Insecure Writer's Support Group Twitter Pitch 2020

I took part in the Insecure Writer's Support Group Twitter Pitch on the 15th of January 2020. The idea is that writers turn to twitter to pitch ideas and any prospective interested parties can like them and then begin a conversation about what to do next.

The only rules were you could post once per hour per manuscript and you didn't like anything unless you were an agent or publisher.

I decided to pitch two ideas:

A school discovers that they are the only people on the planet. Cut off from everything they knew, they are forced to start again. What will they do? How will they cope? Who will learn more: the pupils or the teachers?

School's in. Forever.#CO #SF #MA #YA #IWSGPit

— David Black (@Davetweetedthis) January 15, 2020

When her stage magician uncle dies, Sam inherits his props. She tries to learn his tricks but finds there's more to it. She visits where the rabbits in the hat are pulled from and meets a sawn-in-half lady.

Magic is real. The trick is making it look fake.#AD #MA #YA #IWSGPit

— David Black (@Davetweetedthis) January 15, 2020

The hashtags at the end of each pitch were to detail the genre and intended age group. I chose #CO (contemporary), #SF (sci-fi) and #AD (adventure) for the genres. I was tricky for the former pitch, since although definitely a science fiction idea, it is very much a soft science fiction. I have no intention of explaining the science behind the fiction. For the latter idea, I should probably have included #F (fantasy). That wasn't my biggest hashtag related mistake, however, I decided that the age groups I expected to be interested in these stories to be #YA (young adult) and #MA (which I completely made up). In my haste to post the first pitches before the end of an hour I intended to write #MG (middle grade), but ended up with #MA which depending on your opinion is either Middle Age or Middle Adult.

I managed to post each of them seven times before I had to surrender to the need for sleep. Damn my time zone. My pitches received three comments, 39 retweets and were liked nine times. Sadly, none of the likes were from agents or publisher, but instead other writers, a friend and in one case a Ugandan orphanage charity.

I was encouraged that people wanted to spread the word on my behalf, but disappointed that none of those people were necessarily in publishing. Either way I am determined to spend this year working on both ideas.