Is my pitch convincing?

Will It Stick? tests your words before you send them. Three cold readers say what they heard, not what you meant.

What you are really asking

Convincing is not sounding sure of yourself. It is giving the reader a reason to believe that rides inside the words themselves.

A pitch can be perfectly clear and still not believed. The check separates those two things, because readers do.

A real check

A real panel run. The full run is on Examples.

The goal

Answer 'what's new?' with one thing that lands, not 'good, busy'.

The words

I am starting basketball on my leave of work

What the three readers kept

The stranger kept: “The author starts basketball on leave.”

The skeptic kept: “Starting basketball during work leave.”

The target reader kept: “Starting basketball on my time off.”

The point landed in all three seats. Simple scored 5 of 10. Belief was another matter.

Six scores

Simple5 / 10
Unexpected2 / 10
Concrete2 / 10
Credible3 / 10
Emotional2 / 10
Stories1 / 10

Where belief split

On Credible, one reader scored 0 and two scored 3. Nothing in the line proved anything. It asked to be believed on its own say-so, and one reader declined.

The one fix

“Say, 'I am playing basketball during my time off.'”

After the fix

I am playing basketball on my leave of work.

Shown as the checker returned it. Even its own rewrite kept the foggy phrase “on my leave of work.” The checker shows its work, flaws included.

Paste the words you're about to send. Find the one line they'll keep.