It’s another edition of "Head To Keyboard," my irregular column of writing advice. This time, Chuck Wendig has called me out. Specifically, he said this:

He speaks, and I obey.

After two years of manning the White Wolf slush pile, I’ve gained a couple of ideas of what makes a good pitch over a bad pitch. Here are five of them.

Five Ways To Get Your Pitch Read

1. Brevity is the Soul of Getting Read. Chuck echoes a lot of advice you’ll see about pitches is about keeping it brief. The reason most often cited is that the editor/developer/intern who has to read the pitch often doesn’t have a lot of time (and is also probably sitting on a mountain of pitches), so you want to make sure you’re using that time wisely. And that’s true.

For me, however, I also want to know that you have a firm idea for your pitch. If you have to spend fifteen pages to explain to me all the nuances of your amazing idea, I’ve probably zoned out by page three, and I’m guessing our audience will as well. By keeping it tight and lean, you’re telling me that you have thought this idea through and can cut it down to the awesome core of it. (Which also tells me that if I have to cut wordcount later, we’re both on the same page as to what can stay and what can go.)

2. Put It All Out There. Audiences and customers loved to be teased (as long as there’s a payoff). Tantalizing back cover copy, trailers for movies, clips from next week’s episodes, a character class from the next book — it’s part of the stock in trade of marketing your creativity. Your potential editor, however, is not your audience, and doesn’t have time to be teased. So if one of the things you’re going to cut is the payoff to your pitch (whether it’s the end of your story or the application of your gamebook proposal — see below), don’t. The person reading your pitch should be able to get a complete (if brief) idea of your proposal the first time. Don’t make them work to find out everything they need to know to make an informed decision, because it’s easier to hit "delete" and move to the next pitch.

3. Educate Yourself. If you’re pitching a book about vampires to a company that writes about vampires, take a little time to see what kinds of vampires they write about. Nothing will get you looked over faster than pitching the latest young adult vampire high school romance series to a company that focuses on the inhumanity and bloodlust of the undead. If you’re intentionally pitching something off-kilter for the editor, be ready to present reasons why the off-kilter pitch will work for that editor into the pitch.

4. Comparisons Are The Spice, Not The Dish. Chuck mentioned his pitch to me for Block By Bloody Block, which included comparisons to Grand Theft Auto and the Batman story No Man’s Land. If he had just said that and nothing else, I would have skipped it. (Actually, I would have said "No, seriously you freaky bitch, what’s the pitch?" but then Chuck and I have that kind of relationship.) Instead, he used them to illustrate what he was really pitching, which was a sandbox-style supplement for Hunter that could take advantage of PDF technology in different ways. The comparisons helped to gel that vague-sounding statement into some concrete examples.

But you have to use them sparingly. Not only do you want your property to stand on its own and look unique, but you also run the risk of using a comparison the editor doesn’t recognize. Which is awkward. So make sure that the pitch can stand on its own without needing the references for context. If the pitch is running a bit long, ditching the references is a good place to start.

(Another danger — be careful of using the company’s products as your comparisons. Chuck also listed Damnation City as a comparison, and one of my first questions was "If we’ve already done this before, how will your book be any different?")

5. Application Trumps Ideas. You may think your idea is the most original one in the world, something that no one has every thought of it before. In all reality, someone has. Further, someone has pitched it before. Even more, someone may have pitched it to the same editor you’re pitching to. So make sure you spend some of that valuable real estate in your pitch to showing how you would realize the pitch. This actually ties into point 1, too — if you have a firm grasp on what part of the idea is cool to you and center your pitch around that, the editor has a better chance of visualizing how the final product could look. There’s a world of difference between "I want to do a sourcebook on vampires in Miami" and "I want to do a sourcebook on Miami vampires that use the Cuban influx to benefit their blood-jacking business."

6. It May All Be For Naught. Okay, that’s six, but it’s not so much something you can do as something you should keep in mind. You might have a white-hot pitch that is fine-tuned, sings to the heavens, and gets your editor excited to read it. And it might still get trashed. There could be a similar project in the works. It might not fit the company’s goals. There just might not be enough slots in this year’s release schedule. A fantastic pitch doesn’t mean your dream project will see the light of day.

But it’s very likely to get you a "What else do you have?" And that’s the next best thing.