Gathering (and organizing) your ideas to pitch to a magazine
Good morning Substack readers! I’m hoping your week is off to a great start and that this newsletter provides some inspiration and information that helps bolster your writing business.
Over the span of my career, I’ve written hundreds of articles and hundreds of pitches. When I was on the editorial side of a magazine, I’ve also received plenty of pitches. While this newsletter won’t delve into what makes a pitch successful (I’m saving those juicy details for future posts) in this newsletter we will talk about:
*Ways to brainstorm several stories from the same topic, using different angles, to sell to multiple publications
*How to make sure your idea fits the publication’s tone, voice, and readership
*Keeping your ideas in one place (and re-pitching them to other outlets if they’re not accepted)
Today, I’m going to set you up for pitching success, using my own experiences as a guideline. I’ll give you tips on how to stay organized and how to find homes for the articles you care most about. I’m even including a free PDF titled “10 Pitches That Sold,” written by yours truly, that details what and how I pitched my editors and the end result.
Read below the photo (the majestic 600-year old Old Senator Live Oak in St. Augustine, Florida from a visit a couple of weeks ago) to see what I’ve been working on lately. You can also become a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get all the important details on how to organize your pitches plus the PDF of “10 Pitches That Sold.”
Recently published work:
*Chron: Discover The Strand, Galveston’s charming historic district
*The Tennessean: Explore the History of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park through its graveyards
*Plate: How Denise Vigil Turned An Historic Church Into the Friar’s Fork Restaurant
*Livability: Latin Savor
Thank you to my paid subscribers who want to access this content—I appreciate you! Please feel free to email me with your feedback, future topics you’d like to see covered, and your comments. I hope you find this information helpful.
Brainstorming saleable ideas:
In elementary school, I had a teacher who would gather us on the floor with our legs folded, and have us visualize a magical hat that would give us all brilliant ideas—our Thinking Caps. We could imagine them to be pink or purple, festooned in ribbons, covered in peacock feathers—whatever we wanted, as long as that hat helped us generate good ideas to write about.
To this day, when I set aside time to brainstorm, I tell myself I need to Put My Thinking Cap On. It helps me to have a ritual like sitting in a certain chair with a cup of coffee or tea and really blocking off that time to just think of different ways to tell a story or talk about a destination. When my Thinking Cap is on, I am designating undistracted time to just focus on listing out ideas. I get out my press trip notes and look through the photos on my phone to help remind me of details that may spark an idea.
Let’s say you have a broad topic, such as a destination. Let’s take Greater Zion, for example. On a visit there, I did get to do some of the many outdoorsy activities the area is known for, but I also did a wine tasting along the newly emerging Utah Wine Trail. Plenty of things have already been written about how to experience the recreational options in the Greater Zion area, but not much has been written yet about the area wineries.
I was able to take that little, specific idea and turn it into two stories for top-tier publications. One for Travel + Leisure that was a service piece including places to stay, eat, and things to do; and another for Wine Enthusiast about Utah’s interesting yet complicated relationship with wine and its new wine trail. By taking the same broad topic and winnowing it down, I was able to find different topics within it, develop two different angles, and sell it to two different publications (so far).
One way I find helpful to do this is to start with the larger theme or topic and just list out all the ideas I had about the place. Then I start thinking about who might be interested in sharing a story about those more specific ideas.
Tailoring your idea to the publication
When thinking about placing your story idea, the most important things to figure out is if the publication has already covered the topic (in which case they won’t want to feature anything similar for awhile) and if it’s something in their coverage area.
For example, a magazine like Southern Living only covers stories that are related to travel, culture, and lifestyle in the American Southeast, so you won’t be landing a story with them about your summer in Cape Cod. A magazine like Plate, which covers restaurant industry stories, is interested in giving their readers service pieces that keep them on top of trends.
The best way to get familiar with a publication is to read through as much of it as you can before pitching to get a sense of their voice (playful or serious? authoritative or humorous?), who their readers are, and the types of articles they publish. As an example, Thrillist’s readership is people between 25-35 years old. When I pitched them my article, Everything is Awesome at Legoland, Even if You Don’t Have Kids, I knew I had to take an angle that wasn’t family travel focused (even though it was a trip I took with my kids) because their readers aren’t looking for stories about family travel. If I had pitched a Legoland story to a publication that was family focused, it likely would have been more service oriented, detailing where to stay, what rides were best for what age, and where to go when junior has a meltdown. You get the idea—make the angle for the publication.
When I’m brainstorming and research gathering, I read through as many headlines and articles on a publication’s website as I can, or see if I can get several months worth of back issues of a print magazine from my library. That way, I can mine headlines and see not only the way they hook readers by the type of head and dek they use, but the types of stories they publish: listicles? service pieces? personal essays? longform? stories with quotes requiring expert interviews? reviews? I want to get my pitch as close to the type of stories they publish and use as catchy a headline as possible.
When thinking about pitching a magazine, there are two ways to approach it. One is that you have a great, interesting, and unique story you’re dying to share with the world and you need to find the right magazine to publish it (using background knowledge about readership and type of story). The other is to take a magazine you really want to write for, deeply understand the types of stories they’re looking for, and fit your expertise/story idea into something they’ll want. When you combine the two, you might have a published story and a paycheck.
Keeping your ideas organized in one place (and re-pitching them to other outlets if they’re not accepted)
The easiest way I’ve found to do this is using a free Trello account. It basically lets you create different ‘boards’ that you can title as needed to stay organized. As an example, you could have a board called “Pitches 2024,” one called “Accepted,” “Awaiting Payment,” and “Rejected.” It can be as simple or as complicated as you choose. These days, I use one Trello board (Pitches 2024) to keep my ideas organized.
I create a list title for each pitch and I include the publication, the editor’s name and email, the date I pitched them, and the ideas I pitched. On the same list title, I can add another card to the bottom with notes like what the editor said if they made a call for pitches, the date I followed up, and any other notes, like whether the piece was accepted or rejected. If I have an idea I haven’t figured out where to pitch yet, I can make a list title for that, too, so I keep it top of mind to pitch somewhere. I can also archive any list titles when I want to get rid of them altogether to clear up space (like when a publication shutters, for example).
When I get a rejection or decide after a few follow ups to move on, I choose another publication where I believe the idea would fit, tweak it to fit that publication, and pitch it to the next one, creating a new list title for the old idea/new publication.
Thanks for reading this far—I hope you got a lot out of it! Please leave me your comments and questions or feel free to email me at rebecca@rebeccatreon.com or message me on Instagram @RebeccaTreon or on Facebook.
As promised, here’s a link to my PDF, 10 Pitches That Sold—I hope you find it useful!