An Editor’s Advice for Writers on Pitching Well

I’ve been an editor of tech sites since 2000, which means that I regularly ask people to suggest articles they want to write (and for which they expect me to pay them). Sometimes I respond, “When can you get that done?” but more often, I say, “Sorry, that doesn’t grab me.”

Want to be in the former category? Here’s some advice about how to get an editor to say, “Yes!” when you send a pitch.

First, the definition: By “pitch” I mean the email message that says, “I’d like to write this article for you; may I do so please?”

One common error I encounter from writers — especially from techies who are subject-matter experts and who want to write about that expertise — is a tendency to suggest articles that are entirely too vague. The worst case is someone who wants to write “Something about security.” I see this too in newbie authors’ frequent suggestions that they write an introduction to a topic, when the topic has been written about hundreds of times already, such as “an introduction to SQL Injections” or “Why Linux is so cool.” The key problem is that the would-be author has something she wants to communicate, without regard to whether it’s of any use to a reader.

Even if I said Yes to those suggestions, a vague pitch means you don’t know where you’re headed. When you try to write that article you’ll realize you actually proposed a book chapter, and there isn’t enough room to cover every point that should be included in such a chapter. At best the result is that you write 5,000 words for a 1,000-word assignment (and the skill of cutting text is not easily learned). More likely, it means your article tries to cover the topic with 10 bullet points, none of which has data to back them up, so the article isn’t helpful to any reader.

In other words: Beware an overall topic that is too general. Learn to identify the difference between a topic and a feature. (If you’re serious about writing professionally, I heartily recommend The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, which goes into this topic at some length.)

So, what do you pitch instead?

For articles that aim to convey pragmatic information, start here: People want to solve a problem, such as “Make Windows 7 run faster” or “How do I wrap text around graphics in Google Docs. These are easily identifiable as SEO articles because the reader actively searches for an answer and probably types in the problem as part of the search.

Sometimes you write articles about a problem readers didn’t know they had: an “Oh, what a good idea!” article. Those might include “Several ways to make your mobile app run faster” or “things that broke with the Opera 15 release due to the switch to Blink/Chromium.” This category also includes articles that both entertain and educate, such as project management lessons you can learn from Mission Impossible.

But mainly, I ask people to write about something they care about passionately. If we met in the bar during a tech conference, what subject could I ask you about that would cause you to pound on the table, carefully explaining why it’s important to understand this? It’s the this that you should write about. And you may be surprised at how easy it is to do so.

For me, every feature article begins with a question to which I personally want to know the answer. I pose the question, I research to find the answer, and then I write it up in a (hopefully) entertaining manner.

My only real skill (besides cadging chocolate from strangers) is that I ask good questions. The resulting article is never a question; it’s an answer or a set of answers. So I might start with, “Has Agile gone mainstream?” but end up with “7 examples that prove Agile is now mainstream” or “7 things that have to happen before Agile really can be considered mainstream” or “reasons why developers hate the very thought of Agile becoming mainstream.” Often I look for the other side of a popular viewpoint, such as “If developers love Agile so much, why do any of their users object to it?” which eventually became Why your users hate Agile development (and what you can do about it) — and netted me an industry award.

If I don’t have the right question, though, it’s just dry ho-hum facts and I wrestle with it.

Consider how you craft the pitch. The other element in coming up with sell-able article pitches (and remember, you’re trying to sell me on why I should give you money to write) is both to identify the story and why it should be told. Plenty of great authors send me their headline — but it’s the deck (a.k.a. teaser or abstract) that usually sells me. It also demonstrates that the author has some idea of the issues to address in order to answer the question inherent in the headline.

That also helps the writer with the actual storytelling. I was taught by Laton McCartney to write the headline and deck first. “If you can write those,” he told me, “You have the rest of the story. And you know what to leave out, too, since if it doesn’t serve the headline and deck it can be cut.” That isn’t always easy to do when you haven’t researched the topic much less written anything, but it’s a good way to define the scope of the article.

The proposed headline and deck has to have some kind of urgency. By which I mean, “Give the reader a reason that he must click on this even though he has to pee really bad.” That means it needs some kind of mystery, and it needs to tweak an emotion. You don’t need to be heavy-handed about these, but the pitch needs to convince an editor that readers won’t skim past the headline.

For example, when I pitched the article later published at ITWorld as How to hire telecommuters: 7 must-ask questions” my original pitch to the editor looked like this (I looked it up):

7 (or N) Things To Know About Interviewing Candidates for Telecommuting Jobs
If you’re on the interviewing side of the desk, what do you ask a job applicant who’ll be working remotely? What should you look for in her answers?

As with anything else, you get better with practice. Don’t be dismayed when someone like me responds to your great idea by saying, “Nah, try again.” Even among my best and most reliable authors — people who’ve written for me for 15 years — I rarely accept more than one in three of their pitches.

Really, try again. Don’t give up. I have several authors who frankly are ho-hum writers, but they are persistent at pitching; eventually, I say Yes to their ideas. (Then I remember that their writing is meh, and I resist the urge to say Yes for a while. But they are persistent so eventually I do.)

There are other elements to a good pitch — among them, the answers to, “Who’s the reader? Why do you expect him to care?” and “Who will you speak to in order to gather information? What research is available?” and “What makes you the right person to write this?” …but without a good article idea, none of those make a difference.