Pitch Live! Video Pitch Contest!!!

Friday, September 21, 2012

Pitch Live! ... Elevator Pitch Contest/Blogfest

I'm so excited to announce PITCH LIVE! What is it, you ask? It's a video of your best elevator pitch to an agent. I wanted to give you guys enough time to produce a video of an elevator pitch for your finished novels, so I'm posting this now. We already have a couple agents signed up to view the top 30 videos (if we get that many), but there will be more agents. I'll announce the agents in a post soon. The contest is for Adult, New Adult, Young Adult, and Middle Grade fiction. The elevator pitch should be creative, as if you ran into an agent at a conference.

The blogfest...

Sign up on the linky below by October 15 at 8AM EDT. From October 15 to 17 judges will be hopping to each blog to pick the most creative and exciting pitches (content is important, too) that will make it into the agent round. Hop around the blogs and view your fellow competitors' videos, comment, and make friends. Participating in the blogfest is important, because if you don't make the top 30, you could have an agent or editor not participating (or participating) in the contest hop around the blogs offering to read more. It has happened in contests past. 

The contest... 

The top 30 videos will go live on the hosts' blogs onOctober 18. Agents will view and request to read more of their favorites from October 18 to 19.

Formatting... 

All videos must be accessible on YouTube and the recommended size of no larger than 854 x 480 (51.79 MB). Please make sure your videos are set to public viewing (not private). The video shall be no more than two minutes in length. No obscene content (I will remove the blog from the linky). Make sure to title it "Pitch Live!". Your posts should have the following heading above the embedded video:

Title: TITLE OF FINISHED MANUSCRIPT
Genre: The Genre of your manuscript 
Word Count: The word count of your manuscript (round up or down to the nearest thousandth)

Remember to include these things in your pitches: Character, Inciting Event, Goals, Obstacles, Conflict, and Stakes. 

Check out this site here for some samples on how to create a video pitch. 

Here's some videos from your hosts for hints on what to put into your pitch (warning: mine is awful, but hopefully it will make you feel better about your own)...

Brenda's gawd-awful video (Can you guess the skyline I didn't know?)... 




Erica Chapman's very informative video...




My video on how to create a video pitch...

 

Remember you can be as creative as you want, but your pitch must be there and we must see your face. It's about your personality. Good luck! 

So what are you waiting for? Sign up now!

1.	Jamie Corrigan	5.	Darci Cole	9.	Carrie- Anne
2.	Laura Hughes	6.	Rachel Hert	10.	Jami Montgomery
3.	Talynn Lynn	7.	Karen Walcott	11.	Christina Ferko
4.	Fiona McLaren	8.	Barbara Ellingson	12.	You're next!

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets
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Your name:
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Please leave a comment after linking... Thank you!

Pitch Onnnnnn!

(This post graciously donated word for word by Marieke, also hosting Pitch On!, in my time of most intense dayjob mania. Love you, Marieke.)

Hey sweet readers!

In case you haven’t heard yet, there’s an awesome new contest in the blogosphere: Get Your Pitch On! Hosted by Down Under Wonderings and YAtopia on October 15th, during Get Your Pitch On! Commissioning and Managing Editor of Hardie Grant Egmont, Marisa Pintado, will be poised and ready to take your YA pitches.

Marisa is looking for YA in any genre and is accepting submissions from any where in the world. It’s your chance to skip the slush pile and put your pitch right under the nose of a fantastic editor. There’s even better news – there is no limit on how many requests Marisa will make from the contest.

Here are the rules:

• Your manuscript must be complete, polished and ready to query – this means no first drafts or almost finished manuscripts.
• It must be YA.
• When the contest goes live on October 15th, post your entry details in the comments section of either YAtopia or Down Under Wonderings – each blog is accepting 100 entries only.
• Your entry detail needs to include a 50 – 70 word pitch.
• You can enter more than once if you have more than one complete, polished, ready to query manuscript.

Your contest details should be formatted like this:

Name: Sharon Johnston
Email: smjohnston [ @ ] live.com.au
Country of residence: Australia
Title: SLEEPER
Genre: Speculative Fiction
Word-count: 58,000
Pitch: Seventeen-year-old Mishca Richardson is a sleeper soldier with a weak heart. She has no idea that a life saving heart transplant has accidentally triggered her programming. In the search for answers, she discovers the truth and that her creator, Wirth, has classified her remaining “sisters” from her experiment group as defective, scheduling them for termination. Mishca sets out to save them before they’re eliminated.

All a bit daunting? No fear! Dozens of blogs around the ‘sphere will help you whip your pitch into shape. And (surprisingly) I am one of them! Workshops for Get Your Pitch On will start on October 1st*, but you can send your pitches through now to secure your spot with a host blog.

There is no date deadline for the workshops. Each blog has allocated a set number of pitches that they can host and once those spots are full then no more submissions will be taken. I’ll be hosting 10 pitches here on my blog!

Important Rule: If you want to participate in a workshop, you must be pay it forward by commenting on at least one other pitch. Not so difficult, right?

Also! For each critique you leave in the comments, you get an entry in the draw for one of eight 10-page critique from contest host Sharon Johnston and workshop hosts Larissa Hardesty, Stephanie Diaz, Catherine Scully, Jodie Andrefski, Paula Sangare, Talynn Lynn and Kaitlin Adams. Please use the exact same names for all of your critiques. The opportunity ends October 14. 

How to submit: Email your draft pitch to pitchonws@gmail.com and include PitchOnWS and the title of the manuscript in the subject line. Pitches must follow the formatting as specified for the Get Your Pitch On contest. If you missed if before check out this post here and you can see the list of blogs participating here.

Draft pitches will be evenly distributed between host blogs.

An interview with Commissioning and Managing Editor of Hardie Grant Egmont, Marisa Pintado, so that you have an idea what she’s looking for before she takes your pitches will be coming up soon on Down Under Wonderings. The exact contest opening times will be included in that post.

Have fun honing your pitches!

Are You a Misfit? (YA Misfits Launch Giveaway!)

misfit — n 1. a person not suited in behaviour or attitude to a particular social environment Yep. I've been a misfit in so many different environments, in so many different ways. Depending on the situation, my abilities, attitudes, voice, background, looks, and personality have failed to fit in one way or another. In fact, I feel like a misfit in pretty much every situation. I'm not like the other rabbis, or the other moms. I'm generally pretty at home in the writing community, but even y'all have to admit that YA superhero origin romance stories are pretty few and far between. *insert shaky smile* Which is why I'm so honored to be one of the founding YA Misfits - a ragtag group of Young Adult writers who are changing the world of YA Lit, one novel at a time. Speaking of superheroes. I think I always loved them because being a superhero was about being a misfit, and finding your place in the world anyway. The supervillains were the ones who got angry and tried to exact revenge. But the heroes...they were something special. They were misfits, and they were damaged, yeah. But they turned that into something positive. It may have taken them a long time to get there, but they were courageous, and determined. They found their place in the world by making their misfit-ness into something awesome, into a contribution, instead of something to be ashamed of. I guess I wrote a superhero novel because I hope to do the same thing. In celebration of the YA Misfits' launch today, I'm giving away two superhero DVDs, full of misfitty awesomeness, that inspired me to write about kids who turned their different-ness into awesomeness. (Also, I named my main characters after a character from each of them. I HAVE to share.)

The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: Volume 1

There's Jan VanDyne, AKA "The Wasp," Elias's namesake. She is FIERCE.

X-men Volume One (The awesome 1992 cartoon. Yes.)

 

Aaaand here's Jean Grey:
 total badass, quintessential smart-girl heroine, and Merrin's namesake.One entry for doing each of the following: (just tell me you did it in your comment - I trust you.)
1. Follow the YAMisfits blog
2. Follow the YAMisfits on Twitter
3. Enter the YA Misfits Launch KINDLE GIVEAWAY.
4. Follow this blog.
5. Follow me on Twitter.
6. "Like" me on Facebook. (hey, don't judge.)
7. Tell me your favorite superhero, or, heck, ANY misfit character. 

The giveaway ends on Thursday at noon, so you can have your DVDs for your weekend viewing pleasure. U.S. only, I'm afraid. :(

Thanks so much for coming over, and GOOD LUCK!!!