by Stephanie Morrill
The paperback version of Go Teen Writers: How to turn your first draft into a published book is finally available! You can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and while it likely won’t be on the shelves of your local bookstore, they can order it for you, if you like.
To celebrate, Jill and I are launching a contest. We want you to pitch your story to us! You have 25 words or less to tell us about your story.
Your pitch should create a compelling mental picture that implies an entire story. It should say something about who your characters are, what kind of dilemma they’re facing, the tone of the story, and a clue about the intended audience. (A one-line for a regency novel will sound different than a one-line for a romantic comedy.)
Be sure that you’re pitching us your story and not giving us a tagline. A tagline is something you might find on a movie poster. The tagline for my upcoming release, The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet is, “Don’t just get even – write a novel.” A pitch, however, would be, “A teen writer uses storywriting to cope with her cruel friends, never dreaming that they’ll find out and make her pay.” See the difference?
Here’s how the contest will work:
1. Sometime between now and 1:00pm (Kansas City time) Friday, March 15th, you can fill out the form below with your pitch and the title of your manuscript. If your manuscript is not yet titled, please make up a title. The title is going to act as your password, basically, because you won’t be putting your name on your entry. Since Jill and I are the ones doing the judging, we want this to be anonymous.
2. After the contest closes, Jill and I will read through the entries. We will pick our favorite 10 to 20, depending on how many entries there are.
3. On Monday, March 18th, Jill and I will post the pitches that finalled. You will not be receiving an email that you finalled, you’ll need to check back on the blog to find out. We will not be posting titles though, so when you claim an entry belongs to you, you’ll have to confirm the title with me so I can be sure.
4. To determine the top three entries, we will open up voting for four days. (From Monday the 18th to Thursday the 21st.)
5. On Friday the 22nd, we will announce who the top three are. The top three will receive a copy of the Go Teen Writers book. If they already have a copy of the book, we’ll work out an alternate prize.
This contest is open to all ages and all countries. One entry per person please.
