Snap Judgment Call For Pitches & Themes List

***The Duel***

Face-offs. Grudge matches.  Rematches.  Stories in which someone goes toe-to-toe with an adversary in a weird and unexpected way and maybe discovers something about themselves in the process.         

***Viral / The Meme*** 

Stories about ideas spinning out of control.  Gossip gone wild.  Youtube videos spawning Youtube videos.  A catch phrase that you’re absolutely sure you coined, but nobody believes you!  Perhaps someone tries to start a trend and fails.  Really, we’re just looking for an excuse to use the word “meme” as many times as possible. 

***The Forbidden Zone***

Do you have a story about an abandoned island?  A radioactive wasteland?  A room that was off-limits growing up but which surely contained untold riches and magic?  It doesn’t even need to be a place per se; it could be realm of forbidden behavior, like the one thing everyone knows but which you’re not supposed to actually say out loud.  Which brings to our next theme…  

***Unspeakable***

It could a taboo word.  A persona secret.  Or even an open secret that's never uttered out loud.  But once it's said it, it can't be unsaid.  So we keep our mouth shut … or not.  And come to regret it … or not.  If you have  a story about someone entering a forbidden realm of discussion, we want to hear it. 

***Leap Of Faith***

Everyone has something they choose to believe in the absence of hard evidence.  Sometimes it's because life would make no sense without it.  Sometimes they just know it's true in their bones.  But other times, let's face it, they're just engaging in wishful thinking.  We're looking for stories in which people struggle with whether or not to take a leap of faith, and experience the consequences of their choice.  (Keep in mind the leap does not necessarily have to be religious in nature).  

***GI Jane***

Stories of women in combat — both literally and figuratively.  Stories of fighting alongside women — both literally and figuratively.  Stories in which women get to kick some ass.  As always, we're looking for narrative arcs that go beyond the usual inspirational profile piece.  In fact, banish the word profile from your mind.   

***Gaia***

After a recent story meeting, we concluded that storytellers (truth-tellers) have failed to present Global Warming in a narrative sense that touches regular people.  Without a compelling story, we will continue to ignore the greatest catastrophe of our time.  We're looking for stories that bring home the truth what is happening to our world, our Earth, on a personal level.  We're not looking for earnest, boo-hoo pieces about an assaulted ecology, but stories that make personal what's going on without being preachy. 

***Helpful Hints For Pitching***

As usual, we're interested in stories with classic narrative arcs — so no profiles, no news reports, no issue-based pieces.  Instead, imagine that you're pitching us a movie.  Movie pitches are all about a sequence of events, so give us the enticing premise, introduce the compelling characters, then describe the thing that sets the story in motion, the rising stakes, the unexpected development, the third act twist, and the ending that somehow feels unexpected and inevitable at the same time.  Okay, it doesn’t need all those things, but you get the idea. Anything that sounds like a movie (or a short film) will definitely get our attention. And if you can’t pitch your story as a sequence of events, well, it probably wasn’t a Snap story in the first place.