If you’ve ever interfaced with the world ideas have bubbled up in your head. A sensory stimulus hits and your desires follow. If you’ve ever engaged in storytelling then the world has breathed those head-scratching, earworm, thirst provokers into your internal monolog. But then there’s the question, “Why am I still fixated on this?” With just a passing interaction, the idea has rooted itself in the brain. That is power. If you’ve ever given someone an elevator pitch for the story you’re writing, you’d give a limb for it. But what makes those great ideas linger in others’ minds as much as it does ours?
A near universal bridge is empathy. Can we see ourselves in that situation? If you’ve ever been bullied and the antagonist is a bully you understand what the other characters are going through. If the protagonist is a forty-year-old single mom and you’re a single mom around forty, you’ve experienced the everyday difficulties of that life. It’s an effective shortcut to the mirror effect. It can also be stretched to ask can we see who we want to be or might become in that situation? Both power fantasy and cautionary tale put our wants and fears to the preverbal test. It provides a greater range of plots which exaggerate the similarities inherent in most people’s lives. We already possessed an interest in the plot where then the unresolved question carries us by our pulsing fingertips.
Yet the opposite can be equally enticing. A story unlike anything you know can impress infinite questions. How does this strange civilization function? What do these people do for work? How do these creatures eat? It takes the right personality and inquisitiveness of the listener to entertain the thought. Fortunately these people are more patient to comprehend the initial pitch so you aren’t necessarily limited by the brevity and simplification of an elevator pitch. But don’t count on them being a massive portion of the audience. They can be helpful in spreading the word as what they find interesting about the mystery comes across far more energetic than what you can manage in just a few lines but they’ll only stick around in the first place if the substance is there. Ultimately nothing is truly unreal due to the limitations of the person imagining that story and that world but weighing importance towards the unique and frontloading it into the plot can appease that sought audience.
In the middle is a story that’s a variation of what you know. Similar to seeing who we want to or don’t want to be in a given story, the variation aspect can be about any factor. A world with everyday space travel is a wonder to anyone who’s ever looked up at a plane and thought wow. When summated, these ideas often center around the variation as its own entity. Think the old in a world trailers. “In a world without gasoline…” We’re invited to think of how our lives would change if that one given were removed or altered. You don’t have to use the stock movie trailer delivery but the substance should remain. “Step into the quaint village of Pilenza where dogs are treated as Gods.” What are we talking here? Greek pantheon equivalent? Scandinavian? Mixture of all religions i.e. American Gods? Would Quetzalcoatl be a chihuahua? What happens when one of them tears up a couch?
There’s also the draw of raw emotional impact. This whole spiel came from remembering the ending to Kafka’s The Trial. That bit was so pathetic and bleak to where the last words have stuck with me well over a decade since. “Like a dog.” It’s great. But as a writer I take and subtract and add and transform from better works. What’s living in my head is the phrase, “Like a dog with no name.” Perhaps some America’s in there too. For me that’s just about the saddest thing. Man’s best friend, alone. Alone… Scared… Lost. Now apply that to an elevator pitch. “A little girl lost in the streets of Paris like a dog with no name.” That just deflates the soul. This tool is subjective to the emotional buttons of each individual. Don’t try to capture everyone; you’ll just end up with white paint. Think of who’d have the desired reaction and drive a nail through.
Beyond the elevator pitch, the soul of interest is whatever leaves you questioning or wanting more. A video game trailer full of spectacle cutscenes and gameplay are meant to make you want to play it to see what else it has to offer. Back of book jacket blurbs, previews, even your honest suggestion to a friend are meant to sew a worm into the listener’s mind which can only be appeased by engaging with the product. Yeah it’s marketing sad as it is to reduce all this down to a single annoying discipline (for both creator and audience). But that doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your creativity and betray your work. If you apply these principles to your marketing and combine it with effort while abandoning the fantasy that you can appease or interest everyone, you can make something worthwhile.
Here’s an idea I had for either a book cover or movie poster, just a fun thought I dreamt up. An enlarged human eye. Wide. In frenzy. Red veins streaking wildly. Full dilation with only a thin circle of a tan iris. From below, a needle is pressed against the milky white cornea. At the point, a shimmer of a small indentation, the little the surface can flex stressed at its maximum. The title hovers above the eye: And Push. Does that horrify you as much as it does me? Alone a gross image while even worse thoughts arise, but some people are attracted to such things. Horror is a viable genre with a dedicated fanbase. Not so much myself. I just thought it was ghastly and it’s crawled inside my mind. Maybe the only means for me to excise it is to write that book and put such a cover on it?
Colin Klawans 