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| Photo credit: Jorge Quinteros on Flickr |
For the first time in about a year, I’ll critique your Twitter pitch right here in the comments from today, March 2nd to Thursday, March 5 at midnight. (Or rather, I’ll critique late night Thursday ones on Friday, but they will be critiqued if they're posted before midnight).
Some rules!
- You must read this post on how to write a great Twitter pitch, FIRST. Granted, there’s no way for me to check, but I’m going on honor system here. The reason this is pseudo-mandatory is because I promise it’ll help you with Twitter pitch basics. And my past experience says I tend to refer people back to that post a lot.
Bonus: read this post on the top 5 Twitter pitch mistakes I saw during #PitchMAS. - Pay it forward by critiquing at least THREE other pitches. Two reasons for this: first, it’s just plain nice and second, it’ll help you figure out what works and doesn’t work in a pitch (which you can then apply to your own pitch! yay!). Also, you'll be more likely to get critiques from people other than myself, as well as my critique. Which is good for everyone. :)
- You may post as many pitches are you want, HOWEVER, I can only promise to get to one per person. I will do my darnedest to try to get to them all, but these events have gotten pretty hugenormous in the past, so I can’t guarantee I’ll get to every single pitch if you post more than one.
Related: if you post more than one, please post them in separate comments (unless they’re super similar, i.e.: which version do you think is better?). This makes it easier for me to critique and get through the pitches in a more organized fashion.
Helpful tips:
- For examples of winning pitches (i.e.: pitches that got requests), check out this awesome round-up from a past #PitMad event from Carissa Taylor.
- For tips on the event itself, look at this post (and also don’t do this. No really. Don’t).
- You can check your character count without accidentally tweeting here.
- UPDATE: Alyssa in the comment recommended this really awesome post from my agent sister Diana Urban about what #PitMad is with great tips, and it includes a downloadable spreadsheet where you can schedule your posts and it automatically counts your characters. It's pretty fabulous. Check it out!
- Don’t forget to save room for your genre, category and the hashtag! A quick rundown:
PB = Picture book
MG = Middle Grade
YA = Young Adult
NA = New Adult
A[genre]/Adult = Adult
SF = Science Fiction
F = Fantasy
UF = Urban Fantasy
PNR = Paranormal Romance
CR = Contemporary Romance
WF = Women’s Fiction
HisFic = Historical Fiction
SpecFic = Speculative Fiction
Others I've frequently seen written out/abbreviated to the best of the writer's ability.
And that's it! Let’s see those pitches! :)
UPDATE 3/6/15: While I will not be critiquing pitches posted after midnight on 3/5/15, feel free to keep posting pitches and critiquing each other! The forum has been super lively and awesome, so I've decided to keep it open. Happing critting! :)
Twitter-sized bites:
Are you entering #PitMad? Get your pitch critiqued before next week's event! (Click to tweet)
Thinking about entering #PitMad? Get a free pitch critique from author/assistant editor @Ava_Jae here. (Click to tweet)
