Hook, Line, & Sinker Contest Guidelines

Hook, Line, & Sinker Contest Guidelines

Hook, Line, & Sinker

On Saturday, October 13th, the contest window will open at 11 AM EDT and close at 5 PM EDT or once the limit is reached.  To enter, your manuscript must be complete, unpublished, and ready to send to agents. (You can still enter if you’ve queried any of the participating agents.)

ROUND ONE- Enter at the appropriate blog based on genre.  You must wait until the entry window opens.  One entry per person.  Fiction only.  (no nonfiction, memoir, or erotica)

Middle Grade- http://www.writeforapples.com/ (accepting 50 entries)

Young Adult- http://katelliswrites.blogspot.co.uk/ (accepting 75 entries)

Adult- http://fizzygrrl.com/ (accepting 50 entries)

*Your entry must include the following: Name, title, genre & subgenre, e-mail, hook, & line.

Example-

Name: Autumn Peacock
Title: With a Wiggle of Her Pen
Genre: YA Contemporary
Email: AutumnPeackock(at)gmail(dot)com **Use (at) and (dot) so the spambots won’t find you.**

Hook: One to three sentences pitching your story- the choice is yours. Maximum word count of 60.  (Sentence one. Sentence two. Sentence three.  Lines on the screen don’t matter.) 

Line: Your favorite line in the manuscript. First, last, smack dab in the middle? It’s up to you. Choose something that showcases your writing.  *One sentence only. Use your best judgment and please don't try to combine sentences to fit more in. 

*Comments are accepted and encouraged in this round.  However, they must be positive and constructive.  Anything discouraging or inappropriate will be deleted.

ROUND TWO- From those that get in, we’ll choose the ones we feel are the best fit for what the participating agents are looking for. We’ll leave a comment by Tuesday, October 16th asking those moving to Round Two to email us their hook, line, & sinker (first 250 words). Moving on to Round Two will be 20 entries each from MG & Adult and 30 from YA.

ROUND THREE- From there, we’ll choose 10 entries per genre (with an extra 10 going anywhere we choose) as our finalists and post them on Monday, October 22nd. They will again be posted on the three blogs based on genre.

From October 22-24, participating agents will read through the entries and make any requests they'd like.

*Only agents will be able to comment during Round Three.

*We reserve the right to adjust the number of entries in any of the three rounds. Our goal is to get participating writers in front of agents and to find our participating agents some great writers to connect with!

*Since we know a lot of you who will be entering, to keep things fair, any entries we feel we are too familiar with or too close to the author of, will go to a secret fourth judge for the final decision.

14 comments:

  1. These sound like great contests! Thank you for giving writers so many opportunities to get in front of an agent. :)

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  2. This sounds fantastic! Thanks so much to all three of you for putting this together.

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  3. This is sucj a great opportunity and I am getting very excited for the 13th.

    I have a question about the "line" section. I completely understand if this is something you cannot specifiy, but I figured I would check :)
    There are so many lines to pick from in a novel and many are favotites in different way. Is there something specific you recommend we try to showcase? For example, mine is YA Epic Fantasy, should I look for something with worlding building and action? Or would you say no matter what it is bet to go with a memorable life lesson sort of line?

    Thanks

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    1. Hi Emilyann.

      This probably doesn't help, but it's completely up to you. We wanted to give each writer some flexibility to show us what he/she thinks really makes the story stand out.

      You might want to run a few lines by writer friends and see what they think. Good luck!

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  4. Wonderful!! Thanks Dee for another fun opportunity for writers. :D

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  5. Thanks for much for the opportunity Dee!

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  6. How are we supposed to enter (I'll be entering Adult)? Is it by email or by comment? I'm sorry, I'm sure this info is up somewhere, and I'm just not seeing it. Thanks for hosting this contest! I love the idea of using our favorite line...so hard to choose!

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  7. Hi Kelsey.

    Info is on the contest tips post. We'll each put up a post on our blogs at 11 and then you can put your info in a comment.

    You'll comment on Summer's blog for adult. Good luck!

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  8. where do you post for middle-grade? I have been to the website mentioned and cannot find where to post.

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  9. Hi there!

    MG will be here on my blog, but the post won't go up until 11 tomorrow. Once it goes up, you can put your information in as a comment.

    See the contest tips post at the top for more info.

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  10. Thanks, Dee. I plan to post mine soon.

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  11. I was completely confused by the entry guidelines. It seemed like one place said to include emial, etc. on all and another site said only if you were moving on to round 2. I checked an entry before mine and there was no email, so I did not include mine. Was this wrong and is there someway I can add it to my entry. Thanks.

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    1. Hi Laura.

      I'm not sure where you were looking. Both the guidelines & contest tips say to include email and we all posted the same thing.

      If your entry is MG, you can repost and delete the old one- or let me know and I can delete it. If it's YA or Adult, just leave it and we'll find you if we need to get a hold of you. The email is more important for Round Two.

      I hope that helps!

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  12. Thank you so much for the opportunity!

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