Season 3, Episode 6: Little Tweaks, Big Difference

When you finally choose an agent to pitch (or 20 or 30), what do you do? I'm interested in sending out a series of exclusives. It's a weird strategy, and it might not work. (As a matter of fact, I might scrap the whole thing after this first round. You never know!) But for whatever reason, this is where my gut is telling me to start.

In this episode, we discuss the one cardinal rule in pitching agents: FOLLOW ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS TO A "T."

If the agent says they want the subject line to say your name, title, and date of your last flu shot, then by God, you write your name, title, and date of your last flu shot! It's not time to get fancy or creative because there very well may be a filter on their inbox that weeds out any email which doesn't follow this exact format.

We also discuss my first chapter and why it's essential to nail it. Frankly, I had a tiny blip early in the chapter that took Jennie out of my story.

"An agent is a highly tuned reading machine, right? She is gonna be scanning this super-fast, like, 'Oh, that's so cute. That's so great. That's so awesome. BLIP. Ugh. Done.'" -Jennie Nash, on agents reading your first chapter

In my first chapter, I referred to a conversation between two characters in the scene. Jennie wanted to see the conversation instead. She wanted to see the conversation because it allowed my main character to react to it.

It ended up being a small tweak, but a fun one to incorporate because it gave me the chance to add in a little more "Mr. Rafferty." Sidenote, Mr. Rafferty is the character that every one of my beta readers (EVERY. ONE.) said they loved (and wanted more of!). He's a retired pirate, and he's a grumpy, snarky ol' talking rat with a great big heart.

I've learned during this whole pitching-prep process that sometimes little changes make a big difference.