For those of you who are newer readers: "Drop the Needle" is an in-house critique session during which I call for excerpts from anywhere in your novel. (That's where the name of the crit round comes from -- those nefarious music professors who, in ages past, would "drop the needle" into the middle of a recording and expect the students to identify the piece of music by name and composer.)
The Guidelines:
- Send a 25- to 50-word lead-in and a 250-word excerpt that you would describe as an ACTION SCENE. (i.e., a high-stakes, fast-paced scene in which there isn't necessarily a lot of dialogue)
- Use the WEB FORM to submit.
- Submissions will open at 5:00 PM EDT TODAY (May 21), and will remain open until 25 entries are received.
- The 25 excerpts will post on WEDNESDAY at noon, EDT, for critique.
- All genres except erotica are welcome.
- This excerpt can be from either a WIP or a finished manuscript. Either way, please make sure your work is proofread and clean.
And PLEASE don't neglect the lead-in. It's difficult to be dropped into a middle-of-the-story scene, and we will need the (brief!) lead-ins to set up the scenes for us. I believe this extra bit of information leads to better critiques.
Also, please remember that if yours is one of the entries, you are requested to critique a minimum of 5 entries.
woohoo! lets do this!
ReplyDeleteI think given what happened last time you would be smart to open the web form 5 mins early and allow people to format and properly label their entries allowing for genre, bold, italics, spacing, whatever) that way come 5:00 people could press send. Otherwise, knowing that last time it was a mad rush to press Send ASAP it resulted in a lot more work for you probably. Just sayin'
ReplyDeleteWell, Happy, I can't open it "early" because whatever time I set it for is the opening time. I'd be just as busy disqualifying the earlier entrants by hand as I am by the formatting errors!
ReplyDeleteThe problem is the cut-and-paste from Word. Word is a PAIN!
You've given me an idea, though. I may have a chat with Michael to see if it would be possible to make the actual web form available before the contest opens, to give folks time to format. :)
I'm not in it myself, but I'm ready to read all your awesome offerings and offer what crit I can. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm getting my ninja fingers all warmed up! Should be another awesome round.
ReplyDeleteLooks like it's not open until 6 pm Eastern?
ReplyDeleteOh nooooo, did I set it wrong? DANG those military times! Will fix...
ReplyDeleteIt just worked for me! But, when I checked it at 1:50pm (pacific) it told me I had to come back in 1.1 hours. That was a little confusing!?!
ReplyDeleteThat was me, being challenged with numbers. o-o Apologies!!
ReplyDeleteIf you copy your text from your word document, and paste it in notepad, it removes the MSword formatting. Then space your lines in notepad. Then copy/paste into the entry form.
ReplyDeleteAuthoress, thank goodness for the military times. My computer at work crashed at 4:59 EST and I didn't get to your blog again until I got home. I got in!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the extra chance with this round!
Well, Emily, you've made me feel better. :)
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ReplyDeleteSilly fat fingers on iPhone... Looking forward to all the wonderful crits this round. Best of luck to all!
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