Thursday, June 25, 2009

The Premature Book Trailer

I hate writing novel summaries for query letters. You know the drill: encapsulate the plot, elucidate the important characters and provide a hint of the voice in fifty words or three sentences, whichever comes first. Be enticing. Be compelling.

Piece of cake.

On the other hand, I love a good book trailer, a short, zingy message that makes me want to race to the nearest bookstore. So, I decided to make an imaginary book trailer for TAoCBS, even though that’s putting the cart way before the maverick manuscript.


I present three easy steps to an imaginary book trailer.

1. Hear the music in your head. Don’t worry about copyright restrictions. What plays in your dreams stays in your dreams.
2. Visualize the actors. Don’t worry about their salaries. Your imagination is independently wealthy.
3. Write the voiceover script. And use it in your query letter.

I liked the results. Will I use these lines in my query? I’ll decide when the time comes.

3 comments:

Lori Van Hoesen said...

what a great exercise. :)

Amy Huntley said...

This is an awesome idea, Ann. I was reading recently on a teacher's blog about how the instructor was going to have her students make a book trailer for their independent reading (what I thought was a great idea). I love this, though, too. Have kids make a trailer (or at least plan it) while they're writing a piece. Maybe even more importantly--when they're revising it!

Ann Finkelstein said...

Lori:
I can't wait to read your next book trailer script.

Amy:
I always take it as such a compliment when you use something from my blog in your classroom. Thank you!