Post #2

Part of romanticizing my journey as an aspiring writer is learning how to present my book—so when I stumbled across a trend on X, I couldn’t resist trying it.

While I was mindlessly scrolling through X (as one does while “researching” agents, but really it turns into aimless browsing…), I came across these storyboards (vision boards?). Basically, they’re short little guides for your book that you can pitch to agents on X. Query letters are about understanding how to present your book in just a few paragraphs; this focuses on the visual aesthetic while also diving into trends and themes. I was hooked and thought: how would I present my book? So here’s my attempt!

The Basics

From what I’ve seen, they seem to follow a four-slide rule. This may have to do with how many images are allowed in posts, but I thought four seemed like a good number. From there, each slide could focus on different aspects, but there were two hot topics that were involved in every pitch. The first slide was an introduction to the work: title, genre, and sometimes a word count. The second most popular was a comps slide, which makes sense since you need that for your query anyway. So from there, you can add your pitch, a short summary, the first paragraph, an inspired playlist, a character spotlight, and more!

With that in mind, here’s the outline that I decided to go with.

Slide One: The Introduction

What I have on this slide is my “title” and genre. Project Nightshade actually is not the title of my book. It shall remain a secret… for now. Though I do love easter eggs and maybe the title of the book is already somewhere hidden on my website… ;)

Slide Two: Themes & Tropes

I wanted to highlight a useful, at-a-glance context for the book that focuses on themes and tropes. (It gave me an idea for a future blog post, actually!) This showcases what narrative devices they can expect and what audiences they could appeal to. I also think this is helpful beyond agents. When I work on book round-ups, it’s always useful to know what categories they fit best in!

Slide Three: Comp Titles

I think this is a universal requirement for any query. It was fun highlighting specific elements from comp titles and how they relate to my own. I think this is great for readers too, so if they ever loved a specific theme/trope/focus, they can find something similar!

Slide Four: Mood Board

This is my attempt at an edgy mood board.

Final Thoughts

I had a lot of fun creating this storyboard and think it helped me learn new ways I can expand my query. I won’t be posting it on X, but I wanted to share it at least here! I created everything in Canva using their stock photos.

See you next time! 😀