It’s late July 2020. We’re six months into the pandemic. Vacations are on hold. I’ve finished the substantive draft of Chaos Calling and submitted it to my editor to see if I’ve resolved her concerns with the pacing and plot. 

Creatively, I was bored. 

I came across this Hollywood Reporter article in a colleague’s LinkedIn feed. Netflix Canada had opened a call for Canadian film/TV pitches. And anyone could apply–no credentials needed!

The deadline was August 5. And I thought, why not? Life then was so stagnant. I was itching for a little excitement and to learn something new.  

Watch my Tiktok about what I learned pitching Netflix. It’s had +39,000 views.

I talked with K, a cousin of mine who’s an actor and screenwriter. She introduced me to J, a long-time colleague of hers who also acts, writes and produces. We got together (virtually) and talked about my options. J recommended pitching an idea I wasn’t super attached to, so we picked a separate (unpublished) YA book series I’m also writing. 

We set the story up as a film with trilogy potential. Here’s what I learned.

#1: Pitching film/TV is its own animal 

Publishing has the query letter. Startups have the pitch deck. TED has the talk about a big idea. Marketing consultants have the project proposal. I’ve pitched all of those contexts, but film and TV requires an intensely visual format with its own rules. 

TV shows have a pitch bible–Stranger Things has a really famous example, but there are many others. After debating the merits, we picked a film pitch. For this competition, the rules said it had to be no more than five pages. 

My collaborators recommended we make it: 

• Visual–The pitch sets the tone and atmosphere for the project, and can be more important in some ways than the story in terms of getting people excited about the project.
• Succinct–Going over the page limit is frowned upon if you’re an unknown.
• Diverse–The series characters were already diverse, but we also looked for fresh opportunities to mix things up.

#2: Imagined casts help producers see character analogues 

The pitch included short character biographies to highlight each main or supporting character’s conflict and arc in the story. To my surprise, K and J suggested we visually cast the parts on the page with real working actors. 

I would have floundered on this piece without help. I’m not fluent enough with up-and-coming talent in Canada or elsewhere to have a sense of who would be good for what, who’s career is hot, and who has the kind of trajectory that would mean the project would be mutually beneficial. 

Their insights: 

• Don’t pick all A-list actors (e.g., The Rock, Angelina Jolie, etc.). It inflates the price of your project and makes you look like you don’t know what you’re doing. Which I didn’t. Anyway!
• Matching the actor’s vibe to your character’s will help you convey your idea for what kind of energy the person brings to your story. I relied on K and J for this aesthetic. As an outsider, assessing that was a total head scratcher. 
• What I might like about an actor is not at all what producers or other actors see in a performance. For them, it’s range, momentum, versatility and economy of choice. “But I like them,” is never a strong enough reason.

#3: More special effects = bigger budgets, more competition 

I won’t lie: This one’s a heartbreaker for the speculative fiction crowd. It’s not our fault that our minds run toward stories that innately demand special effects or sets that require CG augmentation to look good.  

But those pieces do make a speculative fiction project more expensive without a built-in fanbase to justify the ‘yes.’ 

Compare the last superhero franchise instalment you saw to a pitch for something like Malcolm & Marie, a film with two primary speaking parts shot in one location in roughly two weeks. If both ideas are pitched by unknown talents, the financial commitment alone makes saying yes to the first pitch hard. 

Without getting into the details, my project involved significant character CG, prosthetics and a lot of water shooting (day and night). Not great odds in my favour. 

The value of experiential goals 

Building the document, collaborating on the visuals and thinking through new aspects of my story was a delightful creative experience. I submitted it with joy. 

So, you ask. What happened? 

About two weeks after I applied, LinkedIn notified me that an Entertainment Analyst at Neflix had visited my profile. 

Do I know anyone with that title? No. Have I ever seen a notification like one in my feed before? Also no.

I talked with A. M., a colleague who used to work in finance in the film industry (not for Netflix). “Well, you made it out of the slush pile,” she told me cheerfully. “Between 60 and 70 percent of projects are so bad they’re an automatic delete. Someone cared enough to send an analyst to go look at your stuff. The fact that you haven’t actually published those books probably killed their interest.” 

I mean, fair?

Honestly, the whole experience was so satisfying that getting out of the slush pile felt like a cherry on the top of my creative sundae. 

I’m so proud of the pitch document that K and J helped me to build. It’s beautiful and helped me to refine my thinking about that series. I learned a lot and made a thing I love.

Zero regrets.

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Bridgerton burst into that gloom with its joyful stories, costumes and sets. Never before had I craved connection and social pleasure more in my life, and the show delivered for me and so many others. 

And so, as Season 2 approached, a former colleague asked her network for Bridgerton fans willing to chat about watching the show. I put my hand up. 

Read the digital version—it may be behind a paywall. 

See the print edition on my IG

My conversation with Elaine Smith covered a lot of ground that understandably didn’t make it into the piece for time. Here are some backstage highlights. 

Trend 1: Making novel adaptations more inclusive

One huge trend in TV production right now are novel adaptations that engage with what it means to tell an inclusive story beyond the limits of the original novelist’s perspective. 

Here are some current examples: 

• The Witcher / Andrzej Sapkowski (Netflix) 
• Foundation / Isaac Asimov (Apple TV) 
• Shadow and Bone / Leigh Bardugo (Netflix) 
• The Wheel of Time / Robert Jordan (Prime )
• Bridgerton / Julia Quinn (Netflix) 
• . . .  and many others

As a novelist and TV viewer, I find the choices fascinating to watch. Which roles get an identity swap, and what form does it take? Does the show choose to address diversity head-on in the story, or through production and casting choices? What’s the fan reaction like? 

Trend 2: Romance Conversations on TikTok

Romance is a genre long scorned by the mainstream with thriving communities, online and elsewhere. BookTok, TikTok’s community about books, is no exception.

Fan reaction videos range from memes and appreciation to analysis and criticism. I’m here for all of it. 

Sanjana’s work on Tiktok (@baskinsuns) has been a big recent influence in my thinking about romance as a variant of collective fantasy with shared rules. She also has an excellent substack where she’s written about the Bollywood to Bridgerton pipeline. 

Another romance Booktoker whose romance content I love and recommend is Janessa (@meemoreads). She’s particularly interested in what she calls the trifecta—the intersection between high fantasy, romance and spice. It’s a relatively new subgenre of fantasy with an ardent and growing fanbase. 

My own TikTok posts about my interview experience and some underlying principles for pitching media and leveraging the outcome are here and here.

Facebook also has a number of groups focused on romance and book connections. I belong to Northern Heat, a group for Canadian romance readers run by Jenny Holiday, Farah Heron and Jackie Lau. I can’t be 100 percent sure, but I think it’s where I first learned about Bridgerton’s adaptation. It’s a great place to visit for other great romance recommendations.

Trend 3: Importance of diversity, particularly in Toronto’s storytelling 

In print, the Star article ran below Evelyn Kwong’s op-ed about Turning Red and the importance of representation, which I read online and greatly admired. 

My family watched the film and really enjoyed seeing an animated version of our city. I love the friends, the family relationships and the SkyDome sequence (beta readers for Chaos Calling know why and appreciate why that’s the only acceptable name for the building). 

I also recommend this Toronto Life piece about Turning Red’s director, Domee Shee, her career at Pixar, and her Toronto influences. 

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