a publisher? What do you not include? How does a short story differ from a limited-series/GN, and that from an ongoing series? How long is the pitch document? Do you have standard format you use (paragraphs, bullet points, section with headers...)? Any other bits of wisdom?
Comments
This depends on the publisher. I've gotten stuff greenlit on the basis of literally a paragraph before, and I've had pitches that ended up a five or six pages.
The latter, though, isn't my initial cold pitch. What I usually do is run some paragraph style pitches past people, and if they're interested I send them the longer pitch. So the longer ones are always after I've already gotten some feedback to go ahead, rather than just blind pitches.
My general style is one page that sums up the project, what makes the story worth telling, and who I/and or the creative are. The latter often being forgone for a lot of publisher. The next page is a summary of the first arc (or the entire mini) and, if ongoing, some brief summaries of the arcs.
You should be able, I think, to get at the essence of your story in ONE sentence, one paragraph and one page. Obviously each of these will offer more information, but the more concisely you can sum this up, the better off you'll be.
I actually had an editor I'd never met but you works at a publisher I work with comment that the general consensus in the editorial there was that I was really, really good at getting across the story and feel of a book in one paragraph. Which, huzzah, because I work hard to make that happen.
I think, and this is more metaphor than actual, that you can look at a pitch as a very good movie trailer. A good movie trailer will give you you, in 30 seconds or a minute, a very good sense of the tone and the broad outlines of the story and why you want to see this story. That's what you're trying to do with a pitch.
Also, you want to be concise, not vague. Hiding twists or the ending or whatever is for readers, not editors.
I use this as a cover page for the script.
Most publishers have guidelines detailing what they want to see but it usually boiuls down to something like a cover letter giving the high concept, a single para about the story, another about format and then credentials of the creative team. After that, a 1-2 page synopsis. Nobody has ever asked me for a an issue-by-issue breakdown but I usually have one up my sleeve.