Jason Yarn at Paradigm Literary Agency is hosting our next contest!
The contest will open on Monday, March 29 at 12 Noon EST. When? MONDAY. Not today. MONDAY.
You’ll be submitting a one-line pitch and the first paragraph of your manuscript. The contest is open to all genres except short stories and romance. Mr. Yarn is accepting 100 entries.
Some advice from Mr. Yarn as you prepare your submission for Monday:
- Be careful if you make your one-line pitch a question. It’s not verboten, but asking me something I can answer ‘No’ to is always a dangerous thing.
- Don’t be flabby – be concrete. Meaning, your pitch line shouldn’t be full of generic clichés like ‘Fate’ and ‘Doom’ without being tied to a concrete story element or character.
- Your pitch should drive me to read your first paragraph and your first paragraph should make me feel like I’ll die if I don’t see more – you don’t need to tell your entire story in either part, just addict me to wanting to find out what happens next. Good luck!
Mr. Yarn will review the entries and choose up to five winners. He’ll be critiquing your query letter and the first 10 pages of your manuscript! We anticipate announcing the winners on Friday, April 9 on the QueryTracker blog.
Dude, guys! All of this is happening MONDAY on the QUERYTRACKER BLOG. So go follow us over there!
But I'm sort of in charge of the contest and wanted you to know so you could, you know, get your pitches and paragraphs ready. *wink*
Have a lovely!