Share This

Wow! It’s Wednesday! Your Life in One Sentence

As someone who never did manage to come up with a good one-sentence pitch for her novel, I found agent Rachelle Gardner’s advice on one-sentence pitches fascinating. She advises using specific, non-confusing language and not sounding like a downer.

For example if I were pitching THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, I might say

A guy learns many lessons while aging backwards in Louisiana before disappearing into the ether.

But I SHOULD say something like

Benjamin Button is born under mysterious circumstance in New Orleans, and learns many lessons about life, death, and love, while aging backward from an old man to a newborn baby.

Hmm, well, that’s still confusing, and maybe not specific enough, but like I said, I’m not particularly good at the one-sentence elevator pitch. I’ve gotten 32 CANDLES down to small paragraph, so I’ll take that.

But this all got me wondering what our actual lives might sound like as a one-sentence pitch. Mine might go…

Ernessa T. Carter grows up bored in St. Louis, goes on many exciting adventures all over the world, only to settle down in California and write a novel about something else entirely.

If I was allowed more than one sentence, I would definitely put in a “Go figure.” But I’m not, so, I guess I’ll leave it at that.

I want to hear about your lives though, in one-sentence, and I’m excited to see what you come up with.

Meanwhile, let’s congratulate the winner of our last online totebag giveaway… EVERYONE. We only got three comments and it was our last online tote bag giveaway, so I decided the more tote bags the merrier. You can see all the comments on the the “What Book Has Changed Your Life?” post here.