✨Four Steps to Nailing a Sure-Fire Premise, aka Darby Kane and the Game-Changing Flight✨
Plus, our hosts utter the dreaded "P" word—and discuss why it's not necessarily that bad.
Happy Friday, Shitlets!
How’s everyone’s writing going? ‘Tis the season to feel stressed and pressed, so if that sounds like you, take a deep breath, exhale, and remember that no one but you is demanding that ms be finished by midnight on December 31st (and if you are in the position of being on deadline, take a deep breath, exhale, and consider yourself lucky—and know that we believe you can get it done! 😊).
If, however, once you’ve exhaled you find you’re still determined to wrap things up and start 2025 with something new, today’s essay from Darby Kane (whose latest, What the Wife Knew, is out now) is perfectly timed just for you. Starting her career as prolific romance author HelenKay Dimon, when she decided to try her hand at thrillers, Darby was able to sell her editor on the idea based on a half page of “babble.” We should all be so lucky, right? Wrong. Yes, being an established author was an advantage, because it meant her publisher was willing to take a chance on her writing in a new genre based on past success. But it was a risk—Darby had one chance to stick the landing and if she didn’t, her nascent career as a thriller writer would crash and burn. How’s that for pressure? So what did she do when it turned out her half page thriller idea was…not so thrilling? Read on for the steps Darby took, and how it changed the way she approached writing from then on! ✈️✍🏼🤩
Over on the podcast, it’s 📕Books with Hooks🪝time again, and in this week’s edition Bianca, Carly, and CeCe analyze two query letters, one for an upmarket novel and one for women’s fiction. In addition to all the usual great insights on polishing your query to perfection, this time around they also go deep into the problems with prologues—and how to fix them (for starters, make sure your prologue isn’t there just to convey factual information readers will already have seen on the jacket copy). Tune in wherever you listen to podcasts or watch it on our YouTube channel (where you’ll now find new episodes every week)!
Speaking of going deep…There’s still time to register for the 2025 Deep Dive Virtual Retreat—sign up now so you don’t miss out!
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading! ❤️
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team
P.S. Still not sure about upgrading to paid? Check out our Tuesday Teaser below to see what you’re missing!
This Week’s Podcast✨🎙️✨
In today’s 📕Books with Hooks🪝segment, Bianca, Carly, and CeCe analyze two query letters, one for an upmarket novel and one for women’s fiction. They provide insights on character development, the importance of clarity in storytelling, and the dreaded “P” word.
The discussion emphasizes the need for movement in narratives and the balance between internal conflict and external action, with our hosts offering constructive feedback on writing engaging openings and the necessity of grounding stories in specific contexts.
Take a listen here!
“We do not hate prologues. We hate bad prologues. There is a difference.”
– Bianca Marais
“The issue is when you're using a prologue to fix something that your first chapter isn't doing. And that is not going to work. Your prologue needs to be as spectacular as your first chapter.”
– CeCe Lyra
Resolved that 2025 is Going to Be Your Year of “Yes”? We’ve Got a Virtual Retreat for That! 🎉🍾🥂
Not everyone is a fan of New Year’s resolutions, and we get it. Even so, it’s hard to not get caught up in the feeling of a new year being a new beginning—and surely there’s nothing wrong with doing whatever you can to set yourself up for success when the calendar page flips from 2024 to 2025? And what better way to do it than by signing up for February’s Deep Dive Virtual Retreat?
Every one of our twelve speakers knows a thing or two about what it takes to make it in the book world, and they’re all keen to pass on what they’ve learned in their careers as successful agents, editors and authors. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to make 2025 your year of “Yes”!
Using Elevator Pitches and Loglines To Create Your Story
By Darby Kane
I’ve taught fiction writing for years and, inevitably, when I ask excited college students the dreaded question, “what is your book about” I get a mix of blank stares and rambling comments. I totally understand. It’s not easy, on the spot, to frame the “it” factor of what you’re writing in a pithy sentence that elicits rounds of oooohs and aaaahs. Despite a lifetime of reading mysteries and suspense and years as a published romantic suspense author, I experienced the same frozen feeling when I started writing thrillers.
After thinking about characters and plot, I knew what my book was about…or I thought I did. I hadn’t nailed down how to make the story compelling. I learned the hard way under the friendliest circumstances possible—during a writers’ retreat weekend—that what I needed was a better premise. Then I had to figure out how to find one.
A group of us traveled to Chicago to write (by this I mean eat), talk (yes, gossip), and whine (whining was mandatory) about publishing. While on this adventure I got the call that my editor who I’d worked with on many romantic suspense books had made an offer for my first thriller. Through my agent, I’d pitched an idea based on a half-page idea (babble). It went something like this: a woman’s husband goes missing and everyone thinks she did it.
You’re saying…wow, that sounds dull. I know. When I told my writer friends about it, I saw their blank stares in real time. I thought the issue was my inability to frame the book idea in an interesting way. That’s when I realized it wasn’t about the words I used. It was about the premise itself. I didn’t know what would make the book special. It wasn’t big enough, bold enough, compelling enough.
Rethinking the story was a huge task. To determine to “it” of the story I turned to the tool that is all about the “it” of the story. In screenwriting terms it’s the logline or if you’ve finished the book and are ready to look for an agent or editor, it’s the elevator pitch. Both refer to a one-sentence summary of the story’s main conflict and hook.
Instead of thinking about pitches and loglines in the usual way, after that writing was done, I used my elevator pitch/logline to make the writing of the book easier from the start. I needed a more refined premise, and the nature of an elevator pitch or logline is about delivering a refined premise.
Here are the things I did during that two-hour plane ride to develop that elevator pitch:
Wrote bullet points outlining the main components and plot points of the story as I saw it. Not pages and pages. Think of this in terms of sitting around a campfire, sharing scary stories. What are the pieces you need to set out to explain the story and conflict to keep people listening and jumping at every sound? Without backstory or dialogue or lots of details, write what you think is the heart of the story. The storytelling. Now I needed to pare it down.
Looking at the bullet points, I then put them into a paragraph aimed at hooking a reader. I knew I had a dead husband and a wife who would be blamed. That’s clearly not enough. It’s missing any sort of “boom” feeling. I ran through a series of questions. What was it about my missing husband thriller that sounded different from every other missing husband thriller already on the market? Does the reader think she did it? Did she do it? Is the book bigger than this one couple? What is the book really about?
At this point, my premise started to shift and my elevator pitch became clearer. I switched my whodunit to a whydunit. Yes, she wanted her husband dead. Yes, she thought she killed him. Neither of those things are a mystery to the reader from the beginning. But the “why” is. Now I started to see something I could polish and use to guide my writing of the book.
I needed more focus in terms of plot and characters. A rambling paragraph was more than the essence of a story. I needed to find that essence. Think about Silence of The Lambs. The logline is simple and concise and manages to focus on three characters while giving you everything you need to understand the premise: “A young FBI trainee befriends a notorious incarcerated psychopath to catch an active serial killer.”
Knowing the focus and the “it” piece of the book, then I could take all of that information and write my elevator pitch. Not to sell the story or use it after-the-fact to describe it. This is the concise, one sentence summary of the conflict and hook of my story that answered the “what is your book about” question for me so I could write it.
After a few plane snacks and more than one cup of tea, my simple sentence about the book I was about to spend six months writing went from this:
A woman’s husband goes missing and everyone thinks she did it.
To this:
A woman kills her husband and plants the body right there to be found…then it disappears.
The book, PRETTY LITTLE WIFE, came out in 2020. It was a Book Of The Month pick, an international bestseller, and a whole bunch of other great things. That Chicago writers’ weekend turned out to be a pretty great investment. I now start every book by writing the elevator pitch first. The one for my current release, WHAT THE WIFE KNEW, started out as this:
A woman wants to kill her husband, and everyone will think she did it.
And ended up like this:
A woman blackmails her famous national hero husband into marriage with the goal of exposing him and ruining him…but someone kills him first.
What I learned was simple: start your book where many people end it. Develop a logline or elevator pitch that tells you exactly what your story is and why readers should care about it, so you can write it for them. Go write it!
Darby Kane is a former trial attorney and #1 international bestseller of domestic suspense. Her first two thrillers, Pretty Little Wife and The Replacement Wife, have been optioned for television and featured in numerous venues, including The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star, The New York Post, Popsugar, Refinery29, Goodreads, The Skimm, and The Huffington Post.
You can purchase What the Wife Knew on our Bookshop.org affiliate page here. Buying books through this link supports a local indie bookstore, as well as The Shit No One Tells You About Writing 📚❤️
Tuesday Teaser 😉
In next week’s newsletter exclusively for our paid members, debut writer Jess H. Gutierrez (whose memoir essay collection, A Product of Genetics (and Day Drinking) is out next week), shares her thoughts on finding the time to write in an essay full of warmth and encouragement for anyone who feels like they’re drowning in all their non-writing obligations.
If it’s not time but ideas that are stymieing your writing efforts, out video of Bianca’s interview with Peter Chiykowski, the creator of the Story Engine Deck, might be just the thing to help get you going again. They talk about how using tools can help you in both plotting and world-building, and also remind us of the most important thing: we should be writing for joy.
Not yet a member? For just $8USD a month or $80USD a year you get:
an exclusive newsletter on Tuesdays featuring bonus author Q&As and other exclusive content from industry experts
weekly access to Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra’s written notes on queries from the podcast’s Books With Hooks feature
monthly bonus podcast episodes, AND
regular Ask Me Anythings / Q&As with Carly, CeCe, and Bianca Marais.
If that doesn’t kickstart your writing journey, we don’t know what will!
The Ultimate Planner for Writers is the Ultimate Christmas Gift!
Have you been frustrated with the limitations of your daily planner which, while allowing for hour-to-hour scheduling of your usual appointments, doesn't allow you to include all the myriad activities associated with your rich writing life?
This planner allows you to:
Keep track of your daily word count, as well as assign and monitor time spent on brainstorming, researching, drafting, editing, etc.
Log and track your agent queries
Brainstorm and make editorial notes
Outline your WIP
Create character profiles
Outline your plot/scenes
Complete scene cards
Keep all your ideas in one place
Keep a record of your research and material sources
Make notes of inspiration
Track the books you've read
The Ultimate Planner for Writers has all the monthly, weekly and daily functionalities of a usual planner, but with added features designed specifically for writers. It’s available for purchase either as a hardcopy or as an e-planner that's been designed for use on an iPad or similar touch screen tablet, and makes the ultimate gift for the writer in your life.
That’s all for this week’s news! If you enjoyed it, why not share the love? 🥰
Tune in again next week for more invaluable wisdom from our wonderful hosts! Until then, happy writing! 😍
❤️ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team
Our work takes place on land now known as Toronto and Ottawa and we acknowledge that these are the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat Peoples as well as the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. Toronto is covered under Treaty 13 and the Williams Treaties. We respect and affirm the inherent and Treaty Rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land and acknowledge the historical oppression of lands, cultures, languages, and the original Peoples in what we now know as Canada. We invite you to learn more about the land you inhabit, the history of that land, and how to actively be part of a better future going forward together at Native Land or Whose Land.
Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra are literary agents at P.S. Literary Agency, but their work in this newsletter is not affiliated with the agency, and the views expressed by Carly and CeCe in this newsletter are solely that of themselves and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of P.S. Literary Agency.
I absolutely love Darby Kane’s books — and this advice. Especially seeing as how I have to pitch my next book project to my new agent next week!!!!
Great episode as always. Can someone help me find the written notes on the Books with Hooks queries? I never seem to be able to find them at same time as the podcast.