Class 18 - Writing a Pitch

Check in and questions

I’m going to put you into breakout groups for five-minutes, just to catch up and check-in, and to see if you have any questions about the course.

Thinking about pitching

We’ve now had a chance to think about the market, so we’re going to explore the art of pitching. So let’s launch in.

A pitch is a proposal for a story you want to tell, one that you share with editors or publishers to see if they want to publish your work. Writing a pitch can be a great way of shaping your ideas. So we’re going to be working in this session in writing a pitch for a story. The aim of a pitch is to give a clear idea of what a story is, and what you need to do to write it.

A good pitch needs to be

• clear
• concise
• detailed
• well-written
• compelling

Remember that as a creative nonfiction writer, you are a storyteller. One common complaint amongst editors is that people pitch ideas to them when in fact what they are looking for are stories. So the strongest pitches will be those that set out to tell a story. You can think of your pitch as being made up of three mini-stories, each one a paragraph long.

• In the first paragraph, summarise the story that your piece will be telling, and tell us why this story matters and needs to be heard here and now.
• In the second paragraph, tell the story of how you will write the piece. How long will it be? How will you research it? What information will you draw on? Books? Interviews? Your own experience?
• In the final paragraph, tell the story of you: who you are,,your experience and interests, and why you are the person to write this piece.

Let’s look an example, from a recent successful pitch of my own:

Pitch: The Rise of Tâi-gí

[OPENING PARAGRAPH] I would love to write a piece for you on the Taiwanese language, or Tâi-gí, a dialect of Hokkien that is the second most-spoken language in Taiwan. Until the mid-20th century, Tâi-gí was the most widely spoken language in Taiwan. But under Taiwan’s almost four decades of martial law, Tâi-gí was suppressed in favour of Mandarin. As a result of these decades of suppression, many young people now struggle to speak the language of their grandparents’ generation. But more recently, Tâi-gí has seen a renewed popularity, and has been undergoing a revival. This revival is tied up with a growing sense that linguistic and cultural diversity is a cornerstone of Taiwan’s history, and of its distinctive and emerging identity.

[WHAT I’LL WRITE] In this piece, I will dive into the history and politics of language in Taiwan. I will explore how Taiwan’s linguistic diversity went into decline, and how it is being revived. And I will ask what the revival of Tâi-gí says about Taiwan’s growing self-confidence as a multilingual and multicultural democracy. I will frame this story with the story of my own attempts to get to grips with Tâi-gí — a language made difficult by having no single standardised writing system, multiple local dialects, and a constantly shifting tonal system that makes Mandarin seem like a piece of cake.

[HOW I’LL RESEARCH] For on-the-ground research, I will speak to language teachers and advocates, poets, writers, and scholars. I will catch up with YouTuber Ayo, a leading figure in the Tâi-gí revival. I will speak to Dr. Poe-iong Lin, a researcher of Tâi-gí literature at the National Museum of Taiwan Literature. And I will speak to those running innovative projects, including the owners of Gutta Books&Coffee in Tamsui, Taipei, a bookstore that every Monday — to the astonishment of many local Taiwanese people, as well as that of foreign visitors — becomes a Tâi-gí Language Only zone.

[WHAT THE READER WILL GET OUT OF THE STORY] My aim in this piece is to explore how this struggle to support Taiwan’s linguistic diversity, in a time of ongoing cross-strait tensions, is helping to forge a new identity for Taiwan as a place where many stories are told in many languages.

[ABOUT ME] I’m a writer from the UK, currently based in Taiwan. My previous book, Hello, Stranger: Stories of Connection in a Divided World, was published by Granta in 2022. I’ve touched on the Taiwanese revival in other places (see this recent piece for the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240710-tainan-the-400-year-old-cradle-of-taiwanese-culture), but I would love the opportunity to give the Tâi-gí revival movement the treatment it deserves.

Reading Pitches

Because pitching is a specific genre of writing, you can best get a sense of how to pitch by reading the pitches of others. So have a look at the following link, find an article that interests you, and see how the author pitches it:

Open notebook

I’ll then put you in groups to discuss the pitch, and why you think it was successful.

Writing your Own Pitch

Now we’re going to move onto writing your own pitch. For this exercise, I want you to think about pitching as storytelling. You are telling at least three stories.

• Story 1 (The story I want to tell)
• Story 2 (The story of how I will tell it)
• Story 3 (The story of who I am, and why I am the person to tell this story)

This will almost always be an email communication. So think about getting the right tone. And this may depend also on the publication.

An editor may get 100s of pitches every week. So you need to be concise. Think of writing one short paragraph for each of these headings.

Homework

For your homework, refine your pitch. And then submit it by the beginning of the next class as your next mini-assignment.

Your pitch should be no longer than 500 words. It can be shorter!