How to Pitch Your Article and Get the Money You Deserve
By: Matthew Osgood
Tags: Freelance Writing, Freelancing, Writing Advice, Writing

This is a modified chapter from my book “Write Now!: The Guide to Making it in Freelance Writing.”

We all have a reservoir of story ideas somewhere. Perhaps it’s housed in the Notes app on your phone; Maybe it is written in color-coded marker (“blue = most important”) on a small white board in the office. Regardless of where these ideas reside, the most gratifying feeling as a freelance writer is when the idea is fully fleshed out and ready to send along to an editor.

(Let’s face it: Some ideas aren’t very good. There’s no story. There’s no underlying meaning to that event. There’s no depth beneath the superficial.)

Some ideas, though, possess a robust complexity. We sketch them out. We reach out, tentatively at first, to a contact; When they reply favorably, we reach out with more confidence to the next contact. We start a free write. “Hmm, there’s more here than I thought,” we say out loud to no one in particular. We hit the checklist:

Can I go deeper into this idea? Check.

Do I have the sources to help tell this story? Check.

Do I have the resources for research? Check.

Has anyone written this story before? If no, check. If yes, how is my handling of this story different than hers? Ok, check.

Do I have a vision for where I think this piece may lead me? Check.

Now the daunting part: Pitching. Pitching is simultaneously exciting, exposing, and exhausting. You’re confident enough in an idea that you’re willing to offer it around, but the editor could easily say, “Nope. This idea stinks.”

(Note: they don’t do this, but sometimes it’s hard not to take a rejection that way.)

To pitch any story, it’s critical to get them into the correct hands. Research around: Are you looking for a left-leaning publication? Right-leaning? Some publication about automobiles or music? After you research and consider which publications are the best fit for your story, the trick is to figure out how to pitch them.

The company line many sites will feed you is to direct your pitch to some generic email address (e.g.: sports @ awesomesportssite [dot] com). Ugh, I hate that. I believed, and still to a degree, that this is some generic folder that’s opened up once a week and gutted by an unpaid intern. When a site has pitches, job opportunities, general inquiries, and so on all heading toward the same email address, story ideas are going to get lost amid generic PR requests and random subscription emails and junk mail.

I also believe, because of the anonymity of the e-mail address, that it’s a way to steal ideas. Ask a writer friend if they’ve ever pitched an idea, got silence in return, and then saw, on the site to which it was pitched, an eerily similar story. Ask them. Ask me. I’ve got a couple doozies.

And so my advice is to research editors. This is easy. Browse the site, click on author names. Many will link directly to an author page with recent work and a short biography. Often there’s an email. These people are also fairly active on social media, too. Look them up there. There are times when their author bios on the site don’t include an email, but there may very well be one in their Twitter bio.

Once more, and I can’t emphasize this enough, research the editor! Don’t send a sports pitch to a politics editor. Find the editor (or a writer, perhaps they’ll be kind enough to pass the idea along) who has written pieces in a similar vein to what you’re trying to write. Typically an editor-in-chief doesn’t want to read pitches, so if I’m pitching an unfamiliar publication, I aim for either the managing editor or the sports/politics/culture/etc. editor.

What goes in the pitch:

Subject, for me, are the hardest to write. I don’t want to write something punny or cliche, but I want it to grab the editors attention. “A story idea: Matt Osgood” isn’t going to get an editor to click the email. However, “I Found a Dead Body Last Weekend: A story by Matt Osgood” will (this assuming you actually did find a dead body last weekend).

In the body of the email, my format is simple. I send a greeting (“Good morning, editor”) then I brief intro (“Finding a lifeless human body behind my parents butcher shop is not how I expected to start 9th grade”) before stopping short and launching into an introduction (“But, first, my name is … I’ve written for … and so on”). In the next paragraph, I’d launch into the story idea, the sources I’m speaking/have spoken to, and the overall slant of the story. I end with my contact info.

If you’re pitching a new place, make sure to also include clips of your best writing. Show some diversity in topics and the skill with which you wrote those stories. Include different publications. Show an example of a shorter piece, a longer feature, or a profile (always something reported). You should be able to show each publication that you can do more than the style of story you just pitched them. That way, if they don’t like the original idea, that’s fine. You’ve shown them that you’ve got some depth to your skills. I once pitched a story that was more of an op-ed than a reported story, but since I included in my pitch some clips of reported pieces, the editor asked me to expand my pitch to include sources. It happens. Show the editors what you have.

In this work, you’ll fail more than you’ll succeed. If we’re compiling every component of this field (every pitch, every unreturned e-mail, every rejection), mathematically this makes sense. Don’t let these letdowns dictate your attitude toward pitching and developing stories. Ask questions if they say no. Try to learn from the rejections. The pitches need to be more refined, more detailed, or more succinct. You’ll also learn over time what publications tend to have better response times, better pay, or are more appropriate for a certain type of story.

In some ways, pitching always reminded me of asking someone on a date (To the millennials used to swiping left or right on apps out there, “asking someone on a date,” is when we would identify someone to whom we felt an attraction or connection and then would approach this person face-to-face and ask them if they would like to join us for coffee or a drink or to a movie). You leave yourself vulnerable. Ideas are precious to us as much as our self-esteem is, right? These are our babies. We’ve developed them. We’ve nurtured and curated them. We believe in them. And so when someone says no, it hurts. It stings a little.

That being said (or written), it’s important to know that our words and ideas will resonate with someone. Some editor will read your idea and say, “Shit, yeah, why is that? I love this idea.” It’s just a matter of finding the right angle, the right story for the perfect editor and publication.

After the pitch, your next step is to obsessively check your email over the next 48 hours and let stress consume you (that is my strategy, at least). It’s good times. After a week, if you don’t hear anything, send a follow-up. A week is a good length of time.

Example #1:

“I just wanted to politely nudge this pitch up in your inbox for your consideration. If you have any questions about my vision for the piece, I’ll gladly answer them.”

Example #2:

“As the piece is timely, I thought I’d reach out to see if you’ve had a chance to review my pitch. Please reach out with any questions, concerns, or interest.”

After a few weeks, move on to the next publication. Whichever one eventually publishes your piece is the publication that was destined to make your story shine. So go pitch. Get your ideas out into the world. Let’s keep great storytelling alive.

Matt Osgood is the author of “Write Now!: The Guide to Making it in Freelance Writing.” His work has appeared in the online editions of The Atlantic, Slate, Vice, Smithsonian, and many more.