Just remember, the pitch doesn't have to encompass your book. It's like an ad. You don't see a list of ingredients for the reeses peanut butter cup. You only see someone enjoying the chocolate heaven! Give them one mc, stakes, and be super extremely specific. Hope that helps. You got some great feedback here already! Keep at it! Sounds like a terrific book! Jenn

When Elly's attempt to revive her husband invokes a deadly curse, their castle becomes a trap for unwary guests. Now a rogue teenage girl, a veteran assassin and his royal master must find a way out. The only problem: one of them has to die to save the others. #A #F <Is Elly one of those characters? Or an additional one? You could choose one person to frame the pitch around to make it feel more cohesive; eg, write the pitch as if it's a 1-POV story.

A noble brat in a cursed castle. A rogue teenage girl. A prince and an assassin on a murderous quest. The goddess of death will devour them all if one doesn't die to save the others. UPROOTED x WINTERNIGHT #A #F <Why must one die to save the others? It looks to me like the main struggle needs to see more action in the pitch. I'm thinking that's the fact that three people are stuck in a cursed castle. I'd just open with the castle getting cursed, and how to escape, and maybe just a one-or-two word descriptor for the main characters.

For example:

[MC] is [doing what?] at the royal castle when [what happens to show the castle gets cursed? like all the doors close?]. Now she's stuck here with [quick character cast], and their only way out is to sacrifice someone in order to [what?].

Does Elly have a hand in helping the trapped guests? Or is Elly one of the possible victims? If so, it may just be a wording problem. Like, Elly messes up when reviving her husband and now she's trapped w/the others AND something is out to kill them.

I really like the idea of the ritual going wrong. Like Michael mentioned, I'm wondering if it's better to just say the teenager/assassin/prince are trapped in a cursed castle. Oh, and whether their relationships to one another get in the way of solving the one/all problem.

The second pitch feels more solid, for sure.

I think you hit on the exact right thing when you lay out the obvious problem.

And it is a problem. The first one, I can't tell where the focus is. The way you start, it seems like Elly is the main character. But the required actions are on the other characters. I'm not going to pull punches -- it's not working at all for me. I've got no idea what's going on. I think to fix it, you have to put the three characters who have to act first, and then the thing they're stuck in (the obstacle) next.

The second one to me is better. I think it lays out the story pretty well. You don't have a lot of room to focus on one character, but in a multi-POV cast, that's always an issue.