#Pitmad: Pitching the project- hints for technotards like me (with pictures)

Written By Brooklyn

Brooklyn Dean is an obsessive-compulsive daydreamer from the Central Coast of Australia. She loves coffee, hugs, lame dad jokes and throwing her head back to laugh with her husband and two kids.

13 Dec, 2021

In my research into querying agents and publishers, I stumbled upon ‘#Pitmad’, a quarterly pitching competition which uses the length of a Twitter ‘tweet’ to ‘sell’ your project to industry professionals. If an agent or publishing house professional likes your single sentence pitch, they ‘heart’ the tweet, and you send them your full query.

For those of you playing along at home, your ‘query’ is the 300ish word document which prospective authors send in outlining their project, creating interest and that ‘I want to know more’ feeling. The query is the document which is designed to ‘hook’ the agent into requesting your full manuscript. It’s the glossy brochure selling that shiny new car, before you get into the nitty gritty of the actual specs or contract. This is yet another document writers need to scaffold, create and refine. As we all know by now, writing a book isn’t just about the actual STORY, but the writer’s ability to compose a variety of documents including (and certainly not limited to) the manuscript itself, query letters, a synopsis, blurbs, and apparently also now twitter pitches! Brave New World indeed!

So, Twitter. #Pitmad. Sounds pretty simple, right? Look, for someone fresh into the Twitterverse, it was a novel idea (pun totally intended) and honestly, I thought ‘why not?’ Whilst my adult manuscript is chugging along nicely in it’s first draft, my kids book has been professionally edited and refined and then refined again. What have I got to lose? 280 characters to ‘sell’ your whole book? Let’s give this a crack!

HANDY HINTS TO WRITING A 280 CHARACTER TWITTER BOOK PITCH

  1. Get a coffee. A most important step. Scientists have found that your caffeine intake has a direct correlation to your brain power and productivity level. *
    *This might, in fact, be total bullshit… but it sounds legit
Step 1- Fire up your brain waves using this delicious creativity juice

2. Turn your laptop on and access Twitter. (If the technology doesn’t want to work, swear at it, turn if off, then on again. I find casual abuse of tech really helps it’s overall performance.)

3. Before your start typing, you’ll want to schedule the post, just incase you accidentally hit the ‘tweet’ button and send it out early (EEK!) #Pitmad runs on American time, 8am-8pm. For an Aussie like me, you’ll have to figure out time conversion rates. Google can help.
WHEN to schedule the pitches? I’m sure there is a whole science dedicated to when posts are most ‘visible’ or get the most ‘traffic’ on the platform, but I just put myself into the shoes of an agent and selected coffee break times! Smoko, late lunch, arvo tea.

The schedule button is that little calendar with
the clock in the bottom right of the icon list.

Times shown are local to you, so make sure you
convert timings for different timezones.

4. Get ready to type in that ‘Tweet’ box! Word will also work, or notepad, or whatever writing tool you have. However, typing straight into the Twitter box thingo will count your characters for you, so you’ll know when you’re over the 280 character limit.
PS- The characters include the hashtags. For anyone new to social media, (raises own hand) hashtags are THE KEY THING to being seen. #Pitmad have an official list on their website (here) which count towards your total, so think carefully about that.

Type that pitch and check you’re within the
character limit, hashtags included.

It’s pretty easy to tell if you’re being too verbose.

5. Condense your entire story into one sentence. Maybe two.
Edit, edit, edit.
Cup of coffee.
Toilet.
Edit and edit some more!
With some tweaking, that bit was fun. There are a buttload of formats you can try, too, but essentially you’re aiming to introduce the character, setting, conflict and stakes. all in one sentence (ish). When you’ve got three solid options (#Pitmad allows three pitches during the event, per manuscript) click ‘schedule’. (See the bottom right hand corner of images above)

4. Check your scheduled/ unsent Tweets. Make sure they’re as good as it’s gunna get. You do this by clicking that link in the top right hand corner that reads ‘unsent Tweets’. I know, obvious right? But as a total noob, it took me a bit to figure all this out, so I’ll assume everyone reading this is as green as I am. Clicking that will bring up the entire list of scheduled items.

That top right-hand button will allow you to see the list of unsent Tweets.

5. Pat yourself on the back. You did a thing! Now, I waited. Actually, I slept. And whilst I snored in the land down under, America woke up and the event began.

Noob (adj.) a person who is ‘fresh’, ‘green’ or ‘new’ to a job or situation. Also: noobie, newby, newbie. For example: “Brooklyn is a Twitter noob.

REFLECTIONS FROM A NOOB

Participating in #Pitmad was a really interesting and somewhat conflicting experience for me.

Firstly, I found the community around the event was super energetic and generally positive. I received some lovely comments from complete randoms and their excitement about my project made me feel confident in my product. There are readers out there. Always a win! And whilst I didn’t get a ‘love’ from an agent (there is a general consensus that agents were few and far between for this event in general), I felt that it was a positive experience.

Secondly, the Twitter analytics fascinated me. Reading the reach my Tweets had, interactions, impressions etc. was seriously cool. I’m such a small fish in a vast ocean, but reading the stats was so interesting! My three Tweets were seen over 700 times! That’s potentially over 1400 eyes (assuming two per person), who read my pitch! (see analytics below)

Thirdly, I didn’t promote, or join any lists for retweets or anything like that. There are some very coordinated and targeted marketeers out there, who maximise the strategy and ‘game’-like elements of this event. For a freshy, first-year, test-the waters kind of approach, I didn’t bother engaging with this stuff, but I see the potential here.

Lastly, this is the beginning of my query journey for my kids novel. I’m so excited to share it with the world! Very few people would meet their agent or publisher via Twitter, but this was still a fun and affirming experience for me, so I’ll keep on into the future.

You May Also Like…

Story Starters

Story Starters

Hello, it's been a while (I'm sorry!) But my brain has been BURSTING with story ideas! Today, I wanted to consider the...

2 Comments

  1. Sunnie

    I love these sorts of posts. A great mix of humour and good info for new writers trying to crack into the writing scene — especially awesome for those who have no idea how twitter works. It’s a confusing place, that’s for sure! I hope you’ll make more posts with this particular format. They’re so fun to read. <3

    Reply
    • Brooklyn

      Thank you!
      What heart-warming feedback!
      🙂

      Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *