Elevator Speech

For aspiring writers, an elevator speech is a few sentences you have ready in case you're ever in a elevator with an editor or an agent and they ask you what you're writing.

Your elevator speech needs to describe your novel in terms that will intrigue the editor or agent and make them ask more. It also needs to be REALLY concise -- their stop may be the next floor.

Most of all you need a HOOK -- some way of communicating the thing that sets your book apart from others.

Story Sensei has a nice formula for coming up with those magic two sentences.

A convention such as the one I've just been at is crawling with editors and agents and aspiring writers -- all of whom take an elevator now and then. (Giving a pitch in the restroom is frowned on -- though Herself, my editor, swears that someone once shoved a manuscript under the door of the stall she was occupying at the time.)

But that magic moment could arrive at some place other than an elevator and you need to be ready.

For example . . .

On Saturday, Herself and I had finished lunch and she suggested taking a turn around the book room. Just outside the book room door, we came upon a friend of mine from the mountains. I introduced Linda to Herself, mentioning that Linda had been in one of my writing classes.

And then it happened.

"So what's your novel about?" asked Herself.

I couldn't believe it. I was seeing a moment I'd heard about and warned my students about.

I looked at Linda, anxious to see how she would do. There was a brief stunned silence (she may have been having trouble breathing) and then she launched into a pretty decent summary of the important points of her novel.

Well done, Linda!

I wonder how many elevator moments there were during the four days of the convention?