As promised last week, I said I’d share the new pitch. Below, I have the before and after. I thought it would be interesting to share why I changed some things.
Before Pitch:
Lou is a local chef, struggling to keep her small French restaurant in the black. After one disastrous day in which she loses her fiancé, a perfectly good coconut cake, and her sanity, she pulls it back together – focusing on her restaurant, until it gets a scathing review by a local food critic, marking it for death.
Al hates Milwaukee. His only goal is to gain enough success as a food critic to get a job in a real city. To bide his time, he challenges Lou to show him what makes Milwaukee so great. Lou accepts his challenge as a distraction from her crumbling life.
They realize they enjoy each other’s company, a lot – until they realize what they don’t know.
Now the After Pitch. I’ve added my commentary in parenthesis so you can see the reasoning. I hope you find it as interesting as I did. It took a lot of revision and practice to get from Pitch A to Pitch B. I can also give this pitch in under 90 seconds at any time. Feel free to test me.
The Cake Effect is a 70,000 word contemporary women’s fiction for readers who enjoy authors like Meg Cabot or Sophie Kinsella. (Boring facts, but it’s an efficient way to put my book in a context and help the listener visualize where it might appear in a book store.)
Lou is a talented chef in Milwaukee, struggling to keep her small French restaurant in the black. (I added the word talented so it was clear Lou is a good chef and the bad cooking to come was not normal. I added Milwaukee to give the story a place.) After one disastrous day in which she loses her fiancé, almost poisons a customer (got rid of sanity – because she isn’t insane and added this more important plot point), and destroys a perfectly good coconut cake, she pulls it back together; focusing on her restaurant until it receives a deadly review by a local food critic (I think this just tightened up the wording).
Said local food critic (this ties Al to the previous event), Al, hates Milwaukee. His only goals are to earn enough success to get a column in a “real” city, and survive food poisoning from the French restaurant he just reviewed (again, ties him to Lou).
To celebrate his brilliantly snarky critique, Al goes to a local pub where he meets the charming and very drunk Lou, the chef he unknowingly just skewered. Not knowing Al’s secret identity and needing an escape from her crumbling life, Lou accepts Al’s challenge to show him what makes Milwaukee so great, with the agreement they NEVER discuss work. (This sets up how they meet, why they start doing things together, and why they don’t know about each other’s work).
During their non-dates exploring the city’s treasures, their friendship and attraction grows along with Al’s affection for Milwaukee’s unique personality. When Al discovers his review destroyed Lou’s restaurant, he scrambles to hide his identity knowing Lou would never forgive him and he’d lose her forever. (And this is why you want to read – how will Al get out of this mess and still end up with Lou?)
I also have a much shorter version for people I know are only asking because they want to be polite, but don’t really want to listen for 90 seconds while I recite the above. It goes as follows: “A restaurant critic and chef meet, fall in love, then everything goes to hell when they find out about each other.”
So, dear reader, what did I learn during this intense process? I learned the power of revision, revision, revision. I learned that even when I think I have something good, I can always make it better. I learned that working with others makes my writing better. And I learned that getting published is about finding your perfect match. I gave this pitch to four different editors. What one wanted more of (Milwaukee references) another wanted less of (didn’t care about Milwaukee). So I need to tell the story I want to tell, I can’t try and guess what and editor or agent or reader wants to read.
Next week, dear reader, we’re talking beginnings.
Get more of me on Twitter @aereichert.
