The Five Finger Pitch

The aim is to find a story shape you can confidently use as a starting point for your writing.

When it comes to writing, whether for page, stage or screen, there is a general checklist for creating a solid story. By following said checklist, the pitching stage will be delivered with ease and help score you potential deals. In this post I'll be covering the basics which can help you start a story or pitch but stay tuned for a more in-depth technique. An easy way to remember the basics is assigning each element to a finger in what is known as the Five Finger pitch. 

So, let’s make a Five Finger pitch! If you feel like it, grab a piece of paper and draw around your hand to create an outline, like this, and you’re going to write story points inside of the fingers. It’s a natural way to force you to be concise, as there’s little room to cheat this way. Begin with the pinky finger and in there we’ll write the story genre. It could be a teen drama, a gentle rom-com, or maybe a character comedy.

We’ll include any other pertinent information, for example, if this is an adaptation, you’d need to include the name of the original book and its author and if we’re working on a feature film, a one hour television drama, a mini-series, whatever. Give as much information as you can and write said information as if you are delivering a presentation to a professional - notes are great for you, but if you get into the habit of writing in full then you'll be confident when it comes to pitching.

Now we’ll go on to the ring finger, which will give us the somebody of our story; main protagonist. Names aren’t much help here, so give us a really quick character context. You know, a sixteen year old runaway, a middle-aged widower, a single, twenty-something untrained assassin, something like that. If it helps, draw what your character may look like. I spend hours designing characters as it helps me create a better voice and more dimension to their character whether it be on paper, character creators or even the Sims. Put the time in to details and your characters will come alive!

Now, here on the middle finger, that’ll give us the “wants something”, or goal. This could be to find an estranged dad, to start dating again, to get over a stammer or assassinate a target. Something small or something large but it has to be something that your character is trying to achieve and drives them forward throughout the story.

Next up is the index finger which will describe the obstacles or the “has trouble getting it” of our story. This often adds a massive “but”. It might be that they lack the crucial information, haven’t dated in thirty years, don't have the confidence or maybe they fall in love with the person they have to kill. These obstacles cause drama and give us, the audience, something to hate. The more obstacles, the worse life you give your character but too many obstacles and we lose interest in the story. It is possible to throw in a curveball and have your character never get over the obstacles - this is great for a recurring series! It took Harry Potter seven books in order to get past his obstacles so who's to say your character can't do the same. 

Lastly, the thumb covers the most important part of the checklist - the reasons why you love the story and the reasons why it’s different from all the other stories in the same genre. It’s very important to give us some reasons to be excited about this, or reasons, or ways in which we can make this particular story specific and interesting. You know, it could be that it’s a street-smart story that gives voice to kids that no one seems to care about, or that it tackles the embarrassment and the fears and rewards that come from trying to date again after being married for so long. Or it might be that it draws on your particular knowledge and personal account of overcoming a stammer. What makes your assassin any better than someone else'e?

Essentially, you are zipping the story into its most concise form: character comedy - twenty-something year old assassin needs to take out a target, falls in love with the target - vulnerable and childish around the target. Now you have these five little slices of material that will be all you need to remember your story. If you get lost, all you need to do is find the right finger to continue. 

Now to re-inflate the story, we merely wrap enough material, enough language around each story point to form a clear sentence. The goal is to make it conversational, for example, this is a character comedy about a twenty-something year old assassin, who is assigned to take out a pricey target in Glasgow, on a mission for her father's gang. She’s convinced that she’ll be carrying out her easiest kill but when she meets the target, she can't bring herself to pull the trigger. To put it simply, she's in love. And I love this story because it gives a voice to evi and highlights that love can conquer evil. After all the years of violence, gangs, control, she just wants to find someone, somewhere, anyone who might ground her and give her back her youth for the very first time. Okay. That’s all there is to it!

This is more than enough to start the conversation as it’s a complete set-up for the story. Then you can fill out the rest of the story for yourself, or for your audience, because you already have this story shape - this general outline. If you just start with bare plot - this happens, then this happens, then this happens, you’ll find that everyone’s eyes glaze over very quickly. And more important, we lose this sense of what the story is really about. So we want to save the plotting - the point-by-point plotting for our outline and that will come at the end of the process. So, let's see if you can do it.