Daily Blog 5/1/18 - Pitches, what and what not to do

Today in class we started by talking about pitches, and what makes them stand out. The things written on the board were:
Good Choices
HONESTY → tone
COMPS to explain style/plot
Audience → representation
Credibility/qualifications → ethos
Told a story without all the information → suspense
Clear of the structure of the story
emphasis  → descriptive
Quote → sample
Polite → introduced, thanked

After working on that for the beginning of class, we then started a video call with Noah Ballard, a literary agent, and got to ask questions. One of the questions was "Why did he choose this career and is it stressful at times to turn people down?". Noah started to talk about how when turning down or denying a pitch is something that people have to recognize that it's not just a document, but another person and they're hard work and creativity. He mentions that it is stressful at times, since he gets thousands of pitches constantly. A few heads up about big mistakes that he gave were; when the person sending the pitch thinks that the pitch document has to be voicey, when writers get frustrated, and to keep it professional, don’t show desperation.
Once the call was ended, Mr. Rivers gave us the rest of class to work on our pitches and/or screenplay idea/brainstorming.
What we learned in class can be very helpful to our lives in the future or simply outside of school. We were taught what to do/not do in professional senses, and one of the advice Noah gave was "You only have one first impression, don't waste it and try your best". We also learned how much politeness and maturity can help in making deals or compromises in partnerships. Pitches can be hard to start, and there is a lot of things to keep in check, but as long as you stay honest, credible, give a clear meaning of the story, and add a hook so those who read it will become curious quickly, the pitch has a higher chance of standing out, and gaining support.