This is my last post before the finalists are announced. You’re ALL winners for your hard work and getting hope out there. If you aren’t a finalist this time, I truly hope you learn something from PBParty discussions and tips that will boost future submissions to a YES. And I can’t wait to celebrate with you when that happens. 🙂
Please give the PBParty judges a huge thank you. They’re amazing…I couldn’t have done this without them.
Here are their helpful tips for you:
Gabriele Davis
(You can read Gabriele’s PBParty Success Story here)
Check, double-check, and even triple-check the guidelines before submitting to contests — and agents! Then look over your submission to make sure it meets all the requirements.
A well-crafted query is an important part of your presentation. Great examples are available in the showcase (past & present) and in our #PBParty success stories.
Stories with common themes need a FRESH approach in order to stand out. Mentor books and events like #ReFoReMo are great ways to see how others put a new spin on things.
Have one or two friends/family members/CPs read your story aloud. When you read it aloud, you know how you want it to sound. Hearing others read it helps you identify areas that might need work.
My favorite writing class to date: @ReneeMLaTulippe’s Lyrical Language Lab. Once you have a tightly written draft with all the big stuff in place (characters, plot, pacing), the language-level skills taught in this course can help make your manuscript sing.
Be fierce in pursuit of your dream. Keep putting your work out there. Your opportunity is waiting.
Matt Tesoriero
1) Read aloud. Always. What you hear in your head when you read is never what it sounds like when read aloud. Reading aloud is for fine-tuning each word.
2) Make joy your motivation for writing rather than for winning contests.
3) Write like you’re a child. Not as an adult trying to be a child.
4) Make the “moral of the story” invisible.
5) Use as many action verbs as possible to move the story along.
6) “Was” is an invaluable word choice until it’s over used. Then it becomes useless.
7) Embrace and expect “Rejection”. It’s part of our process and takes us one step closer to “Acceptance”. Harry Potter was rejected 12 times! Even with its brilliant first 60-70 words!
Melissa Escobar
To all Author/Illustrators who entered, thank you for your wonderful stories and illustrations. They were a joy to read. To that end, there were some illustrations that ended up not qualifying for the showcase due to size inconsistency. Please know it was so hard for us to realize that and to have to pass on them. However, this gives you a chance to really polish up those dummies, fix anything that needs to be fixed to get ready to apply for the PBChat mentorship coming up in April. We encourage everyone who didn’t get selected to take a chance again and keep improving your work. Remember that a no can be just as valuable in helping a creator move forward with their work.
Tip #1 – For all of the author/illustrators when putting your dummy together here are some very important things to decide/know beforehand:
Is your book dummy rectangular or square? If it’s a rectangle, is it portrait or landscape? Decide this first before starting your book dummy. Decide what size your book is before starting any illustrations.
Illustration size is key when laying out your book dummy. Square Book Dummy Example: A 10″ x 10″ book has spread sizes of 20″ x 10″ and single page sizes of 10″ x 10″. Any illustrations made for this example that are not spreads would be 10″ x 10″. The height/ width of the illustrations will be consistent.
Landscape Book Dummy Example: A 10″ x 8″ book has spread sizes of 20″ x 8″ and single page size of 10″ x 8″. Any page illustrations that are full page, spots would be 10″ x 8″. Again, the same thing here, illustration height/ width would be consistent.
Tip #2 – Do not finish all the illustrations in your book dummy. Put in two finished, full color spreads. Leave the rest of the illustrations in pencil/ sketches. This gives the agent/ editor the idea of the book with room for changes.
Tip #3 – When submitting to PBParty, submit your two finished spreads from your book dummy. You want to really show off how you render your illustrations.
Tip #4 – Put your guides on a separate layer so you can turn it off when getting ready to export your final images.
Tip #5 – And finally if you get a no, just realize it’s only a pass. Keep working to improve your writing/ illustrating and keep submitting. No’s are very common in this business. All you need is one yes. Keep moving forward and celebrate how far you have come.
* Melissa wrote a detailed blog post to help all of you.
Lori Degman
– Use true rhymes, which have the same ending vowel and consonant sounds. Both words must end with either a stressed or unstressed syllable.
– The meter (pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables) needs to be the same in every line, so the reader doesn’t have to think about how they’re reading it. It should read as smoothly and naturally as prose.
– Every line should have the same number of syllables – give or take one or two.
– Sometimes, after you’ve been working on a rhyming story for a while, you start reading the lines to fit the meter you’re using. So, have someone – or several someones – read your manuscript out loud so you can hear where it drags, the rhythm is off, or they trip up and have to reread a section. You can also listen to it on an app like TextEdit.
– Often, when you have an ABCB rhyme scheme (especially when the lines are short) the meter works better as two-line stanzas instead of four. It’ll make it less sing-songy and avoid unnatural pauses in the middle of sentences. ie:
While you stood here waiting,
with nothing to do.
I snuck through the gate,
and into the zoo.
While you stood here waiting with nothing to do.
I snuck through the gate and into the zoo.
– A great website for finding rhyming words and synonyms is rhymezone.com.
– A post that really helped me improve my rhyme and meter is Dori Chaconas’ Icing the Cake.
The next time I post will be Wednesday, March 17 at 6 pm EST with the list of finalists. I’m excited to share them with you! I just finished formatting the Illustration Showcase and it looks AMAZING! Now, I need to format the 50 finalists. And the post for tomorrow!
After the final round is over, I’ll share a list of entries that came close, since it was in high demand in the past.
Good luck, everyone. 🙂
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