Earlier this year, I wrote an article called Are You Ready to Pitch for #RevPit. As the submission window for PitchWars is only four days away, I thought it best to revamp the article a little to save confusion.
There are some great resources in here which may help you get through your final milestones before we all start the next leg of our PitchWars Adventure.
Which I’ll lovingly call: Mentee Hunting Season. ^_^
So, for anyone out there who’s about to enter #PitchWars, or any of the other amazing pitch contests:
Are you ready to pitch?
If the answer’s yes, the next question is: how do I prepare for submission?
The following information is more to keep my own thoughts organized, but maybe it will offer some value to others out in the universe. 🙂
1. The Query: Like other writers, I’ve written and written, revised, edited, rewritten, had a shot of whiskey, and banged my head against the keyboard trying to get my query pitch just right. Because that’s what a query is: your first chance to pitch your awesome book. While the internet offers a ton of resources on queries, the best I’ve found is Colleen Halverson’s Crafting the Fantasy Query. She cuts through the bullshit to get you on the right path.
2. The Synopsis: Like the query, I’ve spent far too many hours agonizing over this. Not so much the prettiness of the lines, but making sure I’m including the right plot points: the important ones. The internet has some great resources, but hands down Publishing Crawl’s How Two Write a 1-Page Synopsis is the perfect place to start.
3. The Final Edit: If you haven’t done this already, take one more pass through your manuscript and tackle those last-minute edits. I’d recommend jumping to Step IV if you’ve already destroyed all your fillers and filters. Either way, drop your manuscript into Word, search for anything underlined, and YOU DECIDE if a fix is needed. Word is a tool, not an editor.
4. The Format: This is the easy part, but it is time consuming, so be sure to set aside at least an hour or two to get all your documents ready to go. The site I use is Marly Spearson’s Formatting 101. It’s easy, concise, uses both pictures and words, and helps you get the right format for all your documents ready. After all, you don’t want to be scrambling last-minute if a request comes through.
4. The Documents: So, exactly which documents do you need? Well, that’s going to depend on the editor or agent, mentor or publisher. Since we’re focusing on Mentors with PitchWars, my recommendation is to have one of each document in a private folder ready to send:
- Query
- Synopsis
- First Chapter
- First 50 Pages (For partial requests)
- Full Manuscript (For full requests)
Told you… time consuming. Take the time and format each one with precision. 😉
5. The Labels: Last thing you’ll need to do is label your documents. The mentors will have a lot of submissions to read through, and you want to make sure yours doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. I recommend naming your documents this way: LastName_STORY_NAME_TypeofDocument
i.e. Harrowick_MENTEESEASON_Query
Once #5 is complete, sit back, relax, and celebrate with an adult beverage.
Good luck to everyone on submission day, and may the mentor teases be truly evil! 🙂
