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!

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.

• 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.

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

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!

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.

Take it away, Sara!

The most important part of a query is the book pitch. I tend to skip over any biographical information until I have read the short synopsis. When I read a query I want to know quickly if I want to read the book. That is it. I will look at your credits/ MFA/ hobbies, if I like your pitch. Here are my thoughts on what you need to do to with your pitch to get a request:

WHAT YOUR SYNOPSIS SHOULD DO:
1. SET UP THE STORY/ GIVE US THE HOOK
Setting up the story will mean revealing much of the plot—but not every single thing that happens on every page. (And, please do not reveal the entire plot in the email subject heading which is alarming.)

The hook gets to the heart of the book. It is what makes me want to pick up a book and what keep me reading. What will connect me to this story?

People often think of hooks as gimmicks—but a gimmick won’t keep a story together, won’t make someone keep reading.

2. INTRODUCE THE CHARACTER/S/ CONFLICT
Who is this story about? What is his or her conflict? What is the main conflict of the book?

If a pitch is all about the character or all about the set up/ world, but not about what happens to the character in that world, it is not telling us enough to keep reading.

3. ESTABLISH GENRE/ SETTING/ TONE/ VOICE
Often queries get very specific about the genre and audience, and this is fine, as long as you do not veer into marketing or get too specific, such as all 13 year old swimmers will want to read this or picking an age range that does not make sense for a market such as 2nd grade- 12th grade.

If there is a Sci-fi twist or it is dystopian or a fantasy, I think it can work well to set that up for the reader upfront.

I do want to know the age of the character, as in both MG and YA this is hugely important for the markets, and I want to know that you know your audience.

TONE and VOICE are extras, but are usually present in the best queries. If I can get a sense of the tone of the book and the voice from description, that is a plus. That is not to say queries for humorous books should be funny, but I hope for a line or two in there that shows me that the book is funny.

WHAT YOUR SYNOPSIS MUST DO WHILE DOING THE ABOVE:
1. MAKE SENSE
Reread your query, get others to read it (especially people who have not yet read your book), read it out loud. I am reading at least 30 queries a day, like most agents, and if I have to reread a sentence more than once, I get frustrated and I get disinterested. Many do not make any sense at all.

It has taken me years to be able to truly write a pitch well. Practice! I do not think writing a great query letter correlates to being a great writer.

Bad queries are for the most part the companions to bad books. They are for books that are too long for a human to want to read, 600k words or so, are for the first book in a series of 20 volumes, are for a picture book about cocaine use, stories for all ages, etc.

The tragedy is bad queries for good books: queries that are confusing and sell a great book short because an agent tunes out.

2. SHOW ME WHY YOUR STORY IS UNIQUE
This is not easy. But even if your story is about a vampire or zombie or fairy and the market feels flooded with those stories, you have to fight for your book. This does not mean telling me how much better your story is than the bestselling series about the above. This means writing a synopsis that will show me that this character and this world are different than what I have seen before.

3. MAKE ME WANT TO READ YOUR BOOK
This is about bringing all the above elements together. The best pitches are short and sweet. They tell me the most important details about a character to make me want to know more, introduce the main conflict right off the bat, have a unique hook.

You want to tell me enough about the book that I have a sense of what it is, but you also want to leave me wanting more. Check out book jackets, these are slightly different than pitches, but are a great learning tool.

And it is worth saying again, if query letters and synopses are not your strong point, that is OK. It is a learned skill for most of us. If you struggle with it, keep practicing, and keep it simple.

——

Wow, right?

Have you gone into our forums to get feedback on your pitch? You should!

One of my favorite parts: “As you write and then revise your query, remember back to when it was just an idea unfurling in some corner of your mind. What was the emotional hook, the thing that made this the idea you just had to write? Which relationship or relationships lend emotional credence to the premise—that’s to say, elevate the premise from a scenario to a story. Once you’ve figured this out, you may want to frame your premise and plot through the lens of this relationship when writing your pitch.”

GO HERE TO SEE THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. It’s well worth your while as you polish and prepare that pitch. Your query letter will thank you.

Thanks to Pete, who will be participating in our mid-winter Pitch-Fest in just one month! You can get your pitch critiqued and genre honed in our forum.

As part of that feature of this Pitch-Fest, we’re offering some words of wisdom from our participating agents, as well as some links from some of the best from around the web.

Up today, we’re taking some advice from Kathleen Rushall, literary agent at Marsal Lyon Literary. Here’s what she has to say about building your pitch:

You’ll hear this a lot: your pitch should grab your reader immediately and make them want more.

You can accomplish this by jumping right into your story. Start with something unexpected. Show us a bit of who your characters are and the set up, and then lead us straight to the hook. Remember, you don’t need to share the ending. I love when a pitch synopsis ends with a cliffhanger or mystery. You want to set up who your MC is, why we should care about him or her, and, most importantly, what’s at stake. Make the reader wonder what’s next. We should want to request the book to find out what’s going to happen!

Basically, the goal of a pitch is to make your plot sound as appealing as possible and to show an agent that you write well. Another thing to keep in mind (I know, as if you needed more, right?) is to try to stay authentic to the feel of your book. You want your pitch to reflect the tone of the manuscript. If it’s a thriller, the pitch should be punchy and especially fast-paced. If it’s more literary, the pitch should show off your prose and plot layers. Is it funny? If you can make me laugh just by reading the pitch, that is fabulous!

Stay focused on your plot and what makes it unique. Know your own book inside and out before trying to write a pitch. Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Pitches should be as simple and clear as they are intriguing. Good luck! I can’t wait to see what you’re going to come up with.

——–

There you go! Go forth and Perfect Your Pitch!