Is it possible to get connected to professional authors for advice and comments without any money. I live in very remote Alaska for 42yrs and have 0 dollars but a million dollar story 🙂 Thank You in advance ❤️

Thanks, Steve!

Layer Cake – I’m familiar with the movie. I’ll look up the other stuff too.

I’m writing a psychological thriller featuring a junior investigative journalist. The journalist has suffered loss and is in therapy to help with this. Her attention is caught by a newspaper report of a death from twenty years ago. This could be the story that makes her career, especially as a fresh set of murders seem to be connected to the…

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Hello Kate,

Thank you very much for giving this some thought. Your pitch works very well, but sadly doesn’t match the plot as it stands. What a pain! The police do investigate but because of the alleged secretive nature of the Bar and its reluctance to provide information, progress stalls. The trainee barrister, and her pupil-mistress, are…

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I’ve thought about this overnight, Catherine.

How about just saying something like this?

Christmas 1984: A trainee barrister is sent a bubble-wrapped corpse that she can”t possibly report to the police.

I don’t think the pitch needs to answer all the Qs. It should raise them. So this works to raise questions about her, her past, and her current…

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Hi Kate,

I kid you not, your suggestion exactly mirrored an earlier draft I tried out but it was difficult to explain in a few words why my trainee barrister had to do the police’s job for them so I abandoned it. I will go back and have a re-think in the light of your opinion. Thank you very much!

Best wishes, Catherine

I find this pitch interesting. It does pull me in. A trainee barrister is a protagonist who will already be under stress as she strives to qualify and with a mountain of work to complete. So when a body arrives what will she do? Call the police I presume, but what then? This is where I think the pitch needs work. Why is she solving the…

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Hello and thank you for reading my pitch. Any comments would be gratefully received.

Best wishes, Catherine

In a world of ambition and secrets, a bubble-wrapped body delivered to a trainee barrister threatens her career and the stability of the Bar at Christmas 1984 unless she solves the mystery.

Thanks so much, Catherine, for this lovely comment.

Kate

Hi Christian,

The pitch is a great line but I think we need to know more about why or what’s happened or is going to happen. Suffocating under a river of shame doesn’t tell us in simple terms enough.

I’m not sure how effective the line is. Would you suffocate under a river, or more likely drown? But I like ‘Today, I wanted to … ‘ It’s immediate…

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Hi Cassie,

It’s an interesting premise and I think you need to give the reader a little more. What are the consequences for example of finding out this information? Messing up exams is probably not enough to sustain the whole book, but could the timing have more dire consequences – wedding plans, relocation to another country, finding she might…

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Hi Andrea,

This is an intriguing premise and makes me want to know more. I think the only suggestions I can make is that we don’t know the stakes involved or whose story it is and it would heighten the pitch to have a hint of either or both.

Well done!

Hi Kate,

This is succinct and interesting. The pitch ties in with the book title. The idea of a struggling journalist suggests that irrespective of the legacy it would be an interesting subject for investigation. It sets up the stakes very clearly.

Well done!

I’m writing a murder mystery with a classic touch, set in the 1980’s in the Inns of Court. I’m not sure it’s a popular genre at the moment but I do enjoy books such as Louise Penny’s Three Pines mysteries as well as Elly Griffeth’s series set in Brighton in the 1950’s.

Does anyone else feel that lesson 2 is an exercise in putting the cart before the horse. I feel that I cannot write a concise pitch until I have a story to condense – AW

Harriet Thorne: main protagonist

Harriet’s great-grandfather was a wealthy and renowned British ornithologist and bird collector, and she has tried to follow his example, partly as a rejection of her anti-science, religious upbringing in a Tenessee cult and partly because she has always found nature and birds, in particular, a fascinating refuge.

As…

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The setting is landed estate and its satellite village. and church. The characters are the inhabitants. The amateur detective is the outsider who is imported by the estate to establish that an 1820’s painting in the church actually belongs to the estate, The village claim it was gifted to the church. The amateur wonders if it could be by john Constable.

Ornithology professor HARRIET THORNE finds herself embroiled in the crimes of her late great-grandfather COLONEL WILLOUGHBY, a shady British bird collector and natural scientist. As she grapples with questions about whether he might have stolen valuable specimens and murdered his wife, her source for vital information is brutally murdered at the…

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I believe my novel would fall under “historical crime,” but it is a dual timeline novel with several crimes committed in the 1920s and a modern murder midway through.

Hi Cassie,

I like the idea of an anonymous letter interrupting Tidla’s intensive study period, especially when it contains information that will turn her life upside down. Her grandparents who raised her have kept a secret about her parents. Where are her parents? Why is Tilda with her grandparents? Why did they leave her? And what is behind the…

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Hi Christian,

This is an interesting pitch opening, yes, I want to know more. Why? How did this happen? And why did your character not go through with it?

How could you pitch this or alter the opening line to give us readers a sense of who the character is? It’s a shocking statement but it doesn’t relate to any person (yet). However, I understand…

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Thanks Cassie. I tried to use a word like ‘struggling’ to suggest Lucy’s a human being just like the rest of us and to hint that if she’s struggling to be a successful journalist, how much more will she struggle with the conundrum of her life being threatened and discovering what the legacy is. I’m pleased you seem to have picked up on most of…

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The opening line for my story idea.

“Today, I wanted to end my life. I was suffocating under a river of shame.”

I believe that the reader will want to know more about what is going on and why the character would want to end his life. The reader will question what had happened to lead him to do something like this.

Hi Gemma, I’ve sent your story back with my comments via Messages. It was great!

Hi Jericho

I got an email from Jericho a week or so back about a UK publisher about to open submissions in March.

Now I can’t find the email. Can you tell me again who the publisher is please?

Thanks

Suzy

Tilda is entirely focussed on getting a first in her forthcoming final exams, until an anonymous letter informs her that the grandparents who brought her up have lied to her throughout her life: her parents didn’t, in fact, both die in a car accident.

I really like this. As a reader, I want to know more – what is the legacy, and who from, and why is someone threatening her to get her to accept it?

Giving us her name makes your protagonist real, even in such a short pitch. That she’s a “struggling” journalist is an extra reason to root for her – she’s obviously trying, but not quite getting…

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Hi Phil – happy to help here. First off the Layer Cake – JJ Connolly – in my top 10 of all time ! I like – A Good Day To Die – Amen Alonge fairly recent. Then a strong American contemporary – A Lesson in Violence – Jordan Harper. Also – Stone Cold Trouble – Amer Anwar – Indian gangs in London. One other must is any one of the Parker series…

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Thanks so much, Kate and Andrea for commenting. Appreciate your thoughts.

Kate

Ooh. This is certainly a tell me more Q. I’m intrigued. Who is the literary giant? Is there a supernatural element? And if not, then who?

One thing as you go forward – it would be great to have a name in the pitch (so the lit giant – name them), and then maybe add the name and profession of the person who will figure all this out (the protagonist).…

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Hi, all.

I’m working on a Police Procedural Crime novel. This is the pitch I came up with:

Did the ghost of a historic literary giant commit murder, or was Adam Parkman killed for more…earthly reasons?

I like this. I’m definitely interested in learning more about this legacy.

I suppose the book (the first in a series), I’m working on is pretty much straight-up Police Procedural, with a great deal of focus on the setting (the Scottish Borders). Think, Vera meets Midsomer Murders-ish.

It almost seems boring to not have some sort of sub-genre crossover. I am trying to infuse a little humor into it, and there are…

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I like it – it’s very succinct and it immediately grabs you with questions. Why is the man dead? What is her legacy? How is she linked to the man?

It definitely hits the “tell me more” brief of a pitch!

Hi Jo

Similarly confused here!

Mine is more ‘domestic suspense’ – will Kate reveal what she did in her past, what happened, before she can tell Richard he suffers life changing injuries….will he even survive. Both Kate and Richard have been affected in different ways by a fraudster/sexual predator. Big reveal of her troubled past, resolution and…

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Is this for crime writing? In the absence of a feedback Friday assignment, is this it?

Also, want to say that I thought the video was excellent. Graham explained the sub-genres so well and his comments on crossover were also relevant to the novel idea I’m developing.

Hey

I’m working on my crime novel, Right Hand Lead, but I’m aware that I don’t know as much as I’d like to about its particular sub-genre. Right Hand Lead is a gangster-focused novel.

I have read quite a lot of crime novels: a ton of James Ellroy, a fair few of Martin Cruz Smith’s Renko novels, some Antti Tuomainen, Owen Matthews, plenty of spy…

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