Getting Ready for April's Pitching Clinic

We're going to do a pitching clinic in April. To get ready for this, some of you might want to take a look at what we did last year with practice pitching. As with all things on this blog, it happened more or less organically *cough*by accident*cough*. I posted a dusty old article of mine called Parsing and Pitching, and several people used the method to try to create a pitch.

Then we broke five of them down. Each of these posts contains additional information about pitching.

Pitch #1 describes the physical aspects of pitching from my side of the table, including the arctic climates in pitching rooms and the way that the "speed dating" approach can impact how I hear what you say.

Pitch #2 used a difficult-to-pitch project to show why clarity is so important.

Pitch #3 expanded on the concept of clarity by reassembling a pitch to make it easier to hear.

Pitch #4 was a pop quiz. We let the commenters try their hand at receiving the pitch and thinking about what questions they would ask the author during a live pitch.

Then we did a post about the nature and purpose of questions during a pitch.

And finally, Pitch #5 pulled it all together. Commenters gave a thumb up or down on a practice pitch, and were asked to identify the pitch detail that led to their decision.

In April, we will also take practice pitches, but we're going to start with a lesson in how to craft a log line pitch. Get your hooks ready, because fishing season is about to begin!

Theresa