Act 1 is crucial in guiding readers into your character’s world and maintaining reader engagement. Critical readers can help evaluate how your Act 1 impacts on readers, but in my experience, they may be inclined to comment only on what annoys them, what they love and if they’re writers -their personal strengths in writing craft. If you don’t ask your critical readers to comment on anything in particular, let alone provide a critical reader checklist, their feedback may exclude clues about which aspects of your craft -or a particular novel- may need developing.
This beta reader checklist asks reflective questions to help guide well rounded critical reader feedback throughout Act 1 (and in some cases beyond). As a writer, you may like to select or adapt some questions to give your readers. As a reader, you may consider where the strengths and weaknesses of the story you are reading lie and which questions you’ll give feedback on. If you missed it, you’ll find my Chapter One Critical Reader Checklist here.
Do You Understand The Point of View Characters?
Do you have a clear sense of point of view character goals?
Do you understand what drives these characters?
Do character actions make sense to you? Anddo characters emotional, physical & verbal reactions match what you’ve read about them so far?
If you feel jarred by a character’s actions or reactions, telling the writer so can help focus their edits.
If the pov character thinks in italics, do you read the italics and do you find them effective or annoying?
Do you get a good sense of who a character is and what they’re thinking and feeling through their dialog, actions and internal thoughts, or do they seem distant or unknowable?
What is your overall impression of point of view characters?
Telling the writer can help them reflect on whether they have accurately and consistently represented their characters throughout their story.
Do you get a Good Feel For Character Relationships?
Can you see why new friends/ love interests are drawn to each other?
Do you get a feel for the dynamics of the main characters key relationships?
If these draw you into the story, it can help the writer to know this. If you can’t get into the story because characters or their relationships feel flat, stereotypical or underdeveloped, knowing they don’t engage you also helps inform the writer’s edits.
How Do You Find the Setting/ World Building?
Does what the MC sees, hears, smells, thinks and feels about their world draw you into the setting?
Are you getting a sense of the setting through the characters experience, or through chunks of disembodied narration? Either way, does it engage you?
If there is a magic system, or an alternate political or class system, do you understand how the system impacts on characters lives and the story? Is this made clear to you, or are there details you need to understand to follow the story which seem murky?
Photo by yours truly.
How Do You Feel About the Antagonist?
Do you feel like you’ve ‘met’ the antagonist early enough? Or are the characters wandering around having a lovely time, and you don’t feel drawn into the story because there doesn’t seem to be any tension or signs of conflict?
Do you understand the nature of the threat the antagonist poses? Is the worst they (or it) can do at any given point in the story made clear to you?
If the antagonist is a person, do you understand what drives them and what their goal is?
Is the Story Engaging?
Are you meeting interesting people, seeing interesting places & learning interesting things about characters and their world?
Do you feel like the story is going somewhere? Are there signs of things being not quite right, growing tensions between characters or within the world or signs of danger or trouble to come?
Are point of view characters having overlong internal monologues where you’re dying for someone to do or say something?
Do any details of narration bog you down, overwhelm or confuse you? Or do you want to skip ahead at any point?
Are you staying engaged throughout scenes? If your engagement drops, I suggest commenting when it does and if you think you know why, saying so.
Larger Casts, and Characters acting in groups
Does each character speak with their own distinct voice? (Ie. in speech patterns which reflect their personality, age, background, education, class, culture etc.)
Can you see that the characters have different personalities?
Do they show their emotions with different gestures and behaviours or do multiple characters act like they’re the same person emotionally?
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Can you remember which character is which within a scene and across chapters, or do you feel like there’s too many characters to keep track of?
Or are some characters so similar that you get them mixed up?
Letting the writer know this may indicate that they need to differentiate characters more or to amalgamate similar characters (who don’t need to be separate people), so the reader can keep track of and get to know the remaining characters properly.
If the characters are working in a group, do they have their own ideas about how to precede? Is there tension and different opinions on how the group should respond to story problems? Or does everyone agree with each other to an unrealistic extent?
Social media is an ideal space to think about how you present and to begin interacting publicly as a writer. Twitter and Instagram have thriving Writing Communities, where you can find your tribe. A Facebook page (or Instagram) are great spaces to share your writing life and books with personal contacts. Any of these plus Pinterest, Youtube and others are potential spaces to reach readers and promote your published works. And Tik Tok? If you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ll know writers are selling books over there. So which social media is most appropriate to you as a writer, which account is best to start with and how do you get started on your writer social media?
Twitter
Twitter is a great starting point, because of its #WritingCommunity. There, you can meet and make friends with fellow writers, ask advice about all things writing related and gain insight into what lies ahead of you -at any stage- from writers further down the line. Because of the tight character limit on tweets and Twitter’s focus on text, and because people are more likely to retweet your tweets than share posts elsewhere, I found Twitter the fastest social media account to find my writer tribe on. Once I was established there, it was also a base to connect with fellow writers and to see how they used Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok to reach readers.
To get an idea of potential readers /demographics you can reach on Twitter (it’s a mix mash compared to Instagram and Facebook), see this statistic summary by Hootsuite. For detailed tweeting advice, see Getting Started on Twitterhere (the bottom of this post).
Twitter Alternative: Mastodon
This is a different category of social media, because it isn’t algorithm based. You can go offline as long as you like, and it won’t change your visibility or what content you see on your feed, unlike Twitter and Instagram. Unlike them and Facebook pages, you can’t even see how many impressions your toots get on Mastodon. Best of all, its crowdfunded, so it isn’t littered with promoted posts. Its decentralised, so you join a server and can view toots on its feed, or on the fediverse, which is every server linked to the one you joined.
It’s tricker to be seen there, as algorithms don’t boost you hours after you toot. But boosts (retweets) do share your tweets on both the feeds of anyone following people who boost you, and on the fediverse. As a nonbinary, neurodiverse person, I can also report that it seems to be a very friendly space to diverse people generally, especially in terms of accessibility. If you’d like to find out more about interacting on Mastodon, this post has some good advice.
Instagram
If you have a personal Instagram account and feel at home there, its #WritingCommunity are also welcoming. @adrienneyoungbooks and @kristindwyer launched #FindMyWritingCommunity in 2020, and it’s a great hashtag for posting a selfie and introducing yourself to writers on. Instagram also has #Bookstagram and is a great place to promote your books to readers. With Twitter under new management, its writing community is also taking on Twitter refugees.
Who can you reach there? According to Hootsuite, 67% of 18 to 29 year olds in the US use the site daily and its most popular with Gen Z and Millennials. If your books are likely to appeal to these age groups, but Instagram is outside your comfort zone, I’d leave it for now, but plan to set up a writer/ author account there eventually.
Facebook Page
I say ‘Facebook page’ as opposed to ‘account’ or ‘profile’, because if you want to use the word ‘author’ or ‘writer’ in your name, Facebook considers you a public figure and requires you to have a page. If you create a profile as (whoever) Author, you will have your account suspended, and probably deleted for ‘posing as someone else.’
Research on Facebook’s demographics by Hootsuite suggests it is still (as of January 2020), the single biggest social media platform for reaching an audience across all age groups world wide. If you’re active on and comfortable with Facebook, a Facebook Page (or group created by your page) is a good place to start book promotion. Alternately, you can use your personal Facebook account , f you just call yourself (insert first name, last name). For advice on choosing between using your profile or creating a page, see Facebook for Authors by Jane Friedman.
Pinterest
Pinterest differs from the above three media in a few key ways. Pinterest’s algorithms work differently, with the pins which appear on people’s feeds being determined by the topics each Pinterest user selects, as opposed to pins created or pinned by people they follow. On Pinterest, users are also more likely to use the search function to find particular types of pins, so how sees your pins isn’t limited by how small your following is. It doesn’t even require you to be active on Pinterest, or to make algorithms happy for your pins to be seen (unlike Twitter, Instagram and Facebook).
Pinterest Boards You can pin (create your own copy of, collect and organise) other people’s pins by pinning them to your own boards, using them to attract followers with similar interests. You can click and drag your boards, to position them in the order you want visitors to your profile to see them. You can also select the edit icon (on the bottom right corner of any board) to select (and position) which pin it displays as its cover. I have the boards I’ve saved my blog pins to across the top, where they’re most prominent, and inspirational image boards (for my writing and drawing) underneath.
If you’d like to create pins for your blog or site pages to embed on your WordPress (so visitors can pin them from there), here’s a Pinterest tool which makes that easy. (In my case, this an easy way around the problem of my site not allowing images on it to display on any social media). To learn about who you can reach on Pinterest and how often, here’s Hootsuite’s Pinterest statistics.
Tik Tok
I’ve seen a few posts in an author Facebook group (20Booksto50k -great for learning about marketing), noting an increase in their book sales which appears to correlate with an increase of their book promotion and impressions on Tik Tok. An advantage of Tik Tok is that hashtags are a big factor in how your posts are seen, so if you choose the right hashtags and use popular sounds, you can potentially be seen by far more people than your followers. Another advantage is that when you start typing hashtags on TikTok, it will tell you how many people post on that hashtag, assisting your visibility by hashtag within the app. (Hashtags do help on Twitter and Instagram, but they’re most useful for writing prompts and communities, and less so than Tik Tok for reaching readers).
Lastly, Tik Tok’s like of people being themselves, not the polished, scripted versions of themselves you may see on more formal youtube channels makes it friendlier to the budding writer who isn’t a budding actor. And if you don’t like showing your face on social media, #BookTok is fond of book trailers, and related videos, so videos of you aren’t necessary.
Hootsuite reports that 69% of its users are aged 13 to 24 and while it’s not as popular as Instagram (yet), its still growing and a likely space to reach readers of YA.
Youtube
This may not be technically social media, but Youtube is competing with Facebook’s levels of active monthly users in the US and Hootsuite has lots of encouraging statistics about audiences reachable on it. A few writer friends with established channels have recommended youtube. If you have an interest in film, acting or audio narration, or if your day job involves public speaking, this may be a natural platform to establish yourself as an author. An advantage of Youtube is that it basically functions as the Google of videos, with users regularly searching it for content, so again this is a space that doesn’t depend on a large following or interactions on the platform nudging algorithms to display your posts to more users. If it isn’t, again I’d get started where you feel more comfortable, and think about other content -possibly animation or filming books during readings- which you could produce on youtube down the line.
Whichever social media you start with, find and follow some writers, and if you like, people who share similar interests to you. Spend some time looking at what content they post, how they interact and getting a feel for that space and which content could resonate with potential followers and readers there.
When you start your second social media account, post asking other writers if they are on it and begin your platform by connecting with and learning from writers you already know on the new platform. I see periodic tweets about this for anything you could follow authors on, and this was my entry point into Pinterest. I also met writers to share ideas about Instagram and Tik Tok content with on Twitter.
Social Media Names and ProfilePhotos
I’ve read that your name is your brand —not your book title— so my name on all my social media profiles is @ElisesWritings and my first and last names appear on all of my accounts. My first and last name are also the dot com name and header of my site. My social media profile photo and the most prominent head shot on my site are the same. Consistency across all these spaces lets you build your brand —you— so when choosing a user name, think of something appropriate across every social media you plan to use. I’ve seen some writers develop logos as profile photos, but I find logos easy to forget, while faces are memorable, so I prefer self portrait profile photos.
What Should I Post? Getting Started on Instagram, Pinterest & Facebook
(for Twitter see below)
Marketing 101 —don’t only post book adds! Your account will look like spam and you’ll put people off following you. Vary your content. A ratio a few authors like to use is 80% give, 20% ask. That could be 80% entertaining posts —quotes, photos, jokes, discussion questions related thematically or by genre to your writing. It could be posts about writing, some personal interest or update posts and some work-in-progress posts. Then 20% ‘sign up to my newsletter’, ‘here’s my latest review,’ ‘please vote for my cover,’ or ‘my book is currently on pre-order/ discounted’ posts.
On Instagram
Yes, if you’re time-pressed and mostly write tweets, you can just share them on Insta. But Insta is a visually focused space. My favourite posts to view and read are ones with thoughtfully selected quality photos or images, which compliment a thoughtful personal update, or someone’s reflection on life or writing.
Insta is a great place to share mood boards for your works in progress, character art or sketches. Posting a good photo of yourself can signal a personal update or a reflection on your writing post. You might also like to post photos of and write about some of your other interests —especially if they tie in to your books— and make those connections clear to your followers.
Whatever content you choose, Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags to boost your posts visibility. It has multiple equivalents of #WritingCommunity hashtags and many hashtags for posting about books. Here’s a list of around 70 writer and boookish tags to get you started.
#Bookstagram is full of book covers artfully arranged with props, coloured fabric backing, glitter ect. So if you’re posting book reviews or adds on Insta —be creative. Make your cover the focus of a visually pleasing scene, or explore short animated video add options.
If you want to share quotes or questions, I suggest getting on canva and designing an Insta post image with a coloured (or photo) background and a nice font. Using the same font on all Insta posts helps them become recognisable by it, as well as looking good.
An Insta book promo post by Marion Blackwood of her Storm Series.
No, you don’t have to do the above
Yes, people will follow you if you just take photos of your cat or not-very-visually-pleasing photos of your device with your work in progress on its screen and write comments about those. But if you want to gain (and retain) followers, and to attract potential readers to your account, I suggest making full use of the space by creating visually interesting content and taking book add inspiration from #Bookstagram.
How Often Should I Post?
Until I hit around 500 followers, I routinely got unfollowed by multiple people if I didn’t post for a week or 2. You’ll gain the most followers posting daily —and may keep them if you post popular content like motivational quotes, but you’ll attract a lot of people follow for follow-backs unfollowing you too. For me, posting every second or third day was the best balance to gain the kind of followers who stick around and not be unfollowed for not posting.
Following & Bots on Insta
There are quite a few bot accounts on Insta —particularly those of single men following women— and some bots which write generic comments on your posts. (Twitter thankfully deletes bot account periodically, but alas Instagram has no such clean up system). The bots aim seems to be the same as that of people who follow you, wait till you follow back, then unfollow you —to gain followers. Its annoying. You can get apps to track follows and unfollows, but there’s a LOT of Insta following apps, so I’d choose one carefully. (I don’t use an app, I ignore bots and follow back carefully, screening my followers by taking the steps in When Following Backon Twitter and Instagram below.)
Promoting a Blog On Instagram
The provider of my social media share button (Social Warfare) doesn’t include an Instagram share button. Their research shows over 80% of Instagram users stay on Instagram and don’t want to visit other sites advertised there. However, having found great quality photos on unsplash to illustrate and promote my blog posts with, I post those on Instagram. I write a blurb relating to my personal experience of the blog topic and I include a discussion question for people to reply to. Then I paste the text of the link (which people have to copy and paste into their browser, as Instagram posts don’t do hyperlinks). Generally my Insta posts about my blog get more likes than links on Twitter (though less blog visits). So if you have a blog to promote and you join the Writing Community on Insta, I encourage you to experiment with posting about it.
For more advice on creating an appealing look and on what to post, see:
Because Facebook allows link sharing, your Facebook page is a good place to share interesting articles of topical or thematic relevance to your books. Most commonly, I’ve seen writers posting updates about their latest work in progress, favourite quotes (of other writers and of their own works), character art, cover reveals, reviews of their books and some book advertising.
There’s plenty of room for Facebook Page and Insta content to overlap, and I tend to post the same poetry (sometimes with different travel photos to illustrate) on My Facebook Page as on my Insta. I post occasional work in progress updates on both, but tend to go into more detail on Insta, where I have more writer followers interested in more detail about writing than the personal contacts following my Facebook Page.
I recommend using canva.com to create full pin size images for Pinterest (as I did in my pins), and to add text to pins (if applicable). Hashtags are also used on Pinterest. I tend to choose 5 on my pins, and to search terms I think would be popular tags in the Pinterest search bar to help me choose them. Some popular Twitter or Instagram tags aren’t used at all on Pinterest, so its worth checking your choice of tag has a chance of boosting your pin impressions and isn’t just taking up space in your pin description.
As Pinterest is also very visual, you may like to use the same images to create pins as mentioned for posts above on Instagram. If you’re looking for photos on Pinterest to inspire your character or setting descriptions (something I plan to do), you may like to save these as public boards, as they may also draw interest to your account.
When creating pins for blog pages (if you have one), you may like to use photos from unsplash.com (as I did with the pin on the right). I’ve also made pins of my sketches of Lord of The Rings characters, because I write fantasy and some people interested in those drawings may also be interested in my books. As with Insta, thinking of photos or images from other interests which relate to your books may be give you content ideas.
You might feel great gaining your first Twitter or Insta followers, and be tempted to follow them all right back. Don’t. Most writers following you in Twitter or Instagram’s #WritingCommunity are probably fine. I’ve only blocked 4 jerks on Twitter in 2 years -so I didn’t unwittingly follow them- but its always a good idea to screen accounts before following back, in case they happen to be a troll, a jerk or to post content you dislike. So before following back, check the account:
🔸has a bio and has posted (writing a comment and using hashtags on Insta, not just posted a photo) -so you don’t follow a (primitive) bot account.
🔸look at posts and see if you want that person’s content on your feed.
🔸check if the account is only following a few hundred but followed by thousands -they’re probably going to unfollow you after you follow back.
Also be aware that while some writers will always follow back fellow writers, others may follow or follow back through interaction only (in my case when replying to people’s tweets). If you follows lots of people, they may not follow you back, and if you’re following 5,000 on Twitter and only have 4,000 followers -you won’t be able to follow anyone else until you have 5000 followers. (Twitter jail is a thing 😉).
Further General Social Media Reading
Social Media Tips by Marc Guberti is aimed at businesses generally, but has some useful tips for writers.
Would you like to discuss author socials, newsletters and other aspects of author platform with fellow authors? My Strictly Authoring Discord Server is dedicated to this. Let me know you’d like to join it by tweet or use my contact form and I’ll send you an invite link to access it!
Some writers are partial to following writers of the same genre. The easiest way to let us know what type of writer you are is to state your genre/ text type and audience age in your bio. If you have a website, you may like to put a link in your bio to make it accessible through your @ (and by extension through your tweets) instead of just your profile page. Beyond that, try to inject some personality into your bio, as well as telling us about your interests, so your bio gives us a sense of who we’re potentially following.
First Tweet
Introduce yourself to the #WritingCommunity. Tell us who you are, what you write, that you’re new and anything else you like. I suggest asking other writers a question to encourage people to interact with you too. My first tweet said:
Hi #WritingCommunity. I'm Elise, I write YA fantasy and I created this account to connect with my fellow writers. Who are you, what do you write & how can we help each other along the way? #myfirsttweet
— 🇦🇺🏳️🌈 Elise (they/them) Writing Book 3 🌧⚔️ (@ElisesWritings) January 6, 2019
I can’t promise you the same response my tweet got, but it’s a great way to ‘meet’ people. (I don’t recommend #MyFirstTweet -you get some weird/ random responses).
Before You Tweet
You might like to ask; why am I on Twitter? I assume many of us hope to sell our books, but do you want writer friends/ colleagues to share the journey and seek help and advice from along the way? If so -will you tweet as a companion in the writing/ revising/ querying trenches?
Will you tweet writing motivation and encouragement, or humour or tips and advice? If you want to connect with readers, will you tweet discussion questions related to themes in your writing or share links to topically relevant articles? And what and how much would you like to say about yourself, your life and your opinions on your writer/ writing focused twitter account?
Before You Retweet
You may consider, am I going to retweet everything of interest to me, or just things topically/ thematically/ genre or generally related to my writing? Will I retweet things which are helpful, useful, encouraging or entertaining to my followers? Will I retweet to help the writer whose tweet I’m retweeting?
It’s also worth considering how often you retweet. Retweeting anything which interests you many times a day may make your account look like a bot, and put people off following you.
What Should I Tweet?
Tweets with images tend to get more impressions, but writing or reader related quotes, jokes and clever or just well-timed comment tweets about writing, reading or life can get lots of interaction. Asking a few questions to get to know your followers and encourage people to interact with you is also a good way to start.
Don’t forget, social media isn’t just about producing organic content. On Twitter or Instagram -reply to and interact with others- especially if you’re looking to find your #WritingCommunity on either. Even if you’re not -reply to people who reply to your content, to connect with your audience.
Promoting a Blog or Book On Twitter
Include a blurb (as I have on the right). Don’t just tweet a link. No-one will click it if you don’t give us reason to. And don’t just write, “My book is out on Amazon now!” Sell it to us, with a pitch.
Example: “George thought he had problems. He’d lost his job and the house might be next. Then his city vanished, taking everyone he knew with it. If he can’t work with out-of towners to find his city and bring it back: he’ll truly lose everything. #BookBoost #SpecFic #BookPromo.” (Yes, these are actual Twitter promo hashtags.)
— 🇦🇺🏳️🌈 Elise (they/them) Writing Book 3 🌧⚔️ (@ElisesWritings) October 31, 2020
How Do I Get Tweets Seen or Interacted With?
Short answer -use hashtags. By algorithms no-one I’ve spoken to can fully explain, hashtags help your tweets get onto people’s feeds, but they can do more. Specific, relevant hashtags can act as subheadings and incline people to read and interact with your tweets. Savy Twitter users may also find and interact with your tweets by searching hashtags. For a list of hashtags to connect with writers and find tips, help and prompts on, see this post.
Tips for Getting Tweet Impressions & Interactions
1.Be Concise
My two line tweets often get the most impressions, whereas 3-4 lines often get the least.
2. TweetSome Questions
Few of us have the gift of being able to write statement tweets which go viral, so ask some questions most writers/ readers can answer (unless you’re seeking specific information). This encourages people to interact and is a good way to get to know your followers. The odd poll can help too, especially if your question is thoughtful or a research question.
3. Use 1-3 RELEVANT Hashtags
Lots of hashtags hurts eyes and puts people off reading tweets. No hashtags means we don’t know what the tweet is about. Using vaguely relevant hashtags clutters that hashtag’s feed with tweets writers searching that tag for information or tweets to interact with may find irrelevant and or annoying. So stick to 1-3 relevant tags. Here’s a list of 80, popular, categorised tags to choose from. Using a popular, umbrella hashtag like #WritingCommunity will also boost impressions.
4. Interact
Don’t just ❤️ others tweets -some of us only look in ‘Mentions’ and only notice replies -so reply. Help when you can. Answer questions. Play tag games or respond to prompts (these are listed in my Hashtag Guide.) Reply to familiar faces on your feed and log in at a regular(ish) time of day. Doing this increases your chances of seeing and being able to interact with the same writers, and their chances to interact with you, making it easier to get to know people.
What do the Community Acronyms Mean?
WIP= work in progress
CP= critique partner
POV= point of view
Antag= antagonist villain/opposing force
Protag= protagonist, likely
MC =main character
MS= manuscript
PB= Picture book
MG =Middle Grade
NA used to mean New Adult -which no longer a marketing category (aside from Romance), but some people use it because they don’t know about YA Crossover (the new thing).
YA = Young Adult
SFF =Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction
Synopsis: means ‘book summary’ -including the ending- generally 500 words for literary agencies. But some agency websites call a query letter pitch (which is ideally around 300 words, ending with an impossible choice the MC must make or point of tension after main conflict and stakes are revealed -but not the ending) as… a synopsis.
‘Short synopsis’ tends to mean ‘query letter pitch.’ ‘Long synopsis’ tends to mean book summary. Unfortunately, ‘synopsis’ can mean either. (Unsure? I’d ask others how they interpret that agency’s guidelines, or email the agency to clarify).
A Blurb is NOT a pitch
Blurb =back of the cover description, which can say anything to entice a reader to read the pages.
APitch must include: MC intro, MC role in conflict, MC personal stakes, (MC impossible choice) and anything unique about those. It can include other interesting things, eg lists of crazy situations MC must overcome to resolve conflict, but omitting or not making any of the 3 clear is likely to see your query letter rejected, or your tweet pitch ignored (rejection/ no industry likes having many other causes too).
Once you’ve met people, don’t be that person who notifies 50 people when talking to the one person who tagged them. When you hit ‘reply’, check if above it says ‘replying to @___ and 48 others’. (Like it does on the right).
Select the ‘and’ before ’48 others’ then untick the ‘others in this conversation’ option from the menu, to reply to the one person who tagged you.
Or re-tick/ re-tag the 3/50 people below you’re speaking to (below ‘others in this conversation). If the blue box is ticked -like above- you’re about to notify (in this case) 48 people of your reply. It’s much easier to stay connected if our notifications aren’t bursting with replies of people not speaking to us. If others don’t do this for you, hit the top right 3 dots on any tweet in the thread clogging your notifications, then select ‘mute conversation‘ from the menu.
This means you won’t get notified when someone replies to your tweet in that thread. To see those replies, go to your profile, select ‘Tweets and Replies’. Then scroll down the ‘tweet and reply’ feed to your reply in the tag thread. Selecting your reply will display replies to you.
Staying In Touch: Twitter Lists
The easiest way to remember who you’ve met and something about them (eg. genre, where they live in the world, etc) is to add them to a twitter list by a category of your choosing (using the left menu in your profile page). This will store people’s twitter handles for you and create a list feed which only displays list members tweets (which is how I find my friends tweets out of tweets by the 10k writers I follow.)
Staying in Touch: DM Groups
If you want to talk regularly, or easily ask questions in a private group, or find out what friends are saying without sifting through public Twitter feeds, you can make or be added to a group DM. That’s when someone starts a new Direct Message, but after pasting one person’s twitter handle into ‘search people’, and selecting that account from the drop down menu, you paste another twitter handle in, and continue adding up to 75 people. (Then select ‘Next’ -top right- then type your message). See below for DM etiquette.
Total Page Visits: 6615
NB: twitter etiquette is to speak via public tweet and agree to DM people, not to jump straight into people’s DMs. So if you’re creating a DM group, I’d tweet publicly asking who’d like to be added.
Shortcut: scan your feed for writers offering to add you to their DM groups (which is what many of my friends did with mine 😉).
I hope this helps you get started. To navigate Twitter’s #WritingCommunity and find out which hashtags to use in your tweets, see my Hashtag Guide. If you’d like a more detailed Twitter introduction (including Twitter etiquette), seeEmma Lombard’s comprehensive Twitter Tips for Newbies.
With many literary agents wanting only the first 5-10 pages with a query, those opening pages are crucial to readers and traditional publishing alike. Yet as a critical reader, the main advice I’ve given is to delete or rewrite whole paragraphs. With so much to set up, it’s easy to focus on “have I covered this bit yet”? in chapter one, as opposed to, am I presenting my main character as relatable, or interesting and about to embark upon a journey on which the reader wishes to accompany them? And do I foreshadow intriguing story problems to come, without distancing my readers with chunks of telling, boring them with info dumps or confusing them with time jumps? To help you reflect upon and edit, or plan and write your opening pages in a clear and engaging way, I’ll unpack 9 reflective questions giving first five pages tips.
What do I Want the Reader to Know About my Setting?
Let’s orient the reader. Let’s show them that the main character is on another planet or it’s the year 1492. I’d try to get at least one clear thing about location and which point in time the story is taking place on the first page. I’d consider doing it while introducing the MC, by thinking about things such as: what technology is your MC using? What clothes are they wearing? If they’re traveling, what is transport like in your era/ world?
Eg. In my second trilogy, my main character has to go through a checkpoint in the stone walls of a city which, until that point, sounds like anywhere in the modern world. Until my MC gazes out the window at the massive, magically shielded fence lining a deserted highway, and expresses his hope to see the monsters it’s designed to keep off the road flying overhead. Having established that my contemporary-sounding novel actually takes place in a fantasy setting, my story moves on, elaborating on world specific details and history bit by bit, later on.
Where is the Best Location to Introduce My MC?
You’ll also want to consider: what’s most important for a reader to know about my main character at the outset? Which personal factors or relationships will impact on my character’s arc? Which factors in my world/ planet, country, government or society’s beliefs impact on my MC’s life or the lives of people they love? In other words, which location is most appropriate to show the deepest desires of my MC’s heart? To show their want or goal, the lie they believe and to hint at the truth and personal flaws they may address along the way? If your external conflict extends beyond your character, I’d consider where can I place my MC to show these things and show the external conflict?
As your MC moves through the opening scene, I’d slip in casual references to what they see, here and do to show your reader the time and place your character is living in.
What Do I Have My MC Do in the Opening Scene?
That depends on what you want to show about them and their world. For example, instead of explaining that Geoff works on a planet being mined for star fuel which powers the galactic empire’s space travel and is under constant threat of meteor strikes, you could have him stub his toe on a large rock, and comment, “Haven’t they finished clearing the meteor strike yet? If the empire doesn’t staff this mine properly soon, we’re going to get buried and they can kiss their precious star fuel goodbye.”
Whatever you have your MC doing -choose a location, action and or dialogue which shows the reader who and where they are. For example, I open my prologue with Prince Ruarnon strolling through the palace of his people’s long-time enemies. As heir to the throne, he wears a mask of calm, posing to enemy servants, officials and enemy guards he’s walking past as the grave-faced ruler he believes he needs to be. He conceals his inner tension -an act and a lie tested by his character arc. He walks, not with friends or family, but with adult body guards, showing that this teen moves in the adult world and struggles with the isolation of it.
What can I have my MC doing to show through their organic reactions in thought, feeling and behaviour, what guides their beliefs? And to foreshadow their role in my story’s external conflict?
Whatever you decide, try not to begin with logistics. If you start with an MC waking up, reader me would quickly lose interest, unless your character’s first move is to insert a re-charged power source into their arm, or let pet bats in to eat giant insects, which have swarmed around the inside ceiling overnight. Have your MC doing something interesting. If you open with them driving somewhere, have them sweating and cursing as they rehearse the conversation in which they will soon try to persuade their spouse to move somewhere the spouse hates, because your MC has a fantastic job opportunity there.
Start with character action or conversation hinting at underlying tensions (in personal relationships or the entire SFF world), or at something being wrong -hint at an interesting story to come.
What can I show through dialogue?
Who are the key people and what are the key relationships in your MC’s life? What is the nature of those relationships? Are they under strain/ impacted by past events or will they undergo change during the MC’s journey? If so, how can you use dialogue, gestures and other actions to indicate the current state of your MC’s key relationship/ relationships in an early scene? You might also like to consider how you can use dialogue to show what’s relatable to readers, or unique and interesting about your MC’s relationships. Is there tension, suspicion or lack of trust beneath the surface? Banter? Do your MC and their significant other anticipate each other’s thoughts and wishes?
What other details do I Want My Reader to Know?
Answers which may leap to mind include showing off the MC’s personality, indicating their background, life experience, education, knowledge and skills or prior learning which will help them tackle the story problem. But before you put ALL of this at once, consider: What is the minimum the reader needs to know at any one point for this scene to make sense?
If page one opens with your main character being yelled at by her office boss and thinking it’s time for a career change, do we need to know right then that she was raised by a single mother? If she meets her mother for coffee after work on page two, and this conversation is the inciting event which inspires her to turn a love of deep sea diving into a career assisting marine archaeologists -maybe. But, if any of the things you want to introduce aren’t relevant to what your MC sees, hears, thinks or feels about whatever they’re responding to in the present scene -now is not the time to mention other stuff -and a paragraph or more about other things is most likely an info dump.
How Much Info Do I Show At Once?
Ideally, as little as possible. Your character comments on a strange crack in the wall, which later turns out (like Dr Who series 6) to be a crack in the universe. Then the scene moves on. Your thieves gather after a heist, one comments that someone is missing, the others decide there’s no time to waste and get out of there. Only later do they learn of the missing member’s body being found and that they have rivals -probably the same people stalking them on their next heist.
An ice cavern in Iceland, 2016. If your MC is walking through here, give an impression of this space, but don’t try to cram the MC’s backstory or the history of the city in the heart of the ice cavern by the time your MC has walked to the far end of this space.
Each time you introduce a little piece of world building via dialogue or what your character observes in the present scene, I would move your character further into the scene or through a location. Have them take in scenery or do the next action, before slipping another piece of world building or backstory in.
Give your reader time to ingest new information.
This is especially true for bringing new characters onto the scene. If possible, stagger their arrivals. Give time and show a unique thing or two the reader can remember them by before bringing the next character/ pairing etc on stage. And don’t have multiple character names starting with the same letter, or similar sounding names- that’s highly likely to position readers to confuse characters.
What does the Reader Need to Know about Backstory?
There’s a reason this question isn’t, “what do I want the reader to know?” The answer could be “all of it” and the likely result is info-dumping -slabs of telling which become disembodied from the main character and disconnected from the present scene. That makes it very hard for a reader to get into your story or know what’s going on, let alone want to keep reading. So, I would ask, what must my reader know about my character’s past to understand my character’s actions in the present scene?
The question I asked to write my first prologue was, “how do I give the reader an idea of the state of affairs between the empire and the small kingdom it has always wanted to conquer, but never been able to hold?” I did it by getting my MC to wander through the enemy palace on a diplomatic visit. Ruarnon’s thoughts and their reactions to the presence of their long-time enemies standing all around them tell the reader a lot about how Ruarnon feels about their enemies, and gives present story context for snippets of backstory. I hope its just enough for the reader to understand the present state of uneasy peace my story begins with. Then an assassin tries to kill my MC, and my book continues to reveal more about past conflict in the context of my MC grappling with signs war will break out again -soon.
As your opening scene unfolds, continue asking: how does what my MC is seeing, doing and thinking relate to backstory?
Is it essential to the reader understanding that I tie in backstory every time it relates to my character’s thoughts? Which bits of backstory can wait until the reader is better oriented in the present story?
How often across the first 5 pages (and whole first chapter) have I slipped in references to backstory? Is there too much information across those pages for a reader to easily take in information AND follow present events?
Is the backstory ‘backstory’ -or does my present story start in the wrong place?
If the narration of your first chapter wanders back to specific past events the reader needs to know about -and narrates these in past tense- you risk confusing the reader with a past and a present story, neither of which they can properly grasp. You also risk the reader getting bored with what reads as an interruption to the present story and so skipping over the backstory. (Because if the backstory mattered, surely it would be the present scene? As a reader, I find a past event narrated in past tense has no immediacy or tension, so to be blunt, I have no interest in persevering with reading about it.
If you keep writing full paragraphs about a key event prior to the current story -that prior event might need to be your opening scene, narrated as the present story, so it neither bores, nor confuses the reader as they try to get orientated in the present story.
Are Your Characters Moving in the First Five Pages?
A memorable run in Canada 2015. There’s no movement quite like sprinting on snow 😉
If your character is on the move, going somewhere and doing something, that gives the feel that your story is also going somewhere. Slip some clues in that something isn’t quite right, hinting at tension and or conflict to come, and you have an engaging first five pages. Having everyone sitting around talking may make the reader may wonder where the story is going and if it is in fact going somewhere.
It’s hard to show a character has agency if they’re sitting and chatting with friends in scene one. The first five pages need to prove your MC is an active character, who’s going to do interesting things a reader wants to read about. ‘Active’ doesn’t have to mean taking control of their life or achieving milestones -that might not be possible for them at present. If it isn’t possible, I’d show your MC’s aspirations and small steps your MC can and is taking to meet those aspirations.
Exceptions
One of my novels has my MC sit at a table with his mother and father on page 3. Mum has baked a cake to celebrate my 15 yo MC’s achievements and is trying to play proud mum (if not happy wife.) Dad is being rude, ungrateful, self-centred and domineering, while my MC’s internal monologue about his father is overtly aggressive and he’s sitting with fists clenched under the table. The characters are still because stillness amplifies the tension of the family dynamics and my MC’s inner tension.
So consider, is having my characters remain stationary at any point in the first five pages a necessary or effective way to show something about my MC, their relationships, world etc? If you don’t have a particular reason for keeping your characters immobile early on -get them moving!
Recap
🔸 Orient the reader in space and time.
🔸 Consider: Where can I place my main character and what can I have them doing to show, through their organic reactions in thought, feeling and behaviour, what guides their beliefs and thinking?
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How can I foreshadow their role in my story’s external conflict?
🔸 Start with character action or conversation hinting at underlying tensions (in personal relationships or the entire SFF world), or at something being wrong -hint at an interesting story to come.
🔸 Introduce world building and backstory in small snippets, with character movement or action in between, to give the reader time to digest information about your story and character’s world.
🔸 Consider: what must my reader know about my character’s past to understand my character’s actions in the present scene?
🔸 Make sure narration focuses on the present scene, with no more than a sentence or two of backstory or world building, to let the reader get oriented in the present story.
There’s a general structure for query letters and query letter pitches, but there are also specifics about which literary agents may have differing personal preferences. In the query letter tips below, I outline what I’ve learnt from giving feedback on an estimated forty queries, and reading a similar number of successful ones, to provide structure and advice on specifics (with tips on how to identify literary agent preferences 😉.)
Beginning YourLetter
The Greeting Yes, you want your greeting to be professional, but the formal “Dear Mr/ Mx/ Mz etc” may sound distancing, requires you to check a female literary agent’s marital status, and runs the risk of misgendering a literary agent. As a literary agent is a potential partner in bringing your book into the world, I prefer just Dear First Name, as do a few literary agents in this thread. If you’re not sure how best to greet an agent, you might like to do a Twitter search of their @, #AskAgent and ‘greeting’ to see if they’ve tweeted a preference.
If you Prepare Queries for Multiple Agents At Once-make sure you have their name right! Have a system to ensure you fill details like names and personalisation correctly- every submission. I fill in the email subject line for all first, name for each, personalisation for each, then copy the pitch, sometimes altering the bio to suit the agent, then paste my sign off and contact details. Is spelling an agent’s name wrong cause for rejection? Not for Kortney Price -just don’t call her “Dear Sir” 😉.
Line One
I never begin with ‘I am seeking representation for…’ If your query is by email, your subject line will probably read, “Query, TITLE, Genre, Audience Age” -so the agent will know what you want. If you’re submitting via Query Manager -again, they’ll know and can you imagine getting a few hundred (or thousand) queries a month all beginning with the exact same phrase? 😬
Paragraph One
There is a lot of advice saying that the title, genre, audience age, wordcount and comp title paragraph goes after the pitch. I’ve come across agents wanting to read the pitch first (eg. Carrie Howland & Pam Phonomena ), and agents who don’t mind (eg. Anne Rose), while Query Shark insists the pitch goes first. But I’ve also seen advice to put the manuscript title and word count upfront (eg. Susan Dennard). I include my title, genre, audience age and word count with personalisation. That way, the agent knows my genre (which could be Scifi or Fantasy from my pitch) upfront, and my word count shows straight away that my manuscript isn’t in dire need of editing and isn’t a hard pass on those grounds. (My comp titles go in a separate paragraph after my pitch.)
Personalisation-What Does it Meanand Why Does it Matter?
For some literary agents, a polite greeting by name is enough for personalisation (eg. Maria Vicente, Naomi Davis ). Other agents like to see indications you’ve done your homework about them, or their agency (eg. KT Literary). To see if a particular agent has a preference beyond being greeted by name, do a Twitter search of ‘@(whomever)’ and ‘personalisation’ with ‘#AskAgent’. If you’re lucky, the agent you’re querying will dislike personalisation sentences altogether (like Jessica Alverez), and you won’t need to bother with it.
If You Add Personalisation, What Should it say?
Don’t be weird -eg. don’t tell them the dream you had about them. Or gush about how wonderful they are. If you’ve had prior contact, via a conference for example, or if an agent liked your #Pitmad or other pitch, that’s worth opening with. (If they liked your pitch -embed it or paste its text and a link to it above your query pitch). If you’re keen on a particular agent and want to take time researching their clients and books, you might want to mention how an author or title they represent is similar (yet also different -your work not being a double up of theirs). Alternatively, you may google literary agent interviews or profiles to see if you have a similar taste in books or films with an agent (as Peter Knappe appears to like), or other shared interests which impact on your writing.
I personally don’t look at interviews and sometimes not even at Twitter at the query stage, because it’s a time consuming investment which I suspect is unlikely to pay off. I check the agent’s long Manuscript Wishlist, and their MSWL tweets, filtered on this site and usually make a connection between my novel and the agent’s MSWL. If the agent doesn’t have MSWL, I make connections to particulars on their agency or personal website. If that doesn’t turn up much, you might just jump straight to the pitch -the most important part of the query- as Mandy Hubbard and Naomi Davis appear to advocate.
The Pitch
The Hook
Something concise, which packs a punch about your MC (who ideally is a hook in and of themself) or something unique about your premise/ story, is an ideal way to begin your pitch. You want your hook to say “this book is interesting, original and you want to read my pages.” If you struggle, it may be easier to write and revise your pitch first, then single out what your hook should highlight. Writing a Killer LogLine by Graeme Shimmin may help with that.
Orienting the Reader in YourStory
If you’re querying SFF, Historical Fiction or any book in which your setting is crucial to its plot, and it isn’t contemporary Earth (or you’re querying in America but your novel is set elsewhere) -orient the reader at the outset. Begin with a clear indication of time and or location. Example, ‘It’s 1923 at the Bermuda Triangle…” If you don’t state your genre until after your pitch, you may like to suggest it by including genre specific clues (eg. referring to airships for steampunk), within the pitch.
TheMC
Photo by Ferdinand studio
This isn’t just an introduction. This is your chance to tell a literary agent what makes your MC different to the many other MC’s in your genre and their inbox. It’s your chance to show off some of your MC’s personality in how you describe them and their job description, or their wants or goal in the first line of your query. In introducing your MC, you want to show an industry professional a character they want to spend time with, so they want to follow that character’s journey throughout the story. Try and show something about your MC which is relatable, and which invites a reader to make a personal connection to and to root for your MC.
The MC’s introduction is also a place to begin showcasing your novel’s voice. To help develop your voice, consider how would your MC describe themself? What would they want others to know about them? What would their friends or family say about them? Is there a key sentence of dialogue or narration you can adapt from your MS into your MC’s intro?
Inciting Incident
This may not be a sentence of its own. It might follow on from the MC intro or even combine with it.
Eg. “College student Lizzie didn’t plan on receiving her education by distance, but when a loan shark’s fists show up wanting the money her absentee uncle owes them, life on the run is suddenly appealing.”
You might also want to include how the inciting incident makes the MC’s initial goal or want harder.
“Lizzie thought balancing part time work with completing a dissertation was hard, but meeting assignment deadlines while dodging armed thugs is a whole new project.”
At this point, it’s crucial to remember that a literary agent has no idea the “government” your “rebels” are rebelling against are aristocratic werewolves, who enjoy hunting unsuspecting plebs at every full moon. This section of your query isn’t just about making your conflict clear, it’s about showcasing what’s unique about your conflict, and how the protagonist and antagonist (or contagonist) interests clash. SFF writers, if you name anything in your pitch which doesn’t exist outside your story world (or has a different role in your world) -tell/ show the reader what it is. I’ve critiqued a few SFF query pitches where the “whatever-that-thing-is” is crucial to the plot, and it makes for frustrating reading.
Character Role
I’ve critiqued pitches where there’s a big external conflict, and the draft query doesn’t actually say what role the main character plays. No matter how elaborate your external plot and story world may be -character is key and you’ve got to sell your MC at every stage of your pitch. Further, don’t stop with “MC joins the rebel fight against the evil empire.” Say what drives your MC . If you can, include something unique you’ve already introduced, which they draw on in fulfilling the role only they can play in combating the evil empire.
Stakes
“Or the world be destroyed” might be your stakes. But the reader doesn’t know much about your world, or its rebels. They’re just vague entities and faceless people the reader has no emotional attachment to, so why should we care if either dies? But if the evil empire decides to demolish the suburb where dear old grandad, who inspired your MC to join the Justice League lives, and he’ll die and your MC will be devastated, well then we might care. So while ‘stakes’ can mean external stakes, if you want your stakes to have an emotional impact on the reader -make them personal to your MC too.
Complication
Sure, my MC is only 16, the uncle he loves dearly -his mentor- is dead, his parents have been abducted and he’s under siege by a vastly more powerful enemy, but, what if there’s something else in your story which amps up the stakes? Speeds up the ticking clock? There’s already a war between two kingdoms in my novel, but both sides are humans. Until a monster horde unleashed by a third ruler with an unknown agenda rocks up, and the entire continent is threatened. If in fleeing for her life, and completing her college dissertation, Lizzie discovers that not only are loan sharks after her for her uncle’s money, but her uncle has indebted himself to the mafia to pay back the loan sharks, or the rebel learns the aristocratic werewolves have struck an alliance with vampires to dispose of their political opponents -you might want to mention how the complication threatens your MC (and their dog 😉) and makes their role in the conflict even more difficult to fulfil.
It’s hard to rush to save anyone when your ride gets bogged en route. Photo by Nandhu Kumar on Unsplash
End with Tension and or an Impossible Choice
The rebellion needs your MC’s help to fight the vampires who threaten everyone’s families, but it’s the full moon, and a werewolf aristocrat (mistakenly) suspects your MC’s best friend is the one who joined the rebels, is after said friend’s blood. There’s no-one to defend said friend -unless your MC abandons the rebels. In other words show how, to fulfil their goal and save the day, the MC must risk or sacrifice something precious to them. Or mention the complicating threat your MC can’t see, which is charging at them sideways, then end with that tension.
As said above, your title, genre, audience age and word count (if you didn’t share them above) go here. Different literary agents may hard pass on the basis of differing word counts for the same genre and audience age range. This thread by Kelly from Rees Agency gives an indication on certain genres and ages.
Comp Titles
How many do you need? Two seems preferred, as indicated by former Literary Assistant Christina Kaye here. The most common advice I’ve seen on these is published within the last five years, with variations being within the last three. Choosing two such titles shows there is a market for your book and that you know what it is.
If you struggle to find a title of a similar style book to yours, you can cite major elements in common.
For example, one of my titles is to comp a complex political and military conflict, while the second is for friendships and mentoring relationships. If you want to use older comps, it’s worth checking if a particular agent is ok with them, as three agents on this thread were.
I google (genre), (audience age), top 20/50 books of (2020/ 2019 etc), sometimes including ‘Goodreads’ or ‘Amazon’. Local librarians can be a great help, as they tend to be avid readers, so I’d describe your novel to them and see what potential comps they can recommend. If you’re struggling to find a comp (most of us do and it can be time consuming), bear in mind that vague or ill-fitting comps can be worse than none, as Jim MacCarthy warns. For more information about comp titles and advice on how to find them, see this post by An Willis.
Bio
Put it last -you’re pitching a novel, not yourself. So keep your bio brief and highlight why you personally are qualified to write this book, including any publishing credits or writing qualifications, but also life or #OwnVoices experiences which relate to your MC, their situation, or your book’s audience. For example, I write YA and my bio mentions that I’m a teacher.
Leave your mark. Photo by John Kappa ツ on Unsplash
If you’re a debut author (I wouldn’t state so), and you have participated in a mentorship (eg. #PitchWars or Author Mentor Match etc) I’d include that, as it demonstrates dedication to your craft and your willingness to grow as a writer. I’d also mention if you’re a member of a writers society, example Society of Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators, for the same reason.
If you don’t have writing qualifications, or publishing credits, you might just mention other qualifications, your day job, having a family, being a cat’s slave etc. As James Gowan says -simple is fine. Furthermore, this isn’t just the “Why I’m the right person to write my book and a professional writer” paragraph, it’s also the “here’s an insight into what I’m like as a person you may want to work with paragraph,” so you may also want to include a fun fact and or show some personality in the style in which you write your bio.
SignOff
I wouldn’t worry about, “I have attached x in accordance with your guidelines”. For an email submission -they’ll assume you have, unless you aggravate them by not following their guidelines. But do thank the agent/ acquiring editor for taking the time to consider your work.
Contact Details
I’m not going through Query Shark’s archive to find and link the blog in which she said not to include the words ‘phone no.,’ ‘email,’ ‘twitter’ ‘website’ ect because literary agents can recognise such things. I’m just going to say, save words in the precious query letter word count by just stating each of your contact details -on a new line.
The Query Letter Feedback
I can’t say enough about how important it is to get other writers, with no idea what your novel is about and fresh eyes, to take a look at your query letter. If you can’t see the wood for the trees, seek feedback from writers you know, tweet offering to trade it, or join a Discord Server where writers can trade query feedback. If you’d like to join mine (which is open to all writers, but largely a querying writers support group), let me know by replying to this tweet.
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As with your manuscript, judging when your query letter is ready to submit is a difficult decision -and premature querying is common (tips on avoiding that here). Circumstance with critical readers and my editor prevented me from premature querying not once, but twice.
Author bias can you blind you to ‘obvious’ mistakes or unclear sentences etc. Critical readers have an important role to play in helping ensure your query package is truly the best you can produce -prior to receiving a literary agent or editor’s assistance with editing.
Further Reading
Patrick Bohan’s Mad Libs Formula Blog Post uses humour in a fictional pitch to accentuate everything your query letter needs to get right, while Susan Dennard’s successful query letter is annotated with what to do for each section.
As a member of a querying writers group, I’ve watched writers wait 6 months to receive full manuscript rejections, or go months without receiving so much as a form rejection for queries. I’ve learned a lot about having realistic expectations and how to tackle the querying process. In these querying interviews, I interview some of those writers, with the aim of giving newly querying writers insights into what to expect on your journey, and advice. And to give those of you already on your querying journey a chance to reflect and possibly tweak your approach to querying.
Where Are You Querying From & Which Genres?
(Scroll right to see Debbie Hadad’s details).
Cheryl Burman
Alexandrina Brant
Susan Waters
JulianaSavia Clayton
Melissa
Debbie Hadad
From
🇬🇧 UK
🇬🇧 UK
🇨🇦 Canada
🇺🇸 US
🇦🇺 Australia
🇮🇱 Israel
Genre
Historical 🗝
Fantasy 🐉
Scifi 🚀
Dystopian 💣
Scifi 🚀
How long for?
3 years
2 months?
5 months
7 months (Tapered off July to write second).
1 month
1.5 years
What did you Think Querying Would Be Like?
SusanWay, way back I thought it was going to be every door slamming before I could get near it, but then when I learned that normal people can get literary agents, I realised I could be one of them. But at any point you get reminded it’s going to be hard and you’re going to get lots of rejections.
AlexandrinaThis is not my first time querying. This time round I wanted to go in with my excel spreadsheet and make it as ordered as possible. 10 queries at a time, wait 2 months, do another 10. I came into querying with a definite plan. I didn’t stick to it.
DebbieI think I underestimated how disheartening it could be and how much emotional energy it takes to keep going. If only you could just hand it to an agency to keep submitting or if there was an app like Book Tinder! Put your query up and if an agent likes it they swipe right and get your pages!
Melissa I did a lot of research and had an idea of agents taking a long time to respond, or not at all. I knew it was pretty hard to find an agent -if at all. I never planned to write a picture book. I’m not relying on this to get an agent.
It would be wonderful to be traditionally published for that kind of validation…
–Cheryl
What has Querying Actually Been like?
Susan’s Querying Experience
I definitely know now that literary agents are normal people. Some of them have giant egos. Some of them are very, very humble. You learn which one you might want to work with.
And Twitter is a good way to see, at least, from what they choose to put out there, what they might be like. You still get an idea of their sense of humour and professionalism. It’s a good place to look for red flags, if nothing else.
SusanPersonalisation, I don’t know what to do with that. Eg. “I saw on September 17th that you like spaghetti”. [My blog on query letters will address this later this week, and be included in my newsletter going out Oct 23rd].
Cheryl’s Querying Experience
In the UK you can only really query agents directly. The big publishing houses don’t take direct submissions, like some of them do in Australia. It’s a really time consuming process, just hunting down agents who potentially might be interested.
“Because that one (Cheryl’s second novel) is totally in my control… I have made the decision to self publish that. It could have been a minimum of four years before Keepers got on the market. I’ll be on my walking frame by then, so I just want to get it out there. I’m not interested in making gallons of money. That would be nice, though that’s not going to happen.
Alexandrina‘s Querying Experience
Every rejection you get is a knock back. That feeling of ‘do I need to leave this for another month? Do I need to hold back on my next batch? And re-work it and look for more querying partners?
EliseDo you feel like you’re overthinking or being a bit too cautious?
I always go by the reactions I have per round. If I haven’t got a reaction out of ten or from agents with similar things on their list then something’s not quite right.
AlexandrinaFor my third round, I’m focusing on the whole novel, not just what could be wrong in the opening. There’s always a chance I could get that full request, so I want the whole novel to be the best.
EliseHow long do you think querying might take and how long are you prepared to pursue traditional publishing?
AlexandrinaI could send 100 queries then call it quits. It depends how much feedback I can get.
Debbie’s Querying Experience
I sent out a few, then waited a few months. It’s like, will you please reject me? I rewrote my first chapter 6-10 times after letting it sit for a year. Then I got a request.
Juliana’s Querying Experience
Querying my novel was big because it was like a piece of my soul. I didn’t get my first full until June [she started in January]. I’d heard the stories. I thought I was going to beat the odds. I thought my first book was really good. And it is. But it has to be better than good. It has to be marketable, and timely and no-one wants a dystopia when the world is on fire.
–Juliana
When I got that request after 10 queries I was like, “I did it! I’m in. This isn’t so hard. What’s everybody talking about?” And then it was almost a year before I got basically a form rejection.
When I get a rejection I would have a cookie or a shot of bourbon to take the sting away.
I tried to send out a query for every rejection I got, but then you start running out of agents on your list. My list only had 100 agents.
I have 3 full requests out. Two with agents and a like from an Indie Publisher in #Pitmad. I was pretty solid (through the 7 months.) I’m pretty competitive.
To me taking a break wasn’t an option. Which may not be the best thing for my mental health. It naturally tapered to a halt when I started thinking my next book is better and not a dystopia.
Juliana
What’s been Your Experience of Twitter Pitch Parties?
AlexandrinaI’ve not had any likes on pitches, which is always disconcerting, as I feel like I’ve re-worked my pitches several times. This year I’ve made sure I was in DM Groups, commenting on other people’s pitches and being more social about it. It helps with the community.
Cheryl
[In September #Pitmad, Cheryl and her co-writer’s first novel] got 2 likes and… [two agents] asked for a full. We’ve now been waiting two months… [to hear back from one]. It took her two months to ask for the full after the first fifty pages. [The second agent asked for a proposal, then pages, then rejected the manuscript. Cheryl’s longest full rejection took a year to come through.]
DebbieAt the first few I didn’t get agent requests. I kept doing them and I got better and more attention. I’ve had agent responses. I’ve had fulls requested through this. I’ve had a weird experienced where agent’s heart my pitches, I’ve started researching them and they have nothing on their list that has anything to do with what I’m writing, like no Scifi [Debbie’s main genre 😉].
Being in a query group has really helped, so you don’t feel alone. I think commenting boosts signal from an algorithm point of view. I like the fake likes… just this guy from somewhere. A kind soul or whatever. I feel better seeing five hearts and one real one than nothing at all, because nothing is so sad.
What have been your Biggest Learnings so far?
Alexandrina Be more social. I never actively searched for a critique partner via Twitter. I never found DM groups. Pitch parties… I feel like I have more confidence to say, ‘Hi. I see you’re doing x, y, z. Do you want to swap pages?’
Susan How much you should be ready to put yourself in a box. They want you to be clearly one thing. I wrote a book about an 18 yo, and it’s not really a dystopia… but it might be, and there’s serious situations, and comedy, and I don’t really know how to do comps but please just read this!
MelissaIt’s well worth paying for services like Query Tracker. I learnt the value of it when it was discussed in my query group. Looking back, I probably queried prematurely. I had revised a lot. I did have feedback. But I think I needed to go through again.
Juliana’s Learnings
I didn’t make too many tweaks. I know a lot of people make many on their first pages. I think that way lies madness. At some point you have to let your baby go.
About a month in, when I wasn’t getting the response that I wanted I reached out to an editor, @AmQueryingH, and she’s amazing. She did my query and first five pages. I had the bones of the query, but she really amped it up and that was the query that got me a couple of responses.
I didn’t realise how competitive the market is. Its more about being better than good enough. And a million other things that you don’t know about.
That was such an eye opening moment. It wasn’t my writing. It wasn’t that it was a dystopia. It wasn’t that he thought it wasn’t marketable. It was just that he already had that book.
You don’t have all the reasons why (for a rejection). Sometimes that makes it sting a little less. Sometimes the bourbon makes it sting a little less. And cuddling the cats and a very supportive husband…
Debbie’s Learnings
People always say don’t take it (rejections) personally. To pick yourself up after a rejection is hard. After a while you develop fatalism. It’s like “has my rejection come through yet?”
The more I learned, the more I realised I didn’t know. I learned you need to let it (your manuscript) sit. You are completely blind to the first draft. You have to have other eyes on it. When you read for someone else you pick up patterns. You need someone to help you notice yours and break you out of them.
Listen to feedback you trust. Listen to your gut. If you listen to feedback from everyone, you’ll go mad.
Be willing to implement advice. Get rid of things you really like if it improves the story. You need to be confident enough to think you’re good enough and humble.
You’re blind to your manuscript’s faults because you’re so in love with it that you can’t see what’s wrong with it.
Like phrases you use too much. I removed characters and rewrote from third person past tense to first person dual point of view.
What Advice would you give to Writers Beginning Their Querying Journey?
MelissaI don’t put all my eggs in one basket. You can’t rely on one path to get you through. Have a process for dealing with rejections. (Some writers)… have a dream agent or a few dream agents in mind and I feel like that’s setting yourself up for disappointment.
AlexTake on feedback. Actively look for feedback. Know this agent looks for this because of this interview.
SusanEven if you do fit into more than one category, you have to know how to make yourself fit into the boxes the agents want to fit. Accept that you’ve got to follow the established rule for comps. Actually read at least enough of them to understand why you’re comping it. Ask people who have experience with querying… who’ve gotten to have informal conversations with agents (at conferences). Go to any conferences available to you. If not, find people who’ve been there (not stalking 😉).
Cheryls’ Advice
Do not start querying until you are super, super happy with your manuscript. Give it to as many readers as possible and beg for their honest views. Re-write. Re-write.
-Cheryl
Tell them you’re not just interested in where the commas are. You really want to know if the story works and how do the characters come across. So ask questions. [For an example of possible questions, see my chapter onecritical reader checklist.]
Think about your comps very carefully. Think about style, tone, voice -is it similar? Don’t be too specific about the story.
Make sure you read the submission guidelines very, very carefully. If they ask for 50 pages, send 50.
In terms of getting your manuscript ready, make sure you’ve actually written it technically properly… point of view… dialogue.. make sure you learn those things from other writers. From reading books like Dave King and Renee Brown’s Self Editing for Fiction Writers.
Because an agent’s just going to throw it out the door… they need just the slightest excuse to move on to the next one.
Juliana’s Advice
After living the rejections, it gets easier. It really does.
By my 80th rejection it was, “well at least I heard back. That was nice.” I had 5 agents say, “That wasn’t for me, but I hope you’ll keep me in mind for future work.” So make sure you read your rejections all the way through, because it usually comes at the end if they say that…
If they say “I’d love to read this”, that means they want the full…
Keep track of it. Query Tracker is a really good website.
For my future queries, I have that sheet with who wanted more and whose responses were kind and personalised. I got a couple that were kind of scathing like, “consider joining a critique group.” Like, I am. I got one that just said, “Thank you. This isn’t for me.”
I can’t emphasize enough: have a support system. Nobody gets it like a writer gets it.
Debbie’s Advice
Seriously, make a list of 50 people. Collect 100 rejections. Treat it as an exercise. Be persistent. It’s a long long process. Finding an agent by Friday is like walking down the street and finding a bag of gold. It’s like going on a first blind date and expecting that person to be the one. You need to date a lot of weirdos before you find the one. It’s the same with querying.
Agents have to practically marry your manuscript to represent you. They’re going to be going over it so many times and pushing it to other people.
I need to make a decision if I’m going to keep querying or self publishing. I really love my books and I think they are publish worthy. I believe they will find a home in readers hearts. You can’t know if there’s a cavern of gold and you’re centimetres away. We don’t know how far we are from the cavern or if there is a cavern.
I kind of want to say don’t give up because you could succeed tomorrow, but you don’t want to be querying forever.
Debbie Iancu Hadad
Two short stories of mine appeared in the anthology ‘Achten Tan: Land of Dust and Bone (Tales from the Year Between, Book 1)’. Currently querying a couple of YA SFF novels, participating in three different anthologies, writing vss on Twitter and buying way too much stuff on Aliexpress. For my day job I give lectures on humor and serve as a personal chauffeur for my two teenagers. Residing in Meitar, Israel. You’ll find her on Twitter @debbieiancu.
Susan Waters
lives in Ontario, Canada. Her writing, however, usually features her east coast roots, whether by landscape or by culture. Her first novel is an upper YA Speculative Fiction she hopes is the first volume in a series. Currently she’s penning an adult romantic comedy while plotting half a dozen stories, most of which blend science fantasy and humour. You’ll find her on Twitter @storiesbysusan.
Cheryl Burman
lives in the beautiful Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, UK. Her first novel was a fantasy middle-grade trilogy but she has since taken to adult historical fiction. Her co-authored novel The Shanty Keeper’s Wife is currently being queried and she has also written a romance set in Australia in the 1950s. Her current WIP uses the Forest of Dean as its backdrop and is a magical realism novel about a young woman who becomes a hedge witch – and a little bit more.At the end: She also writes short stories and flash fiction, a few of which have won prizes. She also writes short stories and flash fiction, a few of which have won prizes. You’ll find her on Twitter @cr_burman.
Juliana Savia Clayton
I write young adult novels and picture books. Currently, I’m working on a YA Romcom. I am an active SCBWI member, serving as the Indiana chapter’s Volunteer Coordinator. I am also a member of the Indiana Writers Center. In my day job, I edit environmental documents, and I have one published non-fiction article in my field. You’ll find her on Twitter @kidlit_writer.
Alexandrina Brant
Raised on a diet of Tolkien, Doctor Who, and Agatha Christie, Alexandrina Brant grew up around the city of Oxford, England. After graduating from the University of Reading with joint honours in Psychology & Philosophy, she hightailed it to London to study a Master’s in Linguistics at UCL, where her focus was sociolinguistics and dialect blending. She currently lives in Yorkshire with her husband and two warring cats. Her short stories have been published in several local anthologies and she is working on a Steampunk novel about a linguist’s journey to rescue her fiancé and a Doctor-Who-esque sci fi about lesbian aliens trying to save a corrupt planet. She keeps up with the bookish community on Instagram @lingua_fabularum. You’ll find her on Twitter @caelestia_flora.
Melissa-Jane Nguyen
is an Aussie freelance writer and editor and mum to two little ones. She has writing published in Kidspot and Essential Baby, she sends out a fortnightly newsletter that combines aspects of writing and parenting, and she runs a short story publication with her sister. Melissa is currently working on querying and writing picture books, planning a middle grade novel, and letting a young adult manuscript marinate for a while before turning it on its head and rewriting the entire thing. Melissa is (sort of) becoming an expert at juggling lots of projects simultaneously. If you can get her to sit down for a chat, she’s partial to any kind of tea and will happily relate all she’s discovered about celebrities and topics she has no real interest in but has researched thoroughly as a result of falling down rabbit holes. You’ll find her on Twitter @MJEditing.
Total Page Visits: 1603
Related Reading
For a list of Twitter pitch parties to pitch your novel in, see this post.
For advice on crafting query letter or tweet pitches, see this one.
For a list of resource links spanning Query Letters & Synopsis to Finding and Communicating with Literary Agents, see this post.
I know of 9 confirmed and others survival in doubt parties on Twitter (and 1 on a blog) to pitch your novel to literary agents and three author mentoring programs. In this post you’ll find links to each pitch party and mentoring program website, and parties and programs listed by calendar month. You’ll also find detailed advice on effective pitch and party preparation and on making the most of #WritingCommunity support. (Hint, RTs are the beginning -not the end!).
But First… Is your book Ready to Query?
Have you edited your MS for every aspect of character, conflict, story tension etc you’ve read up on? Have you received constructive feedback from critical readers focused on making the book a better reading experience? Did you edit again and possibly get a second (and third round) of critical readers? (Especially if you’re a fellow pantser 😉). Is your query letter up to scratch? Have you researched its contents, how to ‘sell’ the book to literary agents or acquiring editors in your pitch, and received critical feedback? If not, see this post to kick your query letter into shape!
#KidLitPit Children’s books from PB to YA. January 26th 11.59pm in your time zone (all/ any), 2023. Website
#SFFPit Fantasy, Sci-fi, Speculative Fiction. August, 8am-6pm EST (Not yet scheduled for 2023. Its unclear if it will continue). SFFPit Website
Savvy Authors Pitchfest begins 9am Feb 15th 2023, June & Oct TBC. This event is by registration on theirSavy Authors Site.
#PBPitch -Picture Books- February 16th 2023, June 15th & October TBC, 8am-8pm EST. PBPitch Website.
#PBParty Picture Books. March 1 2023, midnight to 1am EST OR 6pm -8pm EST via Google Form. PBParty Website.
#WMPitch -Picture Books through to YA- April, 8am-8pm British Time Cancelled? Website no longer exists.
#MoodPitch Fiction, all audience age ranges and genres. April 6th and November 2nd 8am-8pm EST, 2023. Moodpitch website.
#Smoochpit Romance. This is pitching to a mentorship program, not literary agents. 8am-9pm EST May 12th 2023. Website
#SWANAPit writers from South West Asia & North Africa (countries listed on website). May?Cancelled? Website no longer exists and Twitter account inactive since 2022.
#Pitmad Most fiction & non-fiction. (2022 TBC): March, June, September, & December, 8am-8pm EST. Pitmad Website Pitmad is discontinued as of 16/02/2022.
#LGBTNPit Authors in the Queer Community, special focus on trans & non-binary authors. April 14th 2022, 8am-8pm. LGBTNPit Website. Discontinued as of May 2022.
#CanLitPit for Canadian authors. June, 9am to 9pm (2023 in doubt as the organiser switches jobs. Latest news is this event is currently suspended). CanLitPit Website.
#PitchDis for authors with a disability & neurodivergent authors, June 22nd, 2023, 8am-8pm, PitchDis Website.
#DVpit -Marginalised Writers- August children’s and YA, Adult has moved to Discord (announced here, as of May 2023). Discord invites will be delivered via their newsletter. DVpit Website.
#JoyPitch The opposite of Pitdark, for ‘light hearted feel good fiction and non-fiction’ of all categories and age ranges. June 1st, 8am -8pm 2023. Joypit website.
#FaithPitch -Christian Fiction- September (2022 TBC). FaithPit. websiteDiscontinued as of March 1st 2022.
If you haven’t taken this step, chances are there’s a lot you don’t know or understand about how to write a successful pitch. If you don’t know where to find tweet pitch advice, mine is here for starters.
Reading as many strong tweet pitch examples as you can also helps. To find them, search the pitch party hashtag and the hashtags you plan to pitch on. The ‘top’ feed may have some great examples, but it also has rather ordinary pitches by people with lots of rts them, so I also suggest skimming ‘latest’ too. A third source of inspiration and understanding is successful query letter pitches. Here’s a spreadsheet of 600+ successful query letters by genre.
2. Comparison Titles & Formatting
Use comps in your tweet pitches. They can indicate more about tone, setting and themes than you have room to indicate in your pitch. For tweet pitches, you’re not limited to books published within the last 5 years (unlike query pitches). Film or tv series and older books are ok. Ideally your comps will be recognisable to agents and publishers, and or contrast with each other (e.g. my MG tweet pitch comps were MATILDA X kids INCEPTION). Alternatively, you could have a notable twist on a comp, e.g. gender-swapped (fairytale/ well-known story) or for example Downton Abbey —with witches. Putting your comps in ALL CAPs at the top of your pitch can help them stand out and encourage industry folks to read and pay proper attention to your pitch.
3. Party Hashtags
Agents and publishers will search genre, audience age and marginalised writer hashtags to find pitches of interest to them. Parties like SFFPit have their own official hashtag lists, which aren’t always the same. So whichever party you’re pitching in, check if it has its own hashtag list and if so, use hashtags from that list, so your pitches are seen by industry professionals. I’ve linked every pitch party I know of’s website above.
As you’re identifying the main relevant hashtags for your pitch, and having already chosen comp titles, now is a good time to type your pitch and hashtags into a tweet or do a character count to check each pitch with comps and hashtags fits Twitter’s 280 character limit. If you’re struggling with this, you might want to skip to step 4.
4. Get Feedback on Your Pitches
There are a few options for doing this, the first being great if you’re new to Twitter and don’t know many writers yet.
Pitch Feedback Parties
Like pitch parties, practice pitch parties run on a particular hashtag, day and time. Some general ones are #Mockpit (dates on their website), or #Pracpit ( #Practpit’s website), while some parties have their own practice pitch event. Eg. #WMPitch has #PeerPitch and #DVPit has #PreDVPit. These events are a great way to get pitch feedback if you’re new to Twitter and have few contacts, or want additional opinions on pitch revisions.
Asking For Feedback
If you can’t find or can’t participate in a practice pitch party, you can also tweet asking for feedback, or search your pitch party’s hashtag for anyone offering feedback. Or you can or do a Twitter search of ‘Discord’ and ‘#AmQuerying’ to look for servers which may have pitch feedback channels. If you’d like to join my Craft & Query Discord Server (which has pitch, query letter, synopsis & beta reader channels), let me know by replying to this tweet.
5. RT or Comment Lists
Tweeting offering to add writers to a twitter list where you can RT or comment on each other’s pitches is a good way to encourage each other and to boost your pitch visibility. With so many people pitching in parties, its also an increasingly popular idea. If you don’t want to make your own Twitter list (which stores handles of people pitching so you can check their feed or pinned tweet), I suggest searching the pitch party hashtag for people offering to put writers on their lists.
6. Join a DM Group
Pitch parties can be lonely, stressful and discouraging affairs on your own. Creating or joining a Group DM on Twitter, or a Discord Server to share pitches for RTs and comments, and to chat, commiserate, celebrate successes and cheer each other on makes Party Day much more enjoyable. It gives you a community, whereas spending time on the party’s hashtag feed on your own may give you the feeling of being a drop in the ocean.
If you’re new to pitch parties or have questions about anything, including agents or publishers who like your pitches, a DM Group gives you a bunch of people to ask directly. And as many people in my DM groups have said: pitch parties are more fun in a DM group!
To find people creating DM groups, search the pitch party hashtag in the Twitter search bar. As of August 2022 I still have a pitch party dm group going, so if you’d like to join it feel free to tag or dm me @ElisesWritings asking to be added to it.
The easiest way to share your pitches in a DM is to hit this button
on the bottom right of your tweet after you pitch it. Then select ‘Send via Direct Message’ and select the name of the DM group from the menu. On computer, you can also copy the url from your browser, paste it in the DM and hit ‘enter’ to share it in the group.
7. Tweet to Explain Pitch Party Etiquette
It never hurts to tell your followers you’re pitching and that they can support you by boosting your impressions and visibility on hashtag ‘top’ feeds to industry professionals (you may like to include a mood board for your wip in this tweet). Your followers can boost by comments (which are more effective for Twitter algorithms) and RTs (which make your pitch more visible to writers, who can then comment on them). If you don’t have many followers and aren’t getting many comments or RT’s, the other hashtag feed industry professionals can search is ‘latest’, which shows up EVERYONE’s pitch at the time they tweet it.
The other important thing to tweet is the explanation that during a pitch party a ❤️ is how literary agents and indie publishers request submissions, and that non-industry likes cause disappointment, or leave us fighting hope as we sift through tens of ❤️ ‘s wondering if even one is an actual request.
8. Mind Set
2021 March’s #Pitmad saw over 570k tweets on the hashtag (yes this includes LOADS of RTs). Its possible your pitches won’t be seen by industry professionals and its VERY common not to get industry requests. Some agents and publishers made under 20 requests -period not just per genre- in March’s Pitmad. But if you go in expecting nothing from the industry, and prepare with the goal of improving your pitch craft, making writer friends, and of testing how your pitches are received by fellow writers to learn what works well for future parties and query editing- you’ll be all set for a positive experience.
9. Decide Which Pitch to Tweet First
This is important because your first pitch will get the most impressions, as people who are supporting pitching writers are most likely to retweet and comment during the first hour. So try to identify which pitch sells your character best, makes your conflict and stakes the clearest and most engaging, and ideally also the pitch which has the most voice. To get maximum retweets and or comments -pitch it in the first 1/2 hour. If you’re not sure how to write a pitch, or don’t know the difference between a pitch, a log line or a blurb (book pitches are different to both and must include certain things to be successful), here’s my post on tweet pitch crafting.
But when do you tweet your other pitches?
Hourly for some parties, but only 2 or 3 pitches max for others. Parties tend to get increasingly quiet after 1pm -especially in the finale hours- so you may wish to tweet all your pitches by as early as 1-3pm. That said, I saw a few agents tweeted that they were beginning to check Pitmad pitches in the last few hours of March 2021’s Pitmad, so if you are online during the party, checking when agents are online is your best way to decide. You’ll sometimes find their ‘I’m checking out (insert party)’ tweets on the party hashtag’s ‘Top’ feed, including agents searching party hashtags the day after the party. If you have particular agents or publishers in mind, you could also check their twitter profiles, as they will normally tweet when they start checking pitches.
9. Schedule Your Pitches on Twitter
Yes, you can use Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, but now you can use Twitter to schedule, so everything is in one place. Whether you’re home all day and awake during a party, sleeping because your timezone isn’t compatible with the US east coast, or working -or both- scheduling pitches takes pressure off you during the party. If you’re online, scheduling lets you focus on retweeting and or commenting on others pitches.
To schedule pitches on Twitter
1. Hit ‘tweet’.
2. Type your pitch.
3. Select this button (beside the emoji button).
4. Select your time and date.
Timezones: If you’re not on US EST time, most parties run on it, except for #WMPitch, which runs on British time and Latinx Pitch. So check your party’s times above (its often 8am to 8pm but again, not always) and convert them to your timezone! If you’re pitching from Australia or New Zealand, remember it’s often the date after the party because we’re a day ahead 😉.
5. Hit ‘confirm’ (top right).
6. Then you’ll see your pitch again. Hit ‘schedule’ (bottom right).
10. Pin your Pitch
This is so writers you know and kind random strangers can easily find and retweet it -if you’re also retweeting other writers and your feed is cluttered with RTs. I’m hearing a lot about how comments do more for Twitter’s algorithms, so I suggest commenting on pitches if you can and asking others to do so for you. (Bear in mind this only works if they’ve got time and it isn’t midnight or 2am in their timezone -fellow Aussies -and Kiwis- I feel your pain!)
To pin your pitch to the top of your profile, after its tweeted, hit the top right ̇ ̇ ̇ then select ‘pin to your profile.’
11. During the Party
Get in your DM group and or the party’s hashtags to comment on each other’s pitches. When you find pitches of writer friends, associates or pitches you like, reply saying what you like about them. We’re all nervous, so acts of kindness like words of encouragement can really make people’s days. And yes, hopefully you will get some of what you have given -and you will have earned it.
12. After the Party
Celebrate, commiserate -ask how writers how they fared and share anything you learnt or ideas you have for next time with anyone likely to participate again. If you pitch in a future party, try and connect with the writers you’ve met this time and see if you can continue supporting each other in future. This is also a great chance, via DM group, Discord or tweet, to offer to trade query letter and synopsis feedback with querying writers.
Whichever pitch parties you participate in, Good Luck!
If you’d like a concise PDF of most of these steps, you can download it on the right.
For a list of resource links spanning Query Letters & Synopsis to Finding & Communicating with Literary Agents, see this post.
Total Page Visits: 7861
Writer Mentoring Events
There are three mentoring programs which involve matching writers with mentors, who will provide manuscript editing notes and help writers hone manuscript for submission, #Pitchwars mentors also help with query package edits. For #AuthorMentorMatch and #Pitchwars the mentors are authors, for #Revpit they are editors.
#Revpit is Revision & Editor Mentoring for MG, YA & Adult Fiction, which begins with pitching on Twitter in April. For more details, visit the Revpit Website.
#RogueMentor is a new mentoring program offering mentorships in Northern Hemisphere Summer, Spring and Fall. For more details, visit the Rogue Mentor Website.
#Pitchwars mentors profiles can be viewed and the submission window for writers to submit via email opens in September. For more details visit the Pitchwars Website. Discontinued in 2022.
Critique.#PassorPages by @OpAwesome6 is for query critiquing. For details on which genres and audience ages you can receive feedback on and when visit their website. Round one is in February, with rounds throughout the year, the last in October.
Critique partner and beta reader feedback can be gold, but as editing is a complex task, it can be difficult to decide what exactly you’d like critical readers to comment on, especially in the crucial first chapter. The reflective questions in this beta reader checklist will help guide critical reader feedback (and in some cases self-editing), giving you insight into how engaging, well paced and easy or difficult to follow unfamiliar readers found your opening chapter.
Does the story start in the right place?
Chronology
Does ‘chapter one’ narrate whole paragraphs or more of events which happened before chapter 1 began? (If the reader really needs to know such events, those events might need to become chapter 1).
Narration
Does chapter one begin with the present story, or with info dumping or backstory? Or does it slowly show the reader the character’s life, with chapters and chapters of narration before the inciting event indicates the character’s life is about to change and the story actually moves forwards? (If it takes ten chapters to reach the inciting event, I suspect the story starts six to nine chapters earlier than necessary).
CharacterAction
Is the main character (or chapter one’s point of view character) doing something interesting to read on page 1? (Or lead up actions like a long, dull drive, instead of opening with characters reacting to their destination as they climb out of the car on arrival?)
What is your impression of the MC? -this can help a writer check that they have portrayed their MC consistently throughout the novel, and that they haven’t over or underdone their MC’s nature/ situation etc in the opening chapters.
Can You Get to Know and Care About Characters?
Main Character
Does the main character’s dialogue and actions give you a good sense of who the MC is and what they’re about? Can you relate to the MC or their personal situation/ relationships in some way?
Supporting Characters
Are there too many named characters for you to keep track of?
Or are any character names too similar to each other to easily tell apart?
All Characters
Can you spot any discrepancies in character actions or dialogue?
Do you understand the characters actions, and can you follow the character’s logic -or do character actions confuse you or seem implausible?
Do you get bored or does your interest wane at any point? (How do you find the pace?)
Letting a writer know you’ve lost interest at a certain point in a chapter and want to start skimming is helpful -because it suggests a problem with pacing. If you can give feedback about why you think you started to lose interest -that’s even more helpful. It might be because; you feel the narration is getting bogged down with details or descriptions which slow the story. Or because there’s info dumping or chunks of telling which isn’t part of dialogue, character internal monologue or reaction to the present scene, ie. without context, possibly pulling you out of the story.
Backstory
Are you catching neat little peeks of what’s already happened in characters’ lives or the world in general as the character interacts with other characters and their world? Or does a character stand still so the writer can tell you five paragraphs about an event they’ve already experienced (but you missed)?
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World Building/ Scene Setting
Have you got a clear enough sense of where and when the story is taking place?
Do you have a sense of character roles within their world? Of their jobs, status, what they can and can’t do? (For SFF this will go right into how clearly magic systems, alternate political systems, tech etc are shown).
Is it clear to you what is magically/ politically/ scientifically/ militarily etc possible and likely within the story?
Information -Showing V.S. Telling
Where possible, do you get to ‘see’ things by what the character sees, hears, says, smells, thinks and how they physically, verbally or emotionally react to their world and story? Or does the writer tell you, ‘the city has x and that character felt impatient because he had a headache.’
(NB. Bear in mind that the point of ‘showing’ is to make the story more interesting to readers and it isn’t practical to ‘show’ everything. Eg. Things like creation myths may need to be told.)
Like many writers, one of the things I loved about joining Twitter’s #WritingCommunity was the opportunity to discuss the craft and to learn with other writers. But as I followed more writers, questions about the business of writing virtually vanished from my feed. I created the hashtag #StrictlyWriting to make these things more visible.
#StrictlyWriting‘s goal is to act as a space to ask for writer or wip help, talk nitty gritty of writing craft and reflect on outlining to querying). Its also to tweet advice to help each other on our writing journeys, and share opportunities like workshops and festivals. Self Promo and Follow Threads are NOT welcome. Here’s many topics which are.
Strictly Writing Community -on Discord
Hashtags are hard to maintain on Twitter. To get around this and make detailed discussions about our writer journeys, and helpful resources more accessible, I’ve created a Strictly Writing and a Strictly Authoring Discord.
Discord began with gamers. It creates private, invite link only groups. Instead of viewing posts via a personal profile, you enter a Server (like an old school forum) with group feeds (channels), organised under Categories. Everyone comments or asks questions on topically relevant channels, so you can go straight to channels whose topics interest you and ignore channels which don’t.
The Strictly Writing Discord Community is a supportive space. It has channels for writing craft discussion and seeking critical readers, query discussion and query package feedback. There’s also a companion server, Strictly Authoring. Its channels are for discussing self publishing, newsletters, social media, author profiles and book marketing.
Both servers are open to fiction writers. Most of us write novels and or shorts, for audiences of all ages, many being SFF and quite a few queer. If you’d like to visit the Strictly Writing and or Authoring Server, reply to the tweet below and I’ll DM you an invite link. Or email me via my contact page. (I share links privately so we don’t inadvertently let trolls in 😉).
✍️Discord Update✍️ I've now got 2 Servers, for supporting each other with:
— 🇦🇺🏳️🌈 Elise (they/them) Writing Book 3 🌧⚔️ (@ElisesWritings) September 3, 2021
#StrictlyWritingResources
This tag has fallen into disuse, but selecting#StrictlyWritingResources shows many great resources relating to craft, querying and more. Feel free to add resources you’ve found helpful or you’ve made on it or to tweet them on #StrictlyWriting.
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Which Other Writer Hashtags Exist? Many.
If you’d like hashtags to connect with specific types of writers, prompts, live chats & tip tags (on Twitter and Instagram), I’ve cataloged many in Writing Community Hashtag Guide. If you’re interested in questions about wip content (eg. characters, setting etc), and writing, a good tag for this is #WritingQ.
If you’re new to Twitter or Instagram, you’ll find advice on what to post and getting started on both in Social Media for Writers.
To write civilisations comparable to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, I’d need to draw on my double major in archaeology and history to break down every major component of world building. My world building blog series will attempt that, and explore how different factors within a world can influence and shape each other. Today I’ve paired Food with Fashion, because both are closely linked to plants and animals, all of which is influenced by geography, climate and trade.
Farming & Irrigation
Let’s start with the basics -what food do people in your world eat? How are different crops grown and irrigated? Is your civilisation set in a fertile part of the world where regular rainfall is sufficient to keep crops and herds alive? Are crops and livestock watered by canals and aqueducts channelling snow-melt from mountain rivers across land/ desert? Or are crops grown on mountain terraces through which water is carefully drained?
Does your civilisation have enough water and arable land to feed itself? Or is it like Rome -dependent on the breadbasket of Egypt? If your civilisation depends on regional trade to feed itself -how does that impact on internal and regional conflict?
Diet
Is your civilisation small-island or coastal based, with a the local diet of predominately seafood? What are the staple crops in the region? Does your civilisation have vast trade networks allowing them, for example. to locally grow potatoes from South America in Europe? Or are the crops grown and livestock reared limited to what is locally available/ native plants and animals? If so -what region of the real world and what era of history might you need to research to write this plausibly?
Climate & Geography
Is your civilisation’s climate hot in summer and mild in winter like Australia? Or cold in winter and mild in summer like England? Can it be 30 degrees Celsius in summer and -30 degrees in winter like Toronto? Is climate determined by the existence of a frozen northern or southern pole? Is there a latitude of tropics like our world? Or is your civilisation’s climate determined by mountains with freezing temperatures, or the desert deprived of rain because it all falls in the mountains? How does climate determine which crops can grow and which livestock for food or trade can be raised in your civilisation?
Seasons
What impact does geography and climate have on seasonal change in your civilisation? Does your world have summer, spring, autumn and winter? Or just wet season and dry season, like countries in our world near the tropics?
In Australia, most trees are evergreen -native leaves don’t change colour or fall off and some native flowers predominately flower in winter -not spring. So do plants in your world behave according to the same seasons as ours?
Geography & Cultural Fashion Influences
There’s a good chance this will be heavily influenced by climate and geography in your world, but that won’t necessarily be the case. Traditional clothing of the First Australians was scanty because of our hot, dry climate. But in the 19th century, Victorian British fashions had men and women wearing stiflingly hot, conservative clothing, causing fainting in Australian summer. A few deaths from heat exhaustion failed to change these fashions. So, in your civilisation, is fashion locally developed and suited to local climate, or is it the product of an influential kingdom, a distant empire ruling a locality, or colonial motherland? If one of the latter -what is the geography and climate of the influencer and what do their fashions look like? Linking back to seasons -does climate vary much between your seasons and do fashions vary accordingly?
Fabric Availability -Trade & Fashion
In answering the above, consider what plants/ fibres are locally available. If your civilisation is European influenced, do they wear woollen garments from locally farmed sheep? Does your Americas inspired culture have people wearing cotton from cotton plants? If the ancient Middle East is the influence, do people wear linen from local fibres or silk from Far Eastern silkworms? When deciding what your people are wearing, think about (or research in a particular region and time period of our world) what fabrics are available locally, and what can your civilization import from elsewhere in your world?
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Costume and Social Class
Whether people in your world have access to different materials to make or buy clothes won’t just depend on regional or international trade networks, it depends on social class and wealth. In any civilisation, it’s likely poor people will wear the cheapest, most readily available clothing in any era. Then in some eras, like the Egyptian Middle Kingdom in which only the pharaoh had the wealth to personally fund foreign trade expeditions -it might only be the wealthiest classes who can afford clothing made from imported materials. So aside from asking what material is available in my civilisation? You might also need to ask, how does what is available vary from class to class or rank to rank?
I’d also ask are there restrictions imposed by people in power on fashions? In Egypt there was a sudden change from elaborate pottery at all levels, to only the wealthiest having elaborate pottery around the emergence of the Old Kingdom. This is the time kings and an elite class first appeared and that even types of pottery became a status symbol. Is there anything that only the ruler or only the elite can wear in your civilisation?
Am I selling my book to the best of my ability? Photo by Maico Pereira
With thousands of pitches set to pour through Twitter’s #Pitmad feed for literary agent and indie publisher perusal on Thursday, it’s time to tell you everything I know about crafting a quality book pitch. I’ll include tweet pitch examples, and advice which applies to query letter pitches and advertising material aimed at readers. If you’re writing a pitch as promotional material for your book, bear in mind that this post focuses on pitches aimed at literary agents and you will have more wiggle room with readers.
BookPitch vs. Blurb
On Twitter, you will see people use ‘pitch’ and ‘blurb’ interchangeably. A pitch is NOT a blurb. A pitch aimed at literary agents or publishers will not get you requests if it doesn’t include specific ingredients, address them clearly and well (see below). Pitches often conform to particular formulas, like ‘Character is X, but when Y happens character must A or else incur terrible C.’ There are variations, which include essential pitch ingredients (see below). Whereas, a back-of-book blurb may or may not include all the essential ingredients of a pitch. A blurb may also include bonus details to appeal to readers, like thematic statements. (Thematic statements are mostly NOT included in pitches because they take up limited space and are usually not what sells a book to industry professionals).
Book Pitch vs. Log lines
You may see people advising, ‘Don’t name characters in pitches. State their role or what makes them unique instead. Definitely state their uniqueness, but I suspect this advice confuses log lines with a pitch. A log line is generally telling the audience (eg. at the movies) they’re in for a wild ride or a fun journey. It’s not trying to get a literary agent or publisher to care about or take interest in a main character. Its not trying to persuade busy agents and editors that they like this character so much or relate to them so well that they want to spend their limited time reading about this character. ‘Little Timmy’ is more likely to generate sympathy or to be relatable than ‘little no-name’. So I advise against log lines in Twitter pitches (in a query letter it may work), and for either, I say name your main character!
Basics
Over the past year, I have critiqued an estimated 100+ tweet pitches for various parties (not including revised pitches). This has helped me note patterns in essential ingredients and maximise opportunities to hook a reader. However, quality ingredients don’t guarantee a quality end product. So I won’t just list ingredients, I’ll explain why it’s important to address them well, then give advice on how to do so.
Essential Book Pitch Ingredients
–Main Character –Inciting event, central conflict & stakes –Character growth that must occur for the MC to resolve conflict and avoid stakes or impossible choice the MC must make
Before we dive in
Remember that your pitch isn’t just saying ‘this is a great novel’. You’re telling an industry professional why they want to represent your novel. So how does your novel differ from others in your genre? What is unique about your character, inciting event, conflict, stakes & character growth? As you draft and revise your pitch, keep checking that it highlights what is most unique and compelling about your novel. Try to be as specific as you can in your pitch.
Note For SFF & Multiple POV Writers
It’s tempting to write an opening which introduces the wonderful world you have created -but don’t. In a tweet pitch and even in a query letter, you aren’t selling your fantasy or scifi setting. You’re selling an intriguing character, with a compelling personal role to play in a conflict involving significant personal stakes. This is why it’s so hard to pitch multiple points of view. Its also why, if your novel has multiple points of view, I recommend giving the main characters a pitch to themselves, to do justice to each character’s arc. You may also write like to attempt a 2 pov pitch. A two pov tweet pitch normally has a sentence to introduce each character and a third sentence explaining their roles and stakes in the conflict.
Character
Photo by Ferdinand studio
Your main character is your hook. Your goal is to introduce them that piques interest and or invite a literary agent or publisher to connect with them. (Do name your MC- thats a mental hook for details about them to hang on and makes more sympathetic than ‘random, un-named office worker’.) A character description could be a single adjective, or a job title. Ideally, it will show or state what your character draws on to help them confront the conflict and be specific to your character. Eg. fear of swimming from near-drowning as a child, in a story of personal growth in which she sees a child drowning offshore at a deserted beach. However you introduce your character, consider: what is the most unique thing about them? What helps them resolve the conflict and what are the most engaging word choices to show or describe that?
Character Intro Examples
“17 YO Jorden’s specialties are baking apple pie, hand to hand combat and leaping before he looks.” -Debbie Iancu-Haddad @debbieiancu.
“Elective mute Ashari remembers nothing before the void in her mind.” -Halla Williams @hallawilliams1.
If you’re struggling to find space for an engaging character introduction, you could use the inciting event as your hook and frame your introduction with it, as I have done here. “Thrust to power by death in the family, peace-born Ruarnon…” -Elise Carlson.
Inciting Event and Tension
You might like to frame your character introduction with ‘when’ to lead into the inciting event. ‘When’ is a good opening to lead into a collision of worlds, desires or wills etc. It amplifies the fact that the character we’ve just met and connected with is about to have their world turned upside-down and leaves us wondering how and what the outcome will be. (Try not to use the phrase ‘turned upside-down’. This phrase is common to many stories and can sound generic. If you use it, highlight the way in which that character’s life is changed. Or their emotional response/ reaction, to keep the focus on what is ‘unique’ about your story). Ending with a clash of wills with another character, or clash of morals between the character’s beliefs and actions -with an obstacle to their goal or resolution of the conflict- is a good way inject tension.
Inciting Event Examples
“His suicide mission: Build a bomb, destroy a space ship and save the world.” -Debbie Haddad.
“Having lost her memory in a storm, she chooses the unlikely safety of becoming a mercenary for the enigmatic Captain Westorr.” -Halla Williams.
“Monsters live under beds, but Julie is sure there’s one in her ceiling.” -mine.
An important thing to note with conflict is that in a pitch you don’t create conflict by saying ‘there’s a war on.’ Conflict here doesn’t refer to external plot events. It refers to your main character’s personal struggles within those events. Or to struggles in relationships necessary to achieve story goals, or to moral or ethical dilemma’s your main character faces. Again, inclusion of these personal elements creates opportunity for readers to connect emotionally to your character and story and for your pitch to hook them.
Of pitches I’ve critiqued, I would estimate that half do not clearly state the external conflict and or the main character’s role in it. Author bias really kicks in here. You know your story so well that your subconscious fills holes in your pitch. But critical readers can point them out, so you can fill holes and clarify that pitch for industry professionals. This is where I highly recommend trading pitch feedback with other writers.
Conflict Examples
“But falling in love wasn’t part of the plan…” -Debbie Iancu-Haddad.
“There’s only one way to find out and stop being scared -climb the tree beside the house and meet the THING!” -my picture book pitch.
Stakes
Once you have introduced a character and conflict which has hooked our interest, we need to know not only the external stakes, but the personal stakes your character faces. A pitch in which the stakes are ‘or the world will be destroyed’ is generic. Also, the world/ fantasy kingdom x’ is an anonymous entity the reader knows nothing about, so it has little impact on us. A character however, is someone we can connect with, so when you threaten that character, we feel something. If external conflict is key to your story, be sure to state the character’s role in it and the personal stakes their role entails.
(Conflict and) Stakes Examples
“…completing his mission means sacrificing the girl he loves.” -Debbie Haddad.
“But ‘safe’ is a relative term. For both of them.” -Halla Williams.
Character Growth and Impossible Choice/ More Tension
Perhaps the greatest place to hook a reader into your pitch emotionally is when you state how your character must grow or develop to overcome the conflict. If main character Jane hates estranged uncle Tom, but his knowledge is crucial to preventing granny’s murder, and Jane must forgive Tom’s past mistakes to enlist his help in saving Granny -that adds tension.
Specific demons from your character’s past (or other obstacles/ shortcomings) they must overcome to resolve the conflict are often what makes me lament your book not being in print yet. Think about how your character must change to overcome the conflict they face and try to include it in your pitch. If you struggle to identify how your character changes (I did in my first Pitmad), this may be a sign that your novel isn’t ready to query. It may signal that your main character’s arc needs another structural edit (as mine did.)
Impossible Choice Example
“…she must use her voice or let her captain perish.” -Halla Williams.
But Wait, There’s More
The Save the Cat Formula features an addition that may be difficult to fit in a pitch, but can make a pitch highly engaging to read. This final ingredient to kick your pitch up a level is adding a complication to your character’s ability to resolve the conflict. Then indicate how this complication raises the stakes. What factor makes it even harder for your MC to achieve their goal? Does a friend betray them? Do they lose an asset crucial to success at the eleventh hour? Can you jam this complication and an indication of how it raises the stakes into your pitch?
“When a monster army invades…” (the second conflict in my novel).
Tweet Pitch Examples which got Agent Likes
The above pitch elements may seem like a lot, and you may only fit some of them into each pitch -which is why it’s great you get 3- so you can highlight different elements in each one. Here’s the pitches I’ve referenced above -each reference is often sections of 2 different pitches.
The day teen eco-terrorist Jorden Lund left Earth he had 4 months left to live His suicide mission: Build a bomb, destroy a space ship and save the world But falling in love wasn't part of the plan and completing his mission means sacrificing the girl he loves#YA#SF#pitmad
17 YO Jorden's specialties are baking apple pie, hand to hand combat and leaping before he looks. Just his luck, when he finally meets the perfect girl he's on a suicide mission to save the planet. She doesn't remember Earth. He's dying to save it. #pitmad#YA#SF
Late June update: Halla is now agented -congrats Halla!
RUIN OF KINGS x PRIORY OTOT Elective mute Ashari remembers nothing before the void in her mind. A mission with mercenaries takes her into the marsh: a place she fears for reasons she doesn’t yet understand. There she must use her voice or let her captain perish. #PitMad#F#A
Rebellious fae Ashari wields a voice that can harm or heal. Having lost her memory in a storm, she chooses the unlikely safety of becoming a mercenary for the enigmatic Captain Westorr. But ‘safe’ is a relative term. For both of them.#PitMad#F#A
Monsters live under beds, but Julie is sure there's one in her ceiling. Every night it scratches and scrapes. She lies awake, worrying what the THING could be. There's only one way to find out and stop being scared -climb the tree beside the house and meet the THING!#PBPitch
— 🇦🇺🏳️🌈 Elise (they/them) Writing Book 3 🌧⚔️ (@ElisesWritings) June 18, 2020
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How Do I Achieve All This in a Book Pitch On My Own?
You don’t. Whether you’re writing tweet pitches or a query letter pitch: tweet on #AmQuerying and #WritingCommunity asking who’s happy to trade pitch feedback. Offer to give others feedback in exchange. Most of what I’ve learnt about pitch craft came not from reading blogs like this, but from reading MANY tweet pitches. It also came from reading query letters -critically- and providing feedback to help other writers strengthen their pitches. Not all of this knowledge applied directly to my own pitches (to date), but all of it has given me valuable insights.
If you’d like to join a Discord Server focused on querying and including tweet pitch and query and synopsis feedback channels, let me know by replying to this tweet or using my contact page.
Another way to learn from other writers is to enter ‘#Pitmad’ (or other parties hashtag), and the genre tags you will pitch on into Twitter’s search bar, then reading the top pitches from previous parties. Some will unfortunately be rough and in need of editing, but many will be jaw dropping and great mentor pitches to learn from.
More Book Pitch and Related Resources
I’ve listed the pitch parties I’m aware of, which months they’re held in and links to Pitch Party websites here.
You’ll find resource links spanning Query Letters & Synopsis to Finding and Communicating with Literary Agents, in this post.
If you’re new to Twitter, the bottom section of my Social Media For Writer’s is full of advice to help you get started, and I’ve cataloged other #WritingCommunity hashtags to help you navigate the community in this Guide.
G'day! I'm an Aussie (they/ them) who graduated from playing imaginary games in my extensive backyard to writing YA Fantasy. In between educating energetic, enthusiastic minds as excited about life as I am —kids— and adventures in Europe, North America, South-East Asia and locally, I enjoy writing adventures and epic conflicts for the young and young at heart.
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