WriteOnCon.com

Okay, so we think the Pitch-Fest was a pretty rousing success. Sure, there were a few hiccups, and a few deletions, and you know, regular WriteOnCon fun.

We’ve finally got all the votes in, so we can announce! First off, each agent chose a winning pitch from their assigned pitches. Each agent donated a specific prize, and we will be contacting the winners via private email. But for announcement purposes, here’s who won!

Check out these winning pitches to see how they did it!

• Alyssa Eisner-Henkin — #12 The Creation of Hallelujah Calhoun
• Amy Tipton — #5 Sweet Little Lies
• Brianne Johnson — #20 The Summer I Started a Business; Solve a Bank Robbery & Showed up on Cajun Pawn Stars
• Christa Heschke — #13 Mim: A Trinketing Tale
• Dawn Frederick — #10 Odin’s Promise
• Eddie Schneider — #15 Three Wishes
• Jennifer Flannery — #22 Simply West of Heaven and #2 Lilly Petunia, Presidential Investigator.
• Jason Yarn — #9 Battle of the Wonderland Gardens
• Jodell Sadler — #20 Ninchicks: Crossing the Road
• Kathleen Rushall — #4 The Sidewalk’s Regrets
• Logan Garrison — #18 Rogue Healer
• Mollie Glick — #4 What Death Has Touched
• Peter Knapp — #14 The Wrong Side of Sunrise
• Sara Crowe — #12 Chasing Charlie

Congrats to those agent winners! Wondering what to do if your agent seemed to like your pitch, but didn’t request? See this post.

 

And now… Onto the Mentorship winners! These pitches were selected by book bloggers and agented/published authors. Each person was assigned a specific thread, and each thread was read an equal number of times. We really tried to make this as fair as possible. Our book bloggers and authors selected the following for entrance into our 6-month Mentorship Program. Details and invitations to the private forum will be coming via private email to our recipients.

But they are:

• Flannery, #17: ANNABEL MIST DOES NOT EXIST (MG Contemporary)
• Sadler, #16: HENRY HEARS YOU (MG Contemporary)
• Crowe, #8: LITTLE MISS EVIL (Humorous MG)
• Frederick, #8: FREAK (Gothic YA)
• Henkin, #23: THIS OTHER EDEN (New Adult)
• Garrison, #16: LOST AMONG STARS (YA Science Fiction)
• Crowe, 12: CHASING CHARLIE (MG Mystery)
• Tipton, #20: BLINK (YA Fantasy)
• Heschke, #15: SOMEBODY THAT I USED TO KNOW (YA Contemporary)
• Flannery, #9: THE FUNERAL SINGER (YA Contemporary)

 

Please join us in a hearty CONGRATULATIONS to all our winners, and to everyone who participated in the Pitch-Fest!

 

FILL OUT THIS FORM TO ENTER YOUR PITCH INTO THE PITCH-FEST.

The submission window is open from now until 8 PM EST on Wednesday, March 13. Please make sure you enter everything correctly on the form. No changes will be made, even if you email us! We simply don’t have the time/manpower to handle such requests and prep the boards for the fest (which begins on Monday, March 18). Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

• Your pitch must fit one of the genres listed in THIS POST. Use the same wording we did.
• Everything you want to know about genres, length of pitch, and how to act during the Pitch-Fest are in THIS POST.

 

How did it get to be early March already?! It seems like the pitch workshops went so fast, and it’s almost time to get ready to submit that final pitch! With that in mind, we wanted to give you a quick run-through of all the rules.

• Each pitcher can submit one and only one pitch. Pick your best pitch for a finished manuscript. Our agents are looking for great projects that are ready to go. Don’t make them wait, because that makes them sad.
• Once your pitch is submitted, you cannot change it. So please take the time to make sure it’s exactly how you want it and proof the bleep out of it! We have a very short amount of time in which to assign and post these pitches; we quite simply don’t have the time to hunt down and edit individual pitches.
• Your pitch must fit into one of the genres listed here. It’s your responsibility to figure out where your pitch fits best. We’ve tried to keep the genres fairly general to make sure there’s a place for everyone. So things like romance, mystery, and coming-of-age books could fit into the contemporary category. Epic fantasy, urban fantasy, and fairy tale retellings could fit into the fantasy category. And so on.
• Your pitch must be 200 words or fewer. The pitch only includes the parts of your query that talk about the plot, characters, and themes of your book. It does not include the title, word count of the book, genre, or any biographical information you might include in a query. We will ask for title, word count, and genre separately.
• If you did not participate in the forum workshop, you can still submit to the PitchFest.
• We open for submissions at 6 AM EST on Monday, March 11 and close at 8 PM EST on Wednesday, March 13. We will post a link to the submission form on the WriteOnCon website on Monday morning. You must submit your pitch via this form to be included in the PitchFest. You are not automatically entered if you posted in the forums.
• We have a limited amount of spots in the PitchFest, because our agents can only look at so many pitches before their heads start to spin. If we get more pitches than we have space for, we will randomly select the participants. So please don’t feel like you have to get up in the middle of the night to submit your pitches right when we open. It doesn’t matter when you submit, so long as it’s during the submission period.
• We will post the pitches for you. Your pitch will have an agent and number, which we will send to you. The agents will read and comment on every pitch in their assigned group. Each agent will pick their favorite pitch from their group to win a prize. We will also be telling all the agents about pitches that are scoring really well among our blogger and published author voters, so it is possible to get requests from other agents even if you are not in their group.
• During the PitchFest, we ask that pitchers do NOT post in the forums. The purpose of the workshop is to give you the chance to ask all the questions you can to make that pitch awesome. The purpose of the PitchFest is to give agents, bloggers, and writers the chance to advocate for the pitches they love, so we’re limiting posting privileges to voters only. This does not mean, however, that you can’t blog, tweet, tumblr, FB, or whatever. By all means, spread the word and thank your commenters there!
• When it’s all over, we’ll post the winning pitches on the WriteOnCon website, and of course we’ll contact the winners via email!

 

Do you have any questions about this process that we haven’t answered yet? Drop a note in the comments section, or email us at writeoncon@gmail.com.

 

Hey there! The Perfect Your Pitch Workshop is winding down. Hopefully you’ve honed your pitch, title, and genre, as none of these can be changed after you’ve submitted them. And that submission window is rapidly approaching!  (It’s not now. It’ll be from March 11 – 13.)

But, you need to know the accepted genres in order to enter your pitch. Well here they are!!

 

Middle Grade

Historical MG

Humorous MG

MG contemporary

MG thriller

MG science fiction

MG fantasy

Literary MG

MG mystery

 

Young Adult

YA contemporary

Historical YA

Gothic/Urban YA

Girl-centric YA

Humorous YA

Boy-centric YA

YA thriller

YA science fiction

YA fantasy

YA horror

High-concept YA

Literary YA

YA suspense

YA with elements of magical realism

 

New Adult

 

When you get ready to fill out the Google form, you will need to type in one of these genres exactly as you see it here. Please make sure you’ve chosen one of these genres!

 

You’ll also need to know the title of your work, your name (ha!) and email, and have your pitch ready. Pitches should not be more than 200 words, and should only include information about your book. Word count, author bio, etc. should not be added.

 

Questions? Ask us now! writeoncon@gmail.com

How are your pitches going? Have you been in the forum getting feedback to really make them strong and shiny for the upcoming Pitch-Fest?

Our critique boards are open year-round, but are especially hopping during our conference and other events. The Perfect Your Pitch workshop runs until March 10, and then we’ll be taking your submissions for three days, from March 11 – 13. We’ll be randomly drawing 325 pitches for the Pitch-Fest, so don’t stress about what time zone you live in. It’s not a first-come, first-served type of thing! You can submit anytime from March 11 – 13.

Then we’ll be taking a breather as we prep the forums for the actual Pitch-Fest, which will begin on Monday, March 18 and run through Friday, March 22.

We’ve been giving tips and tricks from literary agents and other professionals. You can find links to all of those here.

Up today, we have literary agent Logan Garrison of The Gernert Company here to share with us how to prepare your letter so that it’s as perfect as possible.

 

Anything over about a page (and I mean that in the 12pt font double-spaced kind of way your teachers always meant it–no cheating!) tends to just get glazed over by whatever assistant or intern happens to be screening queries. I wish it weren’t that way, but as someone who handles a very high volume of queries every week, I can assure you that it is.

The best queries, to me, are the ones that have an intro sentence that peaks my interest (usually a quote from the work or your one sentence pitch of it), a short summary of the work, a brief paragraph on the intended audience, and then a quick bio of the author.

Be ruthless with your letter. Cut and cut and cut, then hand it off to someone else and ask them to be ruthless. It hurts, but it’s so valuable to just get it cut to the bare bones—you’re much more likely to grab someone’s interest that way.

 

Thanks, Logan!

Today’s pitch-writing tip comes from the fabulous Mollie Glick. She’s been a supporter of WriteOnCon for years, and we’ve even had some success stories from her! Mollie is a literary agent at Foundry Media.

 

Her tip today is short, but worth it’s weight in gold.

 

The best way to elevate your pitch is for it to mirror the mood of your novel. If your novel is funny, the pitch should be clever. If it’s poignant, the pitch should be moving, and if it’s suspenseful the pitch should capture its drama. All the basic elements should still be there, but if you can present them with panache they’re more likely to catch an agent’s eye.

 

 

Go forth to the forums to get your pitch critiqued!

YA pitch critique

MG pitch critique

 

If you haven’t read the rest of our professional’s advice on how to write the perfect pitch, you can check them out in this board.