The Pitch is where The Truth lives

I’ve recently tapped into the Duffer Brothers on MasterClass. (Yes, I’m late to the party. Yes, I’m hanging off every word.)

In the early lessons, they talk about beginning a show conceptually — not with scenes, not with dialogue, not even with characters in isolation — but with a clear, distilled idea. A short concept or brief. Something that forces you to articulate what drives the narrative.

And I’ve been thinking about that a lot.

Because I’ve just come to the end of my writing course - a full year where I wrote a preliminary rundown, then fleshed out a plot outline. I submitted turning points for peer review. We all work-shopped each others' excerpts and received tutor feedback. Eventually, we produced an entire novel draft.

AN. ENTIRE. DRAFT.

You’d think that would he achieved clarity.

I'd thought so too ... until now.

Nothing — and I mean nothing — has focused my attention quite like writing THE PITCH.

There’s something brutally clarifying about trying to compress 75,000 words into less than a page. There’s nowhere to hide!

My problem wasn't articulating what my story was ... it was realising that, when I read it aloud to others, when I was hoping for their acknowledgement of riveting characters and unmissable plot, it actually sounded ... flat.

Not wrong. Not incoherent. Just flat.

If it was a Netflix preview, even I would have turned off.

Ugh. That was confronting.

Over the year, I had convinced myself that depth lived in the detail, that complexity or intricacy equalled substance. That layering in backstory and secondary arcs meant the novel had weight.

Then it hit me ... the Duffer Brothers start with the weight.

They talk about knowing the core idea — the tonal promise, the emotional engine — before building outward. The brief isn’t an afterthought. It’s the foundation.

And yes ... I'm not sure I could have arrived at mine without scrapping out a full draft first. Because, now I know my characters as well as myself. I realise they can carry they amped-up story and the extra layers this needs to not just be a good story (meh), but one that people take in printed form and thrust into their friends hands and say, 'you MUST read this' (yay).

When I stripped my novel back to its bones, I realised the bones weren’t strong enough.

The pitch revealed to me that if a story doesn’t have a clean central tension, it shows. If the stakes aren’t escalating in a way that feels inevitable, it shows. If the protagonist isn’t making hard, defining (maybe impossible) choices, it shows.

Reading THE PITCH aloud was the real gut punch.

Yet here’s the most surprising part: I felt energised, not defeated.

Because, for the first time in all the time I'd been writing it, I could see the work clearly.

The pitch didn’t just summarise my novel — it diagnosed it.

So, in summary, I think the pitch is maybe the most honest version of a story. It's the spine, the core, the 'must read' distilled down in so many words.

Listening to the Duffer Brothers talk about starting with a conceptual brief felt like an elusive industry insight the first time I heard it ... though maybe I'm just late to the party and this high level stuff is so easy and instinctive for some writers?

Rgardless, I see being forced to write a pitch, which will be critiqued by an indusry insider, as a gift.

Because now I know where to work.

And next time — whether it’s this novel rewritten or the next idea forming quietly at the edges — I suspect I’ll go about it all differently.

Somewhere after Chapter One, but a long way before The End, I'll go back the compass that is THE PTICH, and check my bearings.

If this struck a cord, please check out my Substack: https://substack.com/@klairejohnston

(Shout out to Markus Winkler for the fabulous image.)

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