Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Pitch #6 and revision

The Death and Life of Florence Delaney

Florence Delaney expected one of three things to happen when she died – she would ascend to heaven, descend to hell, or wink out of existence entirely. Instead the unforeseen fourth thing happened – she met Max – he of the shaved head and strange fondness for white denim. And Max had a confession to make…

Revision #1

Florence Delaney expects one of three things to happen when she dies. Ascend to heaven accompanied by soothing music, descend to hell by the prod of a three-pronged spear, or to wink out of existence entirely. Instead the unforeseen fourth thing happens – she meets Max, with his shaved head and strange fondness for white denim. And Max has a big confession to make and quite a bit of grovelling to do…

7 comments:

Agnieszkas Shoes said...

This is a great hook! Two points - first, I'm a little confused by white denim. I know it's not capitalised but to me it could still either mean the fragrance or the band as well as the fabric, and that has me thinking off at tangents. Second is that the first sentence could be made sharper - it reads like it's been ut there to lead up to the great sentences that follow - a little more precision (mainly in the "she would" part of it, which is just a little clumsy) is all that's needed.

Brenda St John Brown said...

I agree, I think this is a great hook! I confess that I didn't realize that white denim was anything other than the fabric, so I had an immediate picture in my head of Mr. Clean in white jeans and a white jean jacket. I agree with what the previous poster said about "she would". It seems a bit awkward. You could take out "to happen" and then just put "heaven, hell or nothingness." but that doesn't work with the next sentence where "happened" works very well. Sorry...not helpful rambling, but great hooks!

Michelle said...

This pitch is good. I know enough about the characters and the situation to want to find out more.

Clara English said...

I'm very interested in reading this novel! The details of white denim and a shaved head are fascinating, and allow me to picture the character well.

A few things: pitches are usually written in present tense.

Also, Captain Punctuation has reared her head again to say that the dashes are misused, and perhaps this works better:

"Instead the unforeseen fourth thing happened – she met Max, with his shaved head and strange fondness for white denim."

Tess said...

You've done a great pitch here - kudos!!

Sarah said...

I loved "winked out"! Gorgeous writing.

Steena Holmes said...

'he of the shaved head' threw me off guard. Other than that - it's a great pitch!