#9. How to Make a Story Travel

This newsletter would not be possible without the support of our sponsor, Gregory Mone, so we need to briefly acknowledge what he’s been up to lately. In July, he was part of a 40th anniversary panel celebrating He-Man and the Masters of the Universe at Comic-Con. Why? Great question. Amulet Books recently published his novel The Hunt for Moss Man, a story set in the Masters world. He has also written the autobiography of He-Man’s nemesis, Skeletor, which will be released on November 1st. Talk about a ghostwriting assignment! Here’s the cover; click on it for more info.

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Luckily we impose word count limit on our sponsors, so we cut him off before he started talking about how he met Captain Kirk and Ivan Drago, and pretending they’re friends. Let’s get on with the newsletter.

When I was trying to write my first book, friends and family and strangers often had the audacity to ask a very rude question:

What’s it about?

The first few dozen times, the question flattened me. I’d verbally stumble around, citing other novels, talking about the startup world, dropping in some Einstein references. Then I’d hear myself rambling and change the subject.

Never mind the book. Have I ever told you my horse joke? No? Great. Here we go.

So, there was a horse…

As the months passed, my answer to the what’s-it-about question tightened up. I also started to make real progress on the manuscript. This wasn’t a coincidence. The social pressure to reply to that question - and to do so quickly and confidently so that we could all move on to my beloved horse joke - actually helped me revise and sharpen the novel. Eventually, I’d distilled my answer to a sentence:

It’s about an office worker who thinks he’s the reincarnation of Einstein.

Once I’d settled on this one-line summary, the book really started to come together. I began cutting out anything that didn’t fit the one-line pitch. What I didn’t realize, though, is that this quick sentence had a different sort of power.

It allowed my story to travel.

Not on a horse - that’s not part of the joke. What I mean is that friends and family and coworkers who absorbed that line remembered it because it was a little different and concisely expressed. The summary was simple enough, and interesting enough to certain people, that it could move around without my help.

That line landed me my first agent. I’d already tried to get an agent through the standard routes - query letters and emails. All attempts were met with polite rejections or powerful silence. Then, in New York one night, I went out for beers with a childhood friend. He asked about the book. I fired out my sentence, then changed the subject.

Later that night, he met a college friend and told him about the story Mone was writing.

That same night, at another bar, the college friend told his brother about the office worker Einstein manuscript.

Still later, at another pub, the brother passed it along to his roommate, who was an assistant literary agent at William Morris Entertainment. The next day, the agent emailed me, and a few months later we had a book deal.

The agent soon quit to become a financier, my editor was laid off, and the publisher folded after my book went to paperback, but let’s skip those irrelevant details and focus on the important stuff. The story traveled! My one-sentence summary survived four bars and countless beers. So it helped me refine and sell the book.

Anyone working on a story, screenplay, startup idea or product should distill it into a sentence or phrase. The line doesn’t even need to be perfectly true. Supposedly James Cameron pitched his idea for a Titanic movie as Romeo and Juliet on a sinking ship. Fantastic, right? Not entirely accurate, either. Juliet dies. Rose lives. But who cares? That line tells you the story will be an epic powered by romance and tragedy.

If your idea isn’t established yet, finding that the line may help you get there.

If your idea is funded, or you book is sold on a proposal, the line will keep you focused on the right target as you build the idea.

And if you test out the line in conversation and it doesn’t land, or it’s met with piercing questions or awkward blank stares, then you probably have more work to do.

So, what’s my latest book about?

OK, well, so there’s a kid, and….

Wait…let me start over…

Actually, never mind the book…

See, there was a horse….

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