Wordfight at the ABNA Corral – Round Two
Who woulda thunk it?
The Second Round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest began today with announcement of the 1000 entries each in the Young Adult and General Fiction categories that advanced from the maximum of 5000 per category accepted for the First Round.
Entries were judged based solely on the Pitch, in which the writer has a maximum of 300 words to capture the attention of Amazon’s editors based upon originality of idea, overall strength of the pitch, and the quality of writing.
Between now and March 13, 2011, expert reviewers, including Amazon editors and at least one Amazon Top Reviewer, will judge the Excerpts for each entry, consisting of the first 3000-5000 words of the manuscript. Each Excerpt will be rated on a scale of 1 to 5 on each of the following criteria:
Overall Strength of Excerpt- Prose/Style
- Plot/Hook
- Originality of Idea
Each Second Round Excerpt will receive two reviews, and the top 250 entries based on the average Overall Strength of Excerpt score will advance to the Quarter-Finals.
So now the second waiting period begins. I am frankly surprised to still be standing, and at this moment in time, the emotional challenge is to maintain control of the fantasy demon who so easily can take control and fill my brain with images of award ceremonies.
Back on Earth, I predict that I have little chance of making it past the Second Round because the structure of my novel delays appearance of the main character. He plays no part in the first 5000 words, and although this is relatively common in mysteries (and especially thrillers), reviewers may find absence of the main character to be a negative factor and have difficulty scoring my excerpt well enough to compete for one of the 250 entries that advance to the Quarter-Finals.
I’m totally guessing here, but my chances will probably depend on a single question: Do the first 5000 words create within reviewers a compelling curiosity to find out what happens next? If the antagonist, the murder victim, and the situation don’t accomplish that, come March 13th I’ll have earned a spot in ABNA Boot Hill.
Wonderful news! I got into the YA Fiction corral and I’ve got quite a few cow-pokes in there with me as we try to keep chins up in a quasi-cowboy/girl-group hug. Onward with the adventure we go! I am loving the spirit of our fellow writers thus far – including yours!
Congratulations, Katherine, and thanks for visiting the site. Here’s to crossing our reins, stirrups, etc. as we anxiously await the results from Round Two.
I do hope you get somewhere, Tosh. It is harrowing to think that you’re waiting and, ultimately, wasting valuable writing time. These sorts of things keep you mentally on hold.
However, from your humour, I presume whatever happens, you’ll get over it. Even the award ceremony.
I wonder, does American Penguin use British reviewers as well as their own? Thinking of audience.
Thanks for visiting my blog and leaving a comment, billie.
I’m not waiting and wasting time, actually. There’s a very long road ahead to achieve any degree of success, and to only make the quarter-finals would still be a great opportunity by receiving PW reviews of the complete ms. A fellow writer here in Austin got that far last year and said the reviews really helped him identify where his novel could be improved.
At a writer’s group meeting just last week, I brought up the question of what’s a “second-rounder” to do about concurrently submitting to agents, and under the hypothetical situation of making it further, how should that change at each step of the way? The unanimous opinion suggested that for now it’s nothing more than submitting queries/writing samples to agents while a non-exclusive partial is under consideration.
Your question about British reviewers and audience is an interesting one. I hadn’t thought about that, my concerns being more focused on the fact that every genre except YA is bundled into the General Fiction category, which covers a broad spectrum of subject matter, writing styles, and storytelling philosophies.
Excerpts are classified by genre within the category, but there’s no indication that the reviewers assigned to any given excerpt are chosen based on its genre. If my reviewer doesn’t particularly like mysteries, I’m going to bite the dust in a couple of weeks.
I’d be interested in your connection to ABNA and how you found this blog if you’d be willing to share that. Thanks again for visiting, and the best of luck to you if you’re a second-rounder as well.
Hello, Tosh
Thanks for yours. I did, mysteriously, get through to the second round. And confess, I was projecting my own ‘wasting time’, onto other people. Apologies, comes from having a narcissistic personality….
I found your site via Google, if only Hercules had had this, and I was very impressed by its energetic humour!
Did some aviation writing myself, this was 1917, R.F.C., and had a chapter or two of passion with a Bristol Fighter. Since cooled. Fickle; can’t remember now, it was purely in the cause of fiction.
No, can’t cope with forums, esp entries, which begin Awesome! Here’s my pitch. Wow! Here’s my pitch. Amaaaaazing. Can you look at this?
It is a risk, this review business; as you point out, random, So if mine appears before the equivalent of a Pilgrim Father in the holy grammar stakes, (and boy are they holy), with no sense of irony, I am well and truly stuffed. That will be my excuse, anyway. And then there is the disqualification get out, of course. Brilliant, but you used the ‘cracked johnnie font.’ No! I didn’t!
Oh, what larks. Guessed? Never entered a comp before, and now I’m in two. All over soon. And I have learned masses. If nothing else, I can now write a pitch in less time than it takes to write the novel.
Good luck
Billie
Oh, the trials and tribulations of the writer . . . who can write a novel of 100,000 words and quake in fear at the very thought of coming up with 300 words about it. How well I know, and as you mentioned, to be left standing in the second round is a breakthrough all its own, of sorts, by creating a bit of confidence in the pitch.
It’s not as if an agent read ours, but the people who judged them didn’t just fall off the turnip truck with a tattered suitcase and pocket full of change. And for me, at least, it was the first time in a long while that someone completely unfamiliar with the story had an opportunity to read my pitch/query and evaluate it in terms of the only question that counts: “Am I sufficiently intrigued to want to read the opening chapters of this book?” I had adapted the pitch from my latest version of the query, and now have tweaked it back into a query that I’m currently using to begin submitting the novel to agents.
R.F.C. Bristol Fighter in 1917, huh? Love it. My writer’s group meets this weekend to discuss the first 25 pages of a member’s novel in which the main character flies an original (fully restored) Sopwith Tabloid. At first I thought he’d made it up, but come to find out that the Camel post-dated the Tabloid. Great fun.
Counting down the time with you, Billie.
Tosh
Fab. Friend, pilot, builder of one-seaters in his front room, and advisor, Russell Hunter would love that.
By the way, I never, ever use exclamation marks other than in blogs.
Another discussion at a later date, the exclamation mark, perhaps?
Bye for now
Billie
Looking forward to it!!!!!