SEE NEW POST BELOW FOR REVISED PITCHES :)
Pitch 1:
Dahlia Moss x Guy Noir
Joe, a time traveling PI, must resist the urge to alter a past of which he’s ashamed if he’s to solve a TV judge’s disappearance, forgiver himself, and oh yeah—save humanity from itself.
Pitch 2:
Dahlia Moss x Guy Noir
Joe’s society may only use #tt to re-try hist. figs as reality TV, but when he’s hired to find a missing TV judge, Joe must resist the urge to change his shameful past to solve the case, forgive himself, and oh yeah—save humanity from itself.
Pitch 3:
Joe’s society may only use #tt to re-try hist. figures as fluff TV, but as a PI looking for a missing TV judge, Joe will confront his past sins. He must resist the urge to change his shameful past to solve the case, forgive himself, and save humanity from itself.
Pitch 1 Works for me. Pitch 2 Try to stay away from utilizing 2nd person or including the reader in your pitch. Rephrase the first sentence and you'll be all good: "In the future, there's time travel. But, it's only used to retry historical figures as reality TV." Pitch 3 Try to stay away from rhetorical questions. By nature they withhold information where pitches are vehicles to impart info. Also "save humanity from eating its tail" is very vague and a bit esoteric. Joe, a time traveling PI has a choice: erase his past sins or seek forgiveness in the present. If he doesn't he can't rescue a missing judge and save humanity from repeating the past.
BTW. Any of the practice pitches that I put up, feel free to use lines from or use in their entirety if you feel like it. I'm just using your words and rephrasing what you have already written. Don't feel the need to reinvent them every time if you don't want to. But... If you want to do complete rewrites, and make my suggestions your own in their, er, completeness, you can do that as well... You're doing a good job of doing rewrites, and I don't want to discourage the practice, because pitching takes a LOT of practice, LOL!
REVISED PITCHES--Thanks to @Angela Super for the feedback!
1.
Dahlia Moss x Thursday Next x Dirk Gently
A judge who uses time travel to re-try historical figures disappears. Joe Baker, a PI, must confront his shameful past and resist the urge to alter it if he is to solve the case and forgive himself.
#PitMad #SF #A #TT #HA
2.
Dahlia Moss x Thursday Next x Dirk Gently
In the future, we have time travel. But, we only use it to retry historical figures as reality TV. Joe Baker, a PI, must resist the urge to change his shameful past to find a missing TV judge and forgive himself.
#PitMad #SF #A #TT #HA
3.
Dahlia Moss x Thursday Next x Dirk Gently
Erase your sins in the past or seek forgiveness in the present? Joe Baker, a time traveling PI, must answer that for himself to solve his case, forgive himself, and save humanity from eating its tail.
#PitMad #SF #A #TT #HA
Pitch 1:
You can save lots of space and tighten your language on the first pitch. Also, make the stakes more obvious. His redemption is at stake, not just the saving humanity bit (which is, like the stakes for ALL SF books). It will also be good to have a succinct pitch during PitMad, as I've seen them do quite well in the past. Here's an example of what I would do to trim the fat, so-to-speak.
Dahlia Moss x Guy Noir
Time traveling PI, Joe can't alter his shameful past to solve a TV judge's disappearance. If he doesn't, his own redemption and humanity may be lost.
Pitch 2:
Don't abbreviate worldbuilding terms. We don't understand. This is heavy on the explanation of world and I think you could trim this a bit and tighten. Remember a good, solid, traditional pitch is character+plot+stakes/tension.
Dahlia Moss x Guy Noir
Joe’s society uses time-travel to send historical figures to reality TV court, but when he’s hired to find a missing TV judge, Joe can't change his shameful past to solve the case, [or what terrible thing will happen].
Pitch 3:
You need more variance on your pitches... See if you can come at the wording in just a slightly different way. You have the right idea, but again, you need to tighten down and streamline. Don't short your stakes statement. Really hit it home.
Time-traveling PI Joe must confront his past sins when he's hired to find a missing reality court judge who tries historical figures for fluff TV. If he changes his past, [what terrible thing will happen].