Get ready.  Let’s blast off into the galaxy of good storytelling. Cheesey, I know, I’m sorry. 

It will be incredibly helpful to all your marketing activities if you can sell your story in a single sentence.  Think of this sentence as the elevator pitch for your story.  But, keep in mind, the people on this elevator don’t enter it and then spend of few floors listening to you explain why your story is the next “Harry Potter‘”. Instead, they get in the elevator, look at you, and then turn around and walk out immediately. They don’t even say hello. How rude.  They’re out the door unless you hook them with a single sentence about your story that makes them want to stay. 

This is the challenge. It’s hard. This sentence isn’t your plot condensed to a few words. This sentence shouldn’t sound like: 

“You see, it’s about this guy who, well to understand that part I really need to tell you about this other fellow, who, actually you know what, let me start with the prequels I’m planning on writing because that’s really going to give you the big picture.”

This core marketing sentence should not be an explanation, it should be a promise.

It’s not what your story is, it’s what your story does. 

Not a bad quote if you put it on a t-shirt or something let me know.

An explanation sounds like this.  “It’s about a group of teens who go into this arena and they have to fight to the death.”

A promise sounds like this:  

“What happens when you force teenagers into an arena to kill each other?  Some of them don’t follow your rules.”

I can’t tell you how important the word “your” instead of “the” is in that last sentence.

Like I said, its hard and I’m not even claiming to be good at it. I’m just saying its incredibly beneficial to your marketing to have this sentence.

To build a sentence for a story I like to start off with this sentence.

My story answers the question, dot dot dot… then think, what is a core question your story answers? For example, “Can a nobody farmer restore order to a galaxy at war?”

There are less elegant ways to get at this sentence which can be useful the same way a dancing hamburger is useful to selling fast food. 

For example, you can employ what I call the “Known Twist with a hint of But” method.  

Create a statement that calls out to a known story but adds a twist and a but.  “It’ popyeye the sailor man set in space and olive oil is the real hero.”  That was a dated example, I apologize.

How about this: “It’s the TV show friends, but set on an island and one of them is a killer.”

This method is generic, just like fast food can be generic, so you‘ll have to work to make it unique, sensible and surprising.  Just listing a known genre of storytelling and several tropes isn’t enough. 

“It’s a flintlock war book about a bad seed.” This sentence, won’t get it done.

Instead try: “It’s the movie platoon, but with muskets and the enemy are zombies.”

Not a bad idea, if you write that story, please let me know.

Good luck on your endeavor to write your core marketing sentence. Remember it’s a sentence of promise not premise. If you’d like to know how this sentence can help your writing listen to episode 3 of this podcast.

Your feelings about your story, and the character’s you’ve created, can get in the way of your story being accessible and interesting to others.  

Keep in mind, your story is interesting to you, because you’re the one who wrote it. You understand the deeper relationships and meanings, because you are the one who toiled over them. In some sense, you lived them, so they are important to you. But, that doesn’t make them interesting and important to a potential listener. Unfortunately, you don’t have minutes to explain why a listener should care about your story. You have mere seconds.

Therefore, If you can’t sell your story in a single sentence, you can’t sell your story.  It’s not a bad quote, if you put it on a t-shirt or something let me know.

Sure, this is binary sounding advice, and, of course, there are exceptions to this rule. But, assume you are not the exception. Assume you will have to put the feelings you developed for your story and characters aside and try to understand the very core thing that makes it interesting.  You are looking for the thing that is interesting about your story without all the context. 

In short, if a listener has to get to episode 12 to really understand why your story is so amazing, or they have to read to page 500 to understand what’s really at stake, you have to ask yourself how many people, that are not your friends, are willing to do that. The answer is so close to zero, it might as well be a big ol' goose egg.

Put your feelings aside and focus on the singular reason your story exists. Then, be able to say that singular reason in a sentence or less. If you would like my thoughts on how to uncover this listen to episode 2 of Audiodromeda.  If you want to know what to do after you have uncovered it, listen to episode 3.