QueryTracker Blog

Helping Authors Find Literary Agents

Monday, March 29, 2010

Agent-Judged Contest with Jason Yarn

Jason Yarn at Paradigm Literary Agency is hosting our contest today!

The contest is now open. CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE SUBMISSION FORM. You must have a QT account (free) and login to access the form.

You’ll be submitting a one-line pitch and the first paragraph of your manuscript.

The contest is open to all genres except short stories and romance.

Mr. Yarn is accepting 100 entries.

Some advice from Mr. Yarn as you prepare your submission:

  • Be careful if you make your one-line pitch a question. It’s not verboten, but asking me something I can answer ‘No’ to is always a dangerous thing.
  • Don’t be flabby – be concrete. Meaning, your pitch line shouldn’t be full of generic clichés like ‘Fate’ and ‘Doom’ without being tied to a concrete story element or character.
  • Your pitch should drive me to read your first paragraph and your first paragraph should make me feel like I’ll die if I don’t see more – you don’t need to tell your entire story in either part, just addict me to wanting to find out what happens next. Good luck!

Mr. Yarn will review the entries and choose up to five winners. He’ll be critiquing your query letter and the first 10 pages of your manuscript!

We anticipate announcing the winners on Friday, April 9 here on the QueryTracker blog. So follow us (widget right over there -->).

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41 comments:

Weronika Janczuk said...

I don't see a form or anything like that . . .

Jeanne Lyet Gassman said...

Submission form still says contest hasn't started. Am I doing something wrong?

K. M. Walton said...

Hi Elana - when I click on the submission form it takes me to the QT sight - I'm signed in but there is no form - only a message saying that the contest doesn't open till 12...

B.J. Anderson said...

Hmmm. It's not working.

Sarah Ahiers said...

Jeanne beat me to it - i too am getting a "too early" error message...

Amy Sue Nathan said...

It's 12:03 - no submission form yet!

Conda Douglas said...

Too early message for me too.

Sarah N Fisk said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sarah Ahiers said...

NM- it's working now

Shana Silver said...

I was able to get my entry in just now.

Jeanne Lyet Gassman said...

Got it. Thanks.

Elana Johnson said...

Sorry guys! Glad it's working now. You do have to log in to your QT account. And that's free to sign up for.

Any other problems? (It's loading for me when I sign in.)

Dan Olsen said...

Great contest. I just entered, and will hold my breath until Friday, April 9th...

Good luck everyone.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Elana! Um, can you tell writers are not that into patience?

Catherine

B.J. Anderson said...

It finally worked for me! Thanks a bunch, Elana! Hehe, yes, writers are impatient.

About Me said...

Elana, just wondering, will the form close once the 100 mark is met.

Sarah Ahiers said...

having a limited amount of entries just brings out my competetive side...

Elana Johnson said...

Crimey, the form won't load past 100 entries. So if the contest fills, the page will come up and say the contest is closed. So if the form is loading, you're in. :)

About Me said...

Great, thanks!

Conda Douglas said...

Thanks, Elana! Whew!

Alyssa Kirk said...

Good luck to everyone who enters!

Matthew MacNish said...

Worked for me right away on the first try. I was refreshing the Query Tracker Blog page every few minutes here at work and I had the form filled out by about 12:03. Glad to hear others got it working for them as well.

Good luck to all!

IanBontems said...

Worked fine for me too, entry sent in and fingers crossed.
Oh, and good luck to everyone who enters.

Corinne O said...

Worked fine (once I located my PW for the QT!). Good luck everyone - my heart is pounding, my first time sharing my fiction work. :)

Michelle H. said...

Thanks for this contest! Took a moment for the page to pop up (had to put in my log-on name and password twice) but everything went through okay after that.

Elana Johnson said...

Glad it's working, guys. :)

Steve B said...

oh well, it's full.

Matthew MacNish said...

Hi Elana, I just wanted to let you know that your blog is so awesome that I felt I had to link to it from my own.

Please don't think that you have to return the favor - at least not until I get a bit more popular. And awesomer.

Ann Marie Wraight said...

Phew! I had a problem at first but then managed to get everything filled in OK.
That was the first time I've ever entered anything like that and it was nerve wracking....BUT - fun...
BREAK A LEG to all those who participated - as they say in the theatre!

Unknown said...

I made it. I didn't think I'd have a chance to enter, but had, literally, a ten minute lull at the time the contest opened. Then it was telling me it was too early! I was like, NO! Haha. Luckily, it came up as open about a minute later and I got my entry in before I had to run.

Suzette Saxton said...

Best of luck to all the entrants!

Henya said...

i'm confused...wasn't the contest yesterday? I thought it was closed already.

Oh well...I submitted yesterday. Good luck to all.

Thanks Elana for being you.

Annemarie Bogart said...

I only received the email notification about the contest today, and there is no submission form.

Jan Buck said...

Has the contest closed already? The "too early" notice is up again even though I'm signed in.

Lefty said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lefty said...

I didn't get the email until this morning, and kept getting a message on the site that the contest wasn't open yet. What's up with that?

Annemarie Bogart said...

yes, seems the email list wasn't informed 'til a day later...lame

Patrick said...

The problem is with the way blogger sends out their alerts. The post announcing the contest went up the morning of the contest, but when blogger sends out emails announcing new posts they don't go out until the next day. QT has no control over this.

In order to compensate for this shortcoming of blogger, we also posted about the contest on Friday, knowing that the email would go out Saturday. We also said in that post to watch the blog.

But we do realize that because of the way blogger does this that we have to find a solution and we're working on it.

Lefty said...

Thanks, Patrick, I think. Wasted a bit of time and got my hopes up today anticipating when I could click on the link and enter the contest until I finally realized, duh - it was yesterday. Lame.

Annemarie Bogart said...

Same here, Lefty. Guess we should just query him on our own, he must be looking for new talent! Good luck!

Corinne O said...

Elana, A belated thought, I was thinking about it and wanted to share with you... when I got into the form for this contest and saw the red text that said "if you are seeing this form you're already one of the 100, no need to hurry" it was a huge relief. I thought that was an excellent inclusion, esp. in a contest with the pressure to be in fast. Thanks for including that note. :)