Who am I, and what is my Book?

You want your words to resonate with other people. To be memorable. But how do you do it? Is there a magic spell or a recipe you can follow? It is a little of both. You have writing you want to share with the world. That’s why you’re here. Now it’s time to quantify what you wrote and who you are. 

To present your work in a way that attracts attention, you have to ask and answer a series of questions. You may start with an idea of who you are and what you’re writing about, or you may find yourself operating in an entirely different space. That’s what this exercise is about: clarity.

Start big by answering two consecutive questions. What does my book do that no other book does? What can I do that no other person can? When you think about the unique aspects of your book, consider the lines it shares with other works and where it diverges. Your perspective on the intersection of those conditions and events is the heart of your book. With that in mind, ask why you and only you are qualified to tell this story. I have a novel that is propelled in part by the protagonist’s loss of his brother at a young age. While this isn’t a singular event, it is uncommon enough. I lost my brother. I am qualified to tell this story because I know what it is like.

Part of the quest of writing is dealing with emotions, another is pulling things apart and analyzing them in the safe playground of our mind. Next, ask yourself why you don’t know more about the thing you’re writing about. Do you need to go further? What does that mean? And just as important, what other views are you missing out on? Orson Scott Card wrote the same book twice from two different perspectives. Take a character out and see how the story changes. Put in a character from popular fiction or even the real world. What would your favorite basketball player do? Don’t know enough about them? Look them up. If your nose is too close to the page, you’ll miss the larger world.

On to the branding talk. It can’t be helped. Keywords in your email subject line matter. You won’t include insistences such as TIMELY. Because, are you really being timely? They don’t film Christmas movies in December. That is when they’re released. Timely is ahead of time. And this gets to the heart of the matter. What are your keywords, and how do you find them?

It is time for Pitch Correction practice. Describe your book to someone. Then ask them later what they remember. Not what you said. What they remember. Those are the elements that actually stick. Do this with a few people, and you will correct your pitch and inform your keywords.

What is your book about? Start simple. List 3 things. These three elements are enough to start shaping your pitch. What is the emotion of the story? What is the backdrop? From whose perspective is the story told? Here is an example. After recovering from cancer, an Albuquerque high school science teacher descends into the criminal world when he can’t let go of the get-rich-quick scheme that was supposed to secure his family’s future. This isn’t the finished product, to be sure, but it’s about right to start Pitch Correcting. Branding feels like marketing, but it begins with understanding the story you’re actually telling.

 What are you about? What is unique about you that the rest of the room can’t say? That’s your summary to start. I burned my house down when I was 5 years old. That experience could qualify me to write about disasters, but it is also uncommon enough that I could include it in my bio. That little sentence lets people know why my writing leans toward tension and consequence. Adding humor helps, too. Facts hook as well as humor. Do you take bad advice from the internet and kill your plants? What is funny or unique about you? Lean into that.

The Pitch Correction process seems simple. Identify what makes the book unique. Identify what makes you unique as the author. Test and retest how people remember what you tell them. The words that survive the Pitch Correction become your pitch and keywords.

You don’t gain clarity by staring harder at the page. It comes from stepping back, seeing how your experiences and the larger world intersect. When those lines meet clearly, X marks the spot, and the right words begin to flow.

This is a good video supplement to the article: