{"id":2429,"date":"2014-05-18T07:36:07","date_gmt":"2014-05-18T07:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=2429"},"modified":"2014-05-20T07:16:06","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T07:16:06","slug":"elevator-pitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=2429","title":{"rendered":"Elevator Pitch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As mentioned in the <a title=\"New Liars' League Story -- MacNovel\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=2427\" target=\"_blank\">previous post<\/a>, I&#8217;ve been fortunate enough to have another of my short stories selected as a winner by the <i><a title=\"Liars' League Website\" href=\"http:\/\/www.liarsleague.com\/liars_league\/\" target=\"_blank\">Liars\u2019 League <\/a>. <\/i>Titled\u00a0<i>Elevator Pitch, <\/i>it featured in the<i>\u00a0<\/i>May event, themed <i>Beginnings and Ends<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>Elevator Pitch\u00a0<\/i>was the final\u00a0story to be\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">performed on the night. This will have been\u00a0<\/span>due<span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">\u00a0in no small part to <\/span>the actor, Sarah Feathers&#8217;s,\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">tremendously energetic and humorous performance, which I&#8217;m sure will have sent the audience homewards with a real buzz.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The <a title=\"Elevator Pitch -- Liars League\" href=\"http:\/\/www.liarsleague.com\/liars_league\/2014\/05\/elevator-pitch-by-mike-clarke.html\" target=\"_blank\">video is now available on the Liars\u2019 League website<\/a> along with the manuscript of the story. I\u2019ve embedded a link to Sarah\u2019s reading below. It lasts just under fifteen minutes. (A <a title=\"Beginnings and Ends -- Podcast\" href=\"http:\/\/liarsleague.jellycast.com\/node\/160\" target=\"_blank\">podcast<\/a> is also now available of the whole night&#8217;s readings.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bu4GwPAfiT8?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As in March, I went to the rehearsals the weekend before the show, met Sarah and sat in on the read-through. The story involves three characters in a confined space and Sarah did a brilliant job of bringing each character to life, using body language, gestures and facial expressions to complement the dialogue.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an incredible privilege to watch a professional lift\u00a0your words off the page and voice plausible characters that hold an audience\u2019s attention. It feels like alchemy \u2013 and, as mentioned in <a title=\"MacNovel - The Liars' League Experience\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=2388\" target=\"_blank\">the post after March\u2019s <i>Liars\u2019 League<\/i>,<\/a> it\u2019s an invaluable insight into how writing is interpreted by a reader.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s fascinating to discover details that an actor has added into the story on their own initiative\u00a0before the rehearsal \u2013 in this story Sarah had some great views on how to deliver\u00a0the male character\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the Liars&#8217; League stories tend to focus on narratorial exposition or one character&#8217;s internal voice and this can make them extremely\u00a0compelling (<a title=\"Birth Plan -- Liars League\" href=\"http:\/\/www.liarsleague.com\/liars_league\/2014\/05\/birth-plan-by-uschi-gatward.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Birth Plan<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>by <span style=\"color: #000000;\">Uschi Gatward\u00a0<\/span>in the latest event was a good example). However, my story is quite dialogue heavy, with three very different characters and this can be quite challenging for an actor performing\u00a0a reading \u2013 how many different voices (accents, variations of delivery) can be juggled simultaneously in such a short time?<\/p>\n<p>As did Alex Woodhall with his reading of my previous story,\u00a0Sarah met the challenge brilliantly &#8212; each character has an unmistakable and convincing identity. This shouldn&#8217;t be\u00a0surprising as Sarah is one of <i>Liars\u2019 League\u2019s<\/i> most regular actors and she\u2019s also narrated many popular audiobooks, including the recent, bestselling\u00a0Philippa Gregory novel,\u00a0<a title=\"Philippa Gregory -- The White Princess\" href=\"http:\/\/www.philippagregory.com\/books\/the-white-princess\" target=\"_blank\"><i>The White Princess<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Katy and Liam, who run the <i>Liars\u2019 League<\/i> are also very insightful\u00a0editors and directors:\u00a0with their help the story also evolved considerably during the rehearsal \u2013 and afterwards. Its many contemporary references \u2013 mainly movie actors\u2019 names \u2013 were batted around with alternative suggestions offered, even by email on the day of the performance itself.<\/p>\n<p>We found it most difficult to settle on the heroine in Isabel\u2019s pitch: a kick-ass, British submarine commander \u2013 you\u2019ll need to watch or read the story before this makes much sense)<\/p>\n<p>After going through countless others, we settled on Kate Winslet. There was something a little surreal &#8212; and metafictional &#8212; about how we ended up casting an imaginary lead role for a piece of fiction within a piece of fiction that itself was concerned with casting movie stars. Weird \u2013 but it didn\u2019t raise any Sunset Boulevard mogul ambitions in me (although I wouldn\u2019t mind living out in <a title=\"MacNovel -- Chilling Out with Kim\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=1132\" target=\"_blank\">Santa Barbara again<\/a> \u2013 the place where I was trained in screenwriting by a genuine Hollywood old-timer).<\/p>\n<p>The story appeared to go down well with the audience \u2013 Sarah promptedlots of laughs (in the right places) from the audience, which included my friend Fay again plus ex-City University coursemates, Guy and Sue and\u00a0Alison Burns, who ran the City University Certificate in Novel Writing (now the Novel Studio)\u00a0at the time Sue, Guy and myself took the course.<\/p>\n<p>The night went far too quickly and it was fantastic to see everyone\u00a0\u2013 and to meet Jim Cogan \u2013 whose excellent and poignant story <a title=\"The Memory Man -- Liars League\" href=\"http:\/\/www.liarsleague.com\/liars_league\/2014\/05\/memory-man-by-jim-cogan.html\" target=\"_blank\"><i>The Memory Man<\/i><\/a> preceded <em>Elevator Pitch<\/em>. In fact, all the stories were entertaining and captivating and would repay anyone\u2019s time watching, listening or reading them on the website or podcast.<\/p>\n<p>I feel very lucky to have had two stories chosen recently (the selection is done anonymously, by the way) and the quality of the writing on the evening shows how difficult is the Liars task every month &#8212; picking from what obviously seems to be a sea of excellent submissions.\u00a0It&#8217;s no wonder the event was recently voted one of the <a title=\"Guardian's Top Ten Storytelling Nights\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2014\/mar\/22\/10-storytelling-nights?CMP=twt_gu\" target=\"_blank\">UK&#8217;s Top Ten Storytelling Nights<\/a> by The Guardian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As mentioned in the previous post, I&#8217;ve been fortunate enough to have another of my short stories selected as a winner by the Liars\u2019 League . Titled\u00a0Elevator Pitch, it featured in the\u00a0May event, themed Beginnings and Ends. Elevator Pitch\u00a0was the final\u00a0story to be\u00a0performed on the night. This will have been\u00a0due\u00a0in no small part to the &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=2429\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Elevator Pitch&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1095],"tags":[93,809,1080,1097,1098,1076,39,1096,658,1099],"class_list":["post-2429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","tag-certificate-in-novel-writing-course","tag-city-university","tag-city-university-novel-studio","tag-elevator-pitch-alison-burns","tag-jim-cogan","tag-liars-league","tag-readings","tag-sarah-feathers","tag-the-guardian","tag-top-10-storytelling-nights"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2429"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2448,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429\/revisions\/2448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}