You’ve heard of elevator pitches, I’m sure. Those concise, well-targeted pitches you formulate in case you happen to bump into George Lucas on an elevator. The quick pitch that articulates the story of your story and what sets it apart from the crowd, while at the same time, describing the exact crowd that will love it.
These little pitches seem an easy thing to write – until you have to draft one. There is an art to this, to taking 500 words and distilling them to the perfect 50. I can think of 3 keys to unlocking these potent little blurbs.
- Knowing your story
- Knowing your target audience
- Knowing why your story matters…to your audience and to you
What This Means for Your Newsletter
What if you took this same “elevator pitch” concept and broadened it? Instead of pitching a single book (or series) and knowing the genre/category/audience for the book…and also the unique value that sets this book apart from others in the genre, what if you described who you are as a writer, who your audience is, and what sets you apart from all the other writers in your genre?
How would you articulate your work?
The “elevator pitch” has value even if you never get 2 minutes with an agent or editor (or blockbuster movie producer) because it articulates your work, your audience, and the value you bring. These are essential to know for any marketing you do.
Okay, sure. But how do you take this valuable knowledge and distill it into meaningful content for your readers?
When you sit down to create your newsletters, look for concepts that evoke emotion. You want your readers to feel something—entertained, relaxed, curious, warmed, enchanted, enriched, motivated...Something that fits your writing and resonates with your audience.
Deliver the newsletter that only you can.
If your newsletter could have been sent from Jane Women’s Fiction or T. O. O. Scary or Cozy Matilda, it’s missing the special ingredient: The Secret Sauce.
I can’t tell you what the sauce is, but I can tell you where to look for it. It’s in the last book your reader put down, the one where she wanted the story to go on. It’s in the first book that hooked your reader and made him buy the next one.
→ It’s the reader’s experience.
It’s that thing they want more of.
And gosh, if we could bottle it up and sell it to other authors to inject into their stories, we wouldn’t. We couldn’t. Because it’s ours only. It’s woven into the soul of our stories and the meaty flesh of our characters with DNA that is uniquely us.
The secret sauce identifies you as you. It identifies your books as your books.
Sometimes it’s hard to identify the sauce ourselves because we’re steeped in it. (Or we've come to believe we don't have a sauce...that's for other writers.)
Eight Meaningful Places to Find the Ingredients of Your Secret Sauce.
If you aren't sure what your secret sauce is, look here for clues:
- Attributes commonly ascribed to your books by reviewers and raving fans.
- A phrase people use over and over to describe your writing. (You can know you nailed your tagline if it feels like it was born from this.)
- The most meaningful feedback or praise you’ve received about your writing. (This is personal. It will tell you why your work matters to you. What was the feedback, and why did this matter so much to you?)
- The worlds you create.
- The conflicted characters you love to write.
- The themes you can’t leave alone.
- The rhythm of your words.
- The resonance that lingers.
How can you articulate such things? Not by formula, my friend. This comes by art. You have to get your hands into the cool and formless clay and feel it. And once you do, once you see it, you have to work hard to define it.
Nobody knows your secret sauce like you do. And maybe you haven’t paid much attention to it. And maybe today is a good time to start.
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