First, the pitch:
CLAIRELEE A.D. (AFTER DISASTER)
An Excerpt
by
Jean Ann Williams
One mother damaged, one family tested, one daughter determined to find her place.
At thirteen years old, ClaireLee Monteiro’s family life becomes a shambles. Feeling incapable of taking Mama’s position in the home, she longs for acceptance at school. She sets out to impress Wendy Lavender and her school cronies, and so she lies.
While the Lavender Girls Club receives ClaireLee into their fold, they do not choose her best buddy, Belinda Cruz. How far will ClaireLee wander from honesty, her devoted friend, and a feeble mother’s love?
Next: My Critique:
CLAIRELEE A.D. (AFTER DISASTER)
An Excerpt I’m not sure why this is here. It suggests you’ve included an excerpt of the work, but there isn’t one, it’s just the pitch.
by
Jean Ann Williams
One mother damaged, one family tested, one daughter determined to find her place. Great tagline! I’m interested.
At thirteen years old, ClaireLee Monteiro’s family life becomes a shambles. ’becomes a shambles’ sounds awkward to me. Maybe try a more active verb? Feeling incapable of taking Mama’s position in the home, she longs for acceptance at school. She sets out to impress Wendy Lavender and her school cronies, and so she lies. I need a little more. What does she lie about? Why does she need to take Mama’s position?
While the Lavender Girls Club receives ClaireLee into their fold, they do not choose her best buddy, Belinda Cruz. How far will ClaireLee wander from honesty, her devoted friend, and a feeble mother’s love?This seems like the real story, the Lavender Girls Club choose ClaireLee but not her friend, Belinda. I wonder if you might want to use your space to fill out this plotline, give us a little more on the family situation especially what’s going on with her mother.
Overall, I’m interested. It sounds like a good premise for Young Adult. I want to get to know the character a little better in the pitch and I think we need a little more information.
Okay guys, your turn. Please feel free to critique this pitch in the comments section. A big thank you to Jean Ann for being brave enough to submit her work for critique. I hope it's helpful!
24 comments:
I think it's promising, but it is not YA. It honestly sounds firmly middle grade, unless there is something much more YA than is here. The Lavender Girls Club, for example . . . cute, adorable, but not "high school" or YA. More middle grade. Even later middle grade.
I also think for a pitch, there needs to be much more of a hint of what the disaster is. Is it a hurricane? Mental illness? What? When you PITCH, you hold a little back, but you ultimately have to let on what the core of it is.
But overall . . . intriguing. GOOD LUCK!
Kudos to Jean Ann for allowing us to read her query. That's not an easy thing to do!
- My suggestion is to start with Clairelee and tell us what she does - she lies.
- "life becomes a shambles" is passive and vague. What happens in Clairelee's life? Does her mother die, brother run away, house burn down?
- In the third paragraph I think is the crux of your story.
Be specific.
I think your tag line addresses things you don't address in your query - like a damaged mother. Is that necessary for the query? Or can you tell Clairelee's story? You needn't give away the subplots in a query letter.
I feel it's a little disconnected -- but I love the idea of Clairelee in a club that would not take her best friend. That's classic early teen behavior and can lead to such drama. I think of tv shows like Degrassi when I read a query like this. There's so much potential. My advice is to focus your query.
Oh, and to listen to Erica Orloff. She's a guru.
Yay, thank you E and Amy for chiming in and offering your advice.
Jean Ann didn't actually say it was YA... I don't think... I think I just assumed it was... which makes me slapable as I write both and should've known the difference.
I do think the premise sounds interesting, but I sooo want to know more about what's happened with the mother that makes the mc feel like she needs to step in and I think the main focus is the club that's not accepting the best friend. And I kind of want to hear it in the mc's voice or at least get a hint of what she's like.
This is really nicely written and shows off the writer's style to good effect. It's smooth-reading and clean of mistakes.
My only concern is it seems too light on detailing the plot. I have trouble feeling invested in the story because I just don't know enough about it.
I would suggest Ms. Williams not worry about her word choices yet, but rather work on adding more substance to the query.
The query is well-structured in that it answers a lot of the basic questions a query should: Who is the protagonist? What do they want? What gets in their way? What happens if they don't get what they want?
ClaireLee's wants acceptance at school to make up for the lack of place she feels at home. Her attempted solution is to lie her way into a clique of popular girls. The thing getting in her way is she realizes she is losing her self-identity (and her friend Belinda) to her quest.
So what the query is a bit lean on is describing what the stakes are: What happens if ClaireLee doesn't find acceptance at school?
Right now, it looks like she's better off not getting it--she's giving up too much. This makes her motivation seem superficial.
Thus, I'd recommend fleshing out why ClaireLee thinks it's so important to find acceptance at school. What exactly is so bad at home? What is the cost if the Lavender Girls Club rejects her?
Again, this is a well-written query, and it sounds like an engaging story, too. Best of luck with it, Ms. Williams!
Thanks for stopping in, JJ!!! Great stuff!
And as a note, JJ just opened a permanent blog for query critique at Query Goblin.
It's also linked in my sidebar, JJ, and I'll definitely be stopping in!
I've got one minute to say thank you to all for the comments. I'll chime in more later if it's allowed, Merry. Like asking questions if time allows.
This story is indeed upper middle grade.
Golly, you guys are great. You've given me much to think about and I will make it work.
Thank you!
Hi Jean Ann,
Chiming in is not only allowed but encouraged! =) Sorry I labeled it YA, I'll go change that in the title... feel free to post a revision if you'd like, too... I'm actually kind of dying to know more about her.
Merry,
How much time do I have before the next person is up?
I'll rework this from everyone's suggestions and resend.
Thanks so very much. This is great!
Please let me what works and what doesn't with this Pitch. Thanks everyone!
CLAIRELEE A.D. (AFTER DISASTER)
Pitch
by
Jean Ann Williams
One mother damaged, one family tested, one daughter determined to find her place.
Thirteen-year-old ClaireLee Monteiro comes from hearty and loveable folks. One night at their new home all that changes. Mama’s near death from childbirth weakens her physical and emotional health. Things go from bad to worse, when ClaireLee is overworked with caring for her siblings and Mama loses her mind. ClaireLee worries Mama’s emotional condition is contagious, like the flu or cold, and she just knows she’s lost her independence.
ClaireLee wants a secure life as she once had, and her trusted buddy, Belinda Cruz, is no longer enough. ClaireLee sets out to impress Wendy Lavender and her school cronies, and so she lies about her home life. The Lavender Girls Club receives ClaireLee into their fold. They do not choose Belinda, the town hillbilly. For Belinda has butted heads with Wendy, since the day Wendy stepped foot on campus.
How far will ClaireLee wander from honesty, her friend, and a mother’s love?
Hi Jean Ann,
First of all, I love the premise. I think you might want to go over it a little to spit polish it... some of the wording is a bit clunky to me, but I think that's just because it was your first pass at a re-write. For instance "One night at her new home all that changes" sounds a little off to me... and "Things go from bad to worse..." is a little over-used as a phrase...
But I love the premise. I love that the character thinks she can catch her mother's insanity. I think that's a great aspect and very true to life for a character in that scenario. It sounds well-layered as a novel. I do think it pulls you in more with this new information.
Thanks so much, Merry.
Yes, I had to leave for the day and rushed through that rewrite, but I figured it was more important to finish it than make you all wait. I can always spit shine it later.
I have to say this experience has been all I had hoped. I have no doubts now, as to how to fill the holes that had bugged me about this story.
Yea, a big thank you to Merry for offering this opportunity for us writers.
Jean Ann:
Second version is much better. Sounds like a fit at Candlewick . . .
http://www.candlewick.com/default.asp
They have pubbed several books that offer voice like this.
Wow, Erica, thanks for the tip. Really appreciate your reading of CLAD's pitch.
Great work, Jean. You should go over and take a look at Erica's blog, and JJ's too... Erica is my absolute favorite blogging writer, not the least of which because I loves her. JJ is a god of motivation - can't tell you how many times I've gotten oodles of inspiration out of one of her posts on craft and gotten right back into my own work... plus, she's awesome with critique and just put up her own critique blog.
I will take a look at Erica and JJ's blogs.
Thanks to everyone for your most needed help!!!
Oh, gosh, Merry--you're making me blush! Thanks so much for your very kind comments, and thank you also for linking to The Query Goblin site! :)
That was a great tag line! It stood out to me, for sure.
Hey JJ,
No thanks necessary. I love your blogs... and thank you for the crit... I'm working on a rewrite this week and I'll post here and offer it up to the goblin's maw.
Hi Colleen,
I really love the whole premise, but definitely, the tagline stood out for me, too!
Good, good. It sounds like I am hitting the mark. Now if I can only finish these new rewrites (this book has morphed over the years), and finish it up once and for all.
Thank you everyone!
I know very little about YA, but I could tell it was still well-written. That being said, I agreed with every one of Merry's notes...but yeah, I always find the tagline to be the hardest part of a pitch and she totally nailed it.
Ladies, I copied that style of a tag line from a how-to book I was reading last year. I wish I could remember the book's title, dog gone it, but I don't. The author showed there are three parts to a tag line, so I studied his examples and came up with my own.
I'll rack my brain to remember which book it was. Hopefully, I'll think of it.
Okay, I think I remember: Save The Cat, by Blake Snyder. I tell you, that's an amazing book.
Save the Cat, yes I've read it! It was a good book...more about selling movies, if I recall, but a lot of good stuff in there.
Colleen, I thought it wouldn't apply to book writing, but it does. Valuable!
Post a Comment