Ok, I took the step. Here's what I came up with for my novel Eighth Day.

Eighth Day takes place in a future version of our world, which exists in linked pocket universes that are run by corporate governments capable of time travel. Matt Osgood, a temporal investigator, finds himself in the center of events that will either cause the destruction of life as he knows it in the protected zones or the destruction of the world itself - a world which is being torn apart by corporate governments that are plundering the resources of the past.

The whole idea of an elevator pitch is terrifying and exciting all at once. Taking 75,000+ words of a novel and condensing them into no more than 150 words or 30 seconds of spoken prose to convey the essence of a novel - all while riding the theoretical elevator with an editor that will make your knees melt like butter - is once heck of a concept to tackle.

75,000+ words! Which ones to cut out? Which ones to leave in? How can a person be expected to condense the themes, drama, action, characters, and plot of a novel into such a microscopic amount of information?

It wasn't until I actually finished my outline and had nearly 12,000 words of fiction that I found I could even talk coherently about my novel - or even tell people that I'm working on a novel. The problem now is that people are asking for the quick pitch on the story and, honestly, I have no idea how to condense it all down into something that takes less than a minute to say.

I'd love to hear some of your elevator pitches.