QLTS: 6 – Get the Oomph

Once you’ve mastered the basics, get ready to move beyond mediocre to stellar queries that’ll put you several levels above the competition in the rush for assignments.

While formula queries may be extremely popular with writers, they look pretty average to the editor who receives a hundred or so good ones each week. Editors know how easy it is to copy a writer’s successful pitch and repackage it. And come on, editors are human too. They get bored of seeing the same stale pitches landing in their Inbox day after day. If you can do something interesting and different, you’ll be remembered. And hired.

In her book Feminine Wiles: Creative Techniques for Writing Women’s Stories that Sell, Donna Elizabeth Boetig suggests thinking of your query as a love letter. She advises readers to toss out their conventional notions of a query letter and instead focus on passion, emotion, a sense of urgency, and even a bit of breathlessness. Only by writing this way will you shake the editor from the stupor evoked by reading all those staid, letter-perfect proposals, she says.

Your excitement about a topic, your belief in why something should be written about, your enthusiasm for going out and finding people to talk about this story—it’s all tangible. It comes across in your writing. Which is why, for new writers, I always suggest starting with topics that mean something to you personally.

To put that extra oomph in your pitches, you’ll also need to show the editor what else you have on offer other than impeccable research abilities and a keen eye for detail. Depending on the piece, you could offer photographs, important but not overly written about statistics, and quotes that bring interesting findings to light. I’ll discuss all that in this section.

But an important question before we begin: why put so much effort into one query in the first place?

There are a lot of different opinions on the subject, including the uncertainty of doing so much work up-front for no reward, and the argument that this brings down the hourly rate. You’ll find a lot of reasons for not doing all this research and writing upfront, and maybe that will work for you.

For me, it all boils down to two things: is there a story here, and can I sell it?

Before I take on (or even propose) a topic, I need to know whether there actually is a story there. For that, I need to talk to people who’re involved in those issues, see the current research, and figure out what exactly I want to say. If I don’t know what I want to write, how do I expect my editor to?

Secondly, can I sell it? Since I’ve been doing this for a fairly long time, I can almost certainly be sure of at least one market where my article can be placed. So I have that security and can do some (or a lot) of work upfront.

But let’s consider you. Let’s say you’re a new writer. Let’s say you don’t have much previous writing experience. Let’s say you’ve found a brilliant story, say on new research that could possibly cure AIDS, and you want to propose it to an editor at a national magazine.

What reason does the editor have to hire you?

The more you give to an editor upfront, the more she’ll come to trust you. After you’ve worked with an editor a couple of times, you have a relationship. Indeed, I’ve sent single-sentence ideas to some of my editors and they assign the story. I’ve already proven that I can hack it. But until you have those relationships, my opinion is that you’ll need to do a bit of work upfront to make yourself valuable.

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Get to the Point

One of the biggest pet peeves that editors have is that writers will send them pitches for list articles, such as twenty ways to find freelance work, and then not list any of the ways. How is an editor going to assign you an article unless he knows what you’re planning to say? Your tips could be brilliant, or they could have been done hundreds of times already. Give the editor a sample or two.

In my experience, editors will often ask you to flesh out a point or two to make sure it works in the magazine’s format. So if you’re proposing eleven ways to make Christmas special, go ahead and list a couple of ways. Or if you want to talk about the five health checks you need to get done regularly, talk to a doctor and mention his list of recommendations.

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The Name of the Game

The most important “secret” that I’ve learned so far has nothing to do with negotiating, finding fabulous ideas or even querying. It has to do with envisioning.

Yeah, that sounds pretty inspired. But what does it mean?

It means “visualize.” Visualize the cover of the magazine with the title of your article in bold letters. Visualize the page on which the article appears, along with pictures and illustrations. Visualize how the designer will place the text and interweave it with the images to reach the desired effect.

And now help your editor visualize the same thing.

Come up with a working title for your piece. And make sure it’s according to the magazine’s format.

How do you come up with riveting titles? Here are some suggestions from Shaunna Privratsky’s book Pump Up Your Prose:

Alliteration: Choose words with the same beginning letters or sounds, especially for articles, such as “Garage Sale Guru,” “Confessions of a Coupon Queen,” or “Kudos to Kindergarten.”

Play on words: For instance, “The Purr-fect Pussycat,” “Oops! My Dot-com is Showing!” or “The Write Path.” Try to avoid the ones already done to death.

Get poetic: Rhyming your title is a sure attention-grabber. Shaunna’s article about finding an inexpensive wedding dress is titled “Spend Less on Your Dress.”

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Easter in December?

Being timely isn’t just about sending Valentine’s ideas in October or Christmas saving tips in March. It’s about converting those evergreen topics and giving them a certain time factor. Ways to do this are to associate your idea with a news item (after 9/11 many journalists wrote about dealing with death), linking with a recent survey or study, an upcoming anniversary (September 2004 marked thirty years to the birth of ATM), or a calendar holiday.

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Picture Perfect

While editors at national magazines and newspapers generally assign their photography to professional photographers, some articles may call for the writer to supply pictures. This is especially the case if you’re writing a profile for a regional publication or a how-to crafts article. If you know that a magazine buys pictures and pays extra for them, suggesting their availability in your query letter is a super idea.

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Sneaking in With Sidebars

Here’s a winning prospect: offer sidebars. Editors love sidebars, readers do too. So on top of earning brownie points for thinking up extra ways to make the article work, you also get paid for those tip boxes.

Sidebars don’t just have to be tips though. They can be short quizzes, fun facts or statistics that didn’t fit into your article, or quotes. For instance, in an article on what to do if you’ve failed college, I included some concentration techniques in a sidebar (and then sold a whole article on concentration techniques to the same magazine), and in an article on avoiding spam, I included alarming spam statistics (way back when spam was actually new and of interest.)

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Read, read, read

Another technique that you can play on is the I’ve-read-your-previous-issues sell. It’s not enough to get you the assignment, but combined with all the other elements, it makes for an irresistible query letter. Here’s a sample of what I’ve used in my own pitches:

Inspired by the feature “Name of Article” in your latest issue, I began to think about how much romance has changed in the digital era. The guy who gave me RAM on my birthday just a couple of years ago graduated this year to a comic book created with our caricatured heads as characters. So simple and so much fun! This tech-savvy girl returned the favor by sticking his head on top of a Shrek body. The picture now sits on a photo frame in his living room.

Would you be interested in a piece on fun and DIY tech gifts for the “Name of section” department?

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A Note on Overstuffed Queries

It can be quite tempting to include quotes from all your experts, the timeliness factor of your piece, each of the fifteen ways of organizing your home that you’re proposing, details of all three sidebars, and research that shows organized homes make for happier people.

But chances are that you’re not only making it harder for yourself to actually send the darn thing out, you’re also wasting the editor’s time.

That’s not to say that you should leave out all these important elements. Just don’t over do it. The elements I’ve described here are optional. Sometimes you use them, sometimes you don’t. But in no case do you stuff your pitches with all of them. You need to see what works best for your piece and which of these elements could be included. Do you have great pictures but no title? A bulleted list of points but no sidebar ideas? Put in a couple of quotes, state the points, mention the pictures, and send it out. Mix and match. There’s only so much a two-page query letter can do.

QLTS: 5.2 – Hook ‘em Right

The first sentence of your pitch is by far the most important thing you’ll write in the entire duration of your article’s life. If you get this one line right, you have hope. Lots of it. If not, you’re out even before you’ve had a chance to tout your credentials, show the editor how unique you are or why this article is great for her audience.

Busy editors are generally pulled in or turned off by this “hook” so it needs to grab her attention from the get-go.

The leads I talk about below are mostly from queries. Some are also from articles. Most writers, including me, pretend we’re writing the actual article and start our queries the way we would our finished piece. The idea is that eventually, you’ll need to work on a lead to hook your reader as well. Why not do the grunt work initially and increase the chance of getting the assignment?

But be warned: writing the lead is for most writers, the toughest part of the piece. It takes practice and it takes work.

(A wonderful article on leads:

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=35609)

Here are some of the leads I’ve written over the years.

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The Problem-Solution Lead

It’s no surprise your friends will come banging on your doorstep trying to drag you to a party right when you’re in the middle of studying for an exam. Or, you sit down to write a report, but find yourself thinking of the latest season of The O.C. instead.

If you constantly find yourself wishing you’d rather do your roommate’s dirty dishes than finish your assignments, you might have some concentration issues, and it’s likely to reflect in—gasp!—grades.

This hook is usually used for service pieces, and is meant to outline a problem that concerns a large number of the publication’s readers. You should be able to convince the editor that this is an issue that is important to her readers and that you’ll be providing the solutions to this problem through the article. In the lead, of course, the challenge is to convincingly describe the problem. New twists on a common problem or new problems that are coming up due to modern technologies are very popular these days.

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The Personal Experience Lead

I grabbed my coat, begged dad to lend me his car, and drove as fast as I could to college. As I anxiously walked through the gates, an emptiness in my stomach warned me of what was to come. I pushed along the crowded corridor to stand by the group of students eager to find out how they had fared. A glimpse of the notice board made my heart sink. The worst had happened.

I had failed.

I often use the first-person, “I’ve been through it” approach since it immediately tells the editor that I’m familiar with the subject matter, and can provide great anecdotes and insights. It also suggests that I can give advice from the standpoint of a person who has been there, done that. I know what to do, and more importantly, what not to do. It makes me an indirect expert, it builds reader confidence, and it validates my advice.

A good idea is to look at how articles in the magazine you’re targeting are handled. If they start with first-person, this lead will almost always work. It won’t work with news pieces and trend stories though.

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The “Wow, really?” Lead

Over her husband’s funeral pyre six years ago, Heena Patel, then 21, was informed by her in-laws that he had died of AIDS.

Till then, Ms. Patel had repeatedly questioned his frequent illnesses and received nothing but silence. After he died she had to face the reality that not only had her husband and his family known about his HIV-positive status when he married her, but that she was infected as well.

This is a hook that should make the editor go, “Wow, that’s crazy!” or “Really? I did not know that” or “Oh no! What happened then?” She knows that if she has that reaction, most of her readers will as well. A startling fact, a little-known anecdote about a famous person, or something about a different culture that may be seem bizarre.

This is a great way to open, but of course, remember not to push it too far. You’ll also be required to tie in the shocker with the actual article. And you have to validate it. You can’t use something purely for the shock value. Make sure it’s relevant.

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The Scene-Building Lead

Inside the walls of the Cleopatra restaurant, the atmosphere is serene. Soft music plays in the background while laughter comes in spurts from the tables across the room. Women talk over empty cups of tea and half-eaten sandwiches, and apart from a mobile phone ringing in a woman’s purse, which she scrambles to find and answer, there is peace. The sign on the door reads: “No Male Entry.”

Sometimes, especially in travel pieces, you need to take your editor (and your readers) to some place with you. That’s when you’ll need the scene-building lead. It should be clear very soon though, exactly why you want to take the reader with you on this journey. The scene-building lead works better for articles than it does for query letters. But sometimes it works. In the example above, for instance, I wanted the reader to discover for herself that there are no men allowed inside the restaurant, rather than flat-out saying it. I used this in my article, but if I were querying, I’d use it as well.

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The News/Study/Event Tie-in Lead

The facts: People with disabilities are among the most excluded in Indian society. According to a new World Bank report, disabled adults have far lower employment rates than others–reduced from 43% in 1991 to 38% in 2002.

While estimates differ, most show that people with disabilities form between 4-8 percent of the Indian population, that is, approximately 40-80 million people.

These are some very important, and very interesting statistics. Not to mention, representative of a huge problem. Which is why, even though my article itself was about a project and an industry taking positive and remedial measures, I’ve focused more on the statistics.

In the article itself, I started with the human picture. I began my story by talking about a person’s struggle getting employment. But for my query, I needed to show my (American) editor that the problem (and hence the solution) involved very large numbers.

That’s what this kind of lead does. It doesn’t always work for the final article. But it’s very effective in query letters. This is because it shows, right there in numbers, why your article is important.

Be careful though. Use statistics and research that are new. Also use them only if they actually are interesting and relevant. Numbers for the sake of numbers will mean nothing.

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The Not-What-You-Thought Lead

Picture a Tibetan Buddhist monk and what do you see? A man with a shaved head, maroon and yellow attire, and rosary beads dangling from one hand?

How about speaking English, carrying a cell phone, or releasing a music album?

This is a lead I’ve developed over the years, and that I continue to love. It works so that it starts with one idea, and shocks you with the next. It also sometimes embraces contradictions and challenges stereotypes. Another example of this lead:

Think stereotypes, and you’ll have a variety to choose from. Americans are obese, ignorant and arrogant. The English drink tea, talk posh and assume they’re better than you. Africans are uncivilized. Italian men are womanizers. And Indian women who live alone are morally flawed.

I am one such morally flawed woman.

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The Look-What-She’s-Doing Lead

On September 24, 2006, in nothing more than jeans and a t-shirt, Line Tvete, 48, left her home in Norway, got on her bicycle and started a journey around the world.

Over the last eight months, Lena has cycled through Norway, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India. I met up with Line in McLeod Ganj, India, where she was volunteering, teaching Buddhist monks English, attending yoga classes and taking a small break from her physical and spiritual journey before heading to Nepal, Tibet, China and then Thailand.

There are many variations to this lead. The above lead is for a personal profile, for instance. But, look closely, and you’ll find that it’s often used for feature articles or service pieces as well. For instance, using the above lead, I could write a whole trend story about how women these days are packing up and taking off for solo trips around the world. I’d interview experts about this trend, I’d locate more women who had done similar things, and I’d cite research and statistics.

Or using, the very same lead, and similar research, I could write a piece on how you can plan a cycling trip around the world. I would interview Line, and instead of focusing on her life story, I’d ask her for tips that she could give to other women. Instead of digging into her personal life, I’d focus more on what she packed, what she read, and how much money she needed to save. Then I’d write a step-by-step piece for my readers.

Needless to say, this is a very popular lead. And it enjoys a high success rate. So much so, that it has an official name– The Zimmerman lead.

The only problem with this lead is in the execution. You really need to spend time with people (your sources) to get the kind of information that would make this lead effective, and like I’ve discussed before, that’s a bit of a problem if you don’t actually have an assignment.

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The Lead that Misleads

A theater troupe consisting of unemployed job seekers, hawkers on the streets of Kolkata, and people who’ve been told they have no prospects in life, come together each evening to sing, dance and hone their acting skills.

Earning little more than Rs. 100 per show, they perform in small theaters, villages, local parks, even on the roadside. Their movements are perfectly coordinated, their dramatically delivered dialogues impressive. And it’s only when you see the ropes placed strategically around the stage to demarcate the boundaries that you begin to question, that you look closer and realize—almost all the performers in the troupe of Anyadesh are blind.

This is a complicated lead, and used very rarely. I’m including it here because I thought I was very clever when I wrote it, though I feel less clever now.

After reading the first paragraph, my reader tends to think that this is a story about very poor people turning to art. I continue to lead my reader down this path of thinking, but then throw in the shocker at the end—-the real story—-the performers are visually impaired.

Now, poor people turning to art is a great story in itself, but by adding another layer, I’ve raised the bar higher. And it comes suddenly. Which is what makes it work.

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The Holiday Tie-in Lead

How often do you run out of cash before you run out of holidays?

The holiday tie-in is very popular. Let’s say you’re thinking of an article on how to lose weight, and it’s April. Considering lead times for national magazines, it’s the perfect time to be proposing a Christmas idea. That’s when people are putting on a lot of weight. And they’re out shopping a lot. Bingo! An article on how to lose weight while you shop.

Any idea can have a holiday tie-in, some holiday tie-in. Think Independence Day, Valentine’s Day, World AIDS Day… so many national and international events that can be tied into your ideas to make them timely.

Query: Girls’ Life

Small story before I give you the query. I first contacted GL with feature ideas, two of which the then-editor rejected. She did, however, like my style of writing and send me three copies with marked up pages and notes of what she’d like to see from me. She also sent me a sample query letter that another writer had sent her. The editor left the magazine shortly after and I didn’t pitch them again for a while. I did, however, study the pitch and the magazines thoroughly, and subsequently sent the following query to another editor several months later. Which was accepted, obviously, or I wouldn’t be posting it.

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Dear Ms. [Name of Editor]:

Do your buds come to you when there’s a need for gossip or are you tightly zipped when it comes to sharing other people’s secrets?

Finding out who the hottest guy in school is crushing on can be super cool, right? But are you the type of friend your buds can trust with their secrets or do you toss and turn at night wondering how many people you’re going to tell in school the next day? Read on to know your secret-keeping quotient.

I’d love to write the quiz “Can You Keep a Secret” for you. With real-life situations specifically suited to GL readers, it’ll help them figure out how they rank in the secrecy department.

I’m a full-time freelance writer and have written for [details of previous work]. Clips are included below.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.>

Have a great day!
Mridu Khullar

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The resultant quiz:
http://www.girlslife.com/index.php?id=295

Query: Writer’s Digest

By popular demand, I’m going to start sharing some of my successful query letters.

(I appreciate all feedback, positive or negative. If there’s something you would like me to talk about on this blog, please do let me know. We have readers from about 50 countries, and sometimes, I don’t know which topics would be the most popular. Also, if you leave comments, you’ll get good karma. )

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Dear <Name of Editor>,

As a new freelance writer almost two years ago, I didn’t like the $4,000-a-year freelance writing income statistics I saw. Determined to make a good living from the freelance business, I decided to target markets that would give me a higher pay-off for my words. I targeted international markets, leading to my first assignment from an Indian magazine, my second sale to a newspaper in the US, and my third published credit from a start-up in Australia.

Today, even though my main markets are located in USA, Canada and England, I continue to sell reprints to various other countries, netting me a lot of extra cash for no additional work done. This has not only increased my bottom line, but also opened up a host of new markets for my work. The “international writer” tag helps too.

Or take the case of US-based writer Michael Sedge, who’s had over 4,000 published articles and 21 books in print. The king of reprints, Sedge is known for selling his articles across the globe. “If a writer knows how to manage his rights, it’s a great way to expand potential markets,” he says. His advice is to make your international sales a marketing, and not a writing effort. He constantly “makes up” rights, such as First English Language Rights in Japan.

Interested in this piece for your “Breaking In” department? I’ll include advice from respected freelancers such as Sedge, and editors from countries outside the United States. I’ll outline ideas and advice on maintaining a solid income from your international freelance efforts, such as:

· Consider the time factor: If two years ago, you made 500 Euro for an article, it would come to be around $420. Today, that same amount is worth $625. So, it’s wise to focus a great deal of effort on European markets, which will pay more for your dollar.

· Make it a marketing effort: Sell what you’ve already written. Tune up your queries to meet the needs of markets, and send out three or four international queries per week.

· Keep track of your rights: Never sell “all rights”. Instead, make up some of your own. You’ll probably need to fine-tune the pieces to suit the particular country’s audience, but it’s still worth the effort.

I’d love to write this article for you. As you may remember, I’m a full-time writer with a range of international writing experience. Some of my recent credits include <details of my published work>.

I look forward to working with you and providing quality content for Writer’s Digest.

Have a great day!
Mridu

–

The resultant article:
http://www.mridukhullar.com/portfolio/international-writing.html

Keep ‘em on the Move

When a query comes back rejected, what do you do? Cry? Yeah, me too. But what do you do after that? Jot down a quick note in your submission tracker, place the e-mail in a special “Rejected” folder and hope that your luck will be better next time?

How about increasing the circulation?

No, not your dead brain cells, silly. I mean the query. Whenever something comes back to me rejected, I copy the whole query to a new e-mail message, hunt out another market where that article could be placed, edit a bit if required, fill in the e-mail address and send it off. Immediately. How much time did that take? Five minutes? Ten maybe?

I’ll then take a close look at the market it came from. If it’s a market I’m particularly interested in, I’ll probably have a couple of ideas lying around for it already. If not, I’ll browse through the magazine’s website, check out back issues or do whatever I need to, in order to find another idea that would fit into that magazine. Another query is written quickly and sent off to the assigning editor with a note saying, “I’m sorry you couldn’t use that idea. Here’s another one that I think would better fit your needs.”

That’s two queries sent out for each rejection. Not only am I making sure that all my ideas stay in rotation but that I’m regularly pitching to magazines I want to break in to as well. And I just sent two queries. That’s a day’s worth of work that I just ticked off my schedule.