Although the writing community has slowly moved away from X/Twitter over the last year, there are still a few pitch parties for unagented authors taking place on Formerly-Known-As-Twitter. Other pitch parties have moved to Discord or other apps, typically using similar rules to the old Twitter pitch parties.

If you’re not familiar with Twitter pitch parties, you can read about them here. Individual pitch parties have their own specific guidelines. If you participate in a pitch party, make sure you read the rules carefully, as they do vary. Breaking the rules can get you into trouble. For example, you can read about the upcoming MoodPitch event here. Unlike many pitch parties, MoodPitch encourages you to tweet moodboards or aesthetics along with your written pitch, but ALT text is required for all graphics. That’s important to know in advance!

Today’s post isn’t about why you might participate in a pitch party; you can find that question addressed elsewhere. Instead, this post is about the kinds of pitches that work on social media. For the most part, I’m speaking from my own experience, and I’m still unagented, so take my advice with the proverbial grain of salt!

To begin with, let’s talk about the traditional pitch. There is a standard formula for pitches or loglines that you may see recommended on Twitter and elsewhere. Literary Agent Jennifer March Soloway has shared a useable template on Twitter:

Many people have success with this format, which ensures that the pitch contains the stakes and hints enough about the plot to get agents and editors interested. I’ve used it in the past, too, as in this pitch for Runes and Ruin:

Honora plans to ruin her reputation so the Duke of Belmont won’t want to marry her. But when her attempted tryst with a young sorcerer turns into an elopement, she must work with him to outmaneuver the vengeful duke and keep her family safe.

This tells you a lot:

1. Female lead Honora grantly serves as the protagonist for the purpose of this pitch. While R&R is a dual perspective romance, it begins and ends with Honora’s perspective.
2. The inciting incident is Honora’s attempt to “ruin” herself with a young sorcerer (male lead Oliver Valance).
3. The stakes are high, because the Duke of Belmont threatens Honora’s family.
4. The combination of the words “ruin,” “elopement,” and “sorcerer” suggest that this is a Fantasy of Manners.

Here’s another example of the traditional pitch format, this time for my Gothic romance, CURSES AND VOWS:

When a shotgun wedding changes all of Pippa’s plans, she moves to her new in-laws’ possibly- cursed-and-definitely-haunted manor house. As unsavory secrets are unearthed, she’ll need her talent for breaking spells to undo the dark magic binding Windhover Hall.

Again, this tells us important details:

1. The protagonist is Pippa. (This book is first person from a single perspective, so Pippa is the only viewpoint character.)
2. The inciting incident is a “shotgun wedding.” If the pitch format allowed more detail, I could explain the compromising situation that led to that wedding, but I don’t have the space for that here.
3. The setting is a haunted manor house, which tells you that there are Gothic elements to this fantasy.
4. Dark magic binds the Hall and Pippa needs to use her magic to fight it. (Note: the weakness of this particular pitch is that the stakes could be clearer and stronger.)

I’ve gotten hearts from pitches like that. But I’ve also had success with very nontraditional pitch formats, like this alternative pitch for CURSES AND VOWS that drew likes at past pitch parties:

Welcome to Windhover Hall! The butler will take your coat. Don’t mind the smell of lavender; that’s just the resident ghost. But you’d better stay out of the old laboratory: it may be cursed. Perhaps you should avoid the old wing entirely. Care for some tea?

This pitch breaks all the rules. It doesn’t name the protagonist or indicate what the inciting incident is. What it DOES convey is the setting (Gothic country house owned by the upperclass) and time period (nineteenth or early 20th century). It tells you two of the things that create narrative tension in the story: ghosts and curses. For some people, that’s enough to catch their interest.

Similarly, I’ve gotten likes and retweets for “list” type Twitter pitches, like this:

Though this pitch doesn’t name the protagonist or list the inciting incident, it gives you a good idea of what’s going on in terms of genre and mood. The book is a romance (hence the terms “meet cute” and “HEA”) using the arranged marriage trope (tropes are important in romance!). It is also Gothic fantasy, containing both ghosts and magic. Finally, I think the point about neurodivergent representation is important because authentically written ND characters are still relatively uncommon in romance.

I don’t want to overgeneralize, so I can only say that in my personal experience, the pitches that have earned me likes from agents and editors have typically been the “creative” ones, not the ones that follow the traditional pitching template. I still use the traditional logline format, though. It’s useful for querying agents whose Query Manager forms ask for a short pitch.

Bottom line: if you are participating in a social media pitch party, I encourage you to be creative with your pitches. Most parties give you multiple chances to pitch each work, so you can use more than one type of pitch. By all means, use a traditional protagonist + inciting incident + stakes formula for at least one of your pitches. But feel free to experiment with other formats!

Apparently, I missed a very important date a week or two ago. It was on February 10, 2022 that I sat down and began to write a novel about a girl named Christina who dreamed violent precognitive visions of the future. I set the story during the Regency, because I’ve always loved that time period, and I paired her with a handsome wizard, because I love a good romance plot. I initially thought of the novel as a fantasy, but over the course of writing, I became so obsessed with the romance that I wrote the proposal scene in advance–and then had to discard that entire scene, since the story had changed so much by the time I got to the proposal! I learned my lesson, and have since then tried to draft chronologically. Drafting scenes out of order works for many writers, but it does NOT suit my writing style.

It took me about a month and a half to write the first draft of that novel, which has since undergone a number of title changes, from Secrets and Visions (a title that emphasized the mystery and fantasy plots) to The Wildflower and the Wizard (a title that I hope makes it clearer that this is fantasy romance). And although I queried it much too soon, I did something else that was probably more important: I kept writing.

See, prior to last year, most of my writing focused on picture books. In the picture book world, the standard advice for someone who writes one picture book is that they should write another. And another. And another. When you look for a picture book agent, you are typically expected to have at least three manuscripts that an agent would like.

The rules of querying a novel are different in many ways. You don’t need additional manuscripts to submit in case an agent likes the first one! But it’s still true that novel writers need to keep writing. And boy, did I write! I ended up drafting six more novels in 2022, finishing with Runes and Ruin, which I’m currently revising. That pace is ridiculous, and I’m pretty certain that I won’t be able to keep it up in 2023. My teaching load is more challening is some ways, and as I spend more time revising the novels I’ve already drafted, I have less time for working on my newest project. (In fact, don’t ask me about that current project, because it’s going so SLOWLY and painfully.)

But the good thing about my rapid torrent of writing in 2022 is that my writing has improved a lot since the first novel. My beta readers and critique partners have helped make it better, too. I already have good news about one of my manuscripts, though I can’t yet share the details. And I’m hoping for more good news in 2023.

I don’t know if Secrets and Visions/The Wildflower and The Wizard will ever make it into publication. I really hope it does, because I still have an enormous soft spot for that story and its lead characters. But even if it doesn’t, I’m really glad that I sat down and began writing it last February. Thanks to that, I rediscovered just how much fun it is to write novels. And I hope I keep doing that for years to come, whether or not I achieve my publication goals.