In this Author Q&A, BPA mentee Claire Quinn reflects on her journey, what it was like working with HarperNorth, the excitement of hearing an award-winning actress narrate her audiobook, and what helped set her on the right path when she was starting out.

What if being busy didn't stop you writing? We share a little about what mentoring an author means to us here at BPA.

Meet the Literary Consultancy Agency's new partners, Sara Sarre and Frances Merivale, and their vision for BPA.

A synopsis is a functional document summarising the story of your novel. It usually fits on a single side of A4, but always check the agency/competition website for specific requirements.

SO, WHAT IS A COVER LETTER? Literary agents and many literary competitions require a cover letter along with your sample chapters and synopsis. This is a formal introduction to you and your novel. Note: It is not a CV, a bio or a blurb for the book. It’s a letter, written from one professional to another, that should make the agent or judge want to read more. The biggest mistake entrants to the BPA First Novel Award made this year was getting the balance off, either writing t

Pitching is one of the final skills you have to learn as a novelist. Many gatekeepers look for a strong ‘hook’ when deciding whether to give a submission serious attention, which means proving your story’s worth in the cover letter, before they’ve read a word of the novel.

‘Escapism’ is one of the publishing industry’s favourite buzz words at the moment, and we’ve heard many literary agents using it when recounting their chats with publishers at the London Book Fair 2023. It seems a lot of commissioning editors, and therefore agents, are looking for novels that provide readers with an escape from ordinary life. But what is escapism in fiction and how do you write a novel that readers want to escape into?

Twenty years ago, editors at publishing houses had time to work with an author on their manuscript, if they saw promise. As the market has become more and more saturated, this job has moved to literary agents. Now, agents are so busy they often don’t have the time either. Literary consultancy agencies have formed to give authors the possibility to receive industry-level feedback and increase their chance of being noticed.

Twenty years ago, editors at publishing houses had time to work with an author on their manuscript, if they saw promise. As the market has become more and more saturated, this job has moved to literary agents. Now, agents are so busy they often don’t have the time either. Literary consultancy agencies have formed to give authors the possibility to receive industry-level feedback and increase their chance of being noticed.

In 2004 Christopher Booker published his momentous book, The Seven Basic Plots. It is reputed to have taken him 34 years to complete. Through an extensive analysis of stories originating from around the world, he stipulates that all stories can be reduced to seven fundamental narrative structures. He claims that these seven plots are embedded in our collective unconscious and the human psyche.

Maddalena Cavaciuti joined David Higham Associates in 2017 as Junior Agent Assistant to Lizzy Kremer, now Managing Director. After two years of working with Lizzy on her author list, Maddalena became an Assistant Agent and began to take on her own clients.

We recently discovered that, by coincidence, two BPA clients, Philippa Ronan (right) and Lindsey Mellon, were both to be published by the same independent publisher Northside House within only a few weeks of each other. They were happy to share their experience of going indie in our latest Author Q&A.

Julia Kelly won the BPA 2021 First Novel Award, coming first out of more than 1,000 entries. She then signed with that year’s competition judge, literary agent Hellie Ogden. In 2024, Julia signed a six-figure publishing deal with the publishing house Harvill Secker. Her debut novel The Fisherman’s Gift comes out today, Thursday March 6, 2025. We caught up with Julia to congratulate her on her success and to find out more about the different stages that lead to publication.

Triona Campbell worked closely with Blue Pencil Agency’s head editor and founder Sara Sarre on a YA novel, after which she successfully acquired an agent and a three-book deal with Scholastic UK. In this Author Q&A, Triona describes working as a film producer, the steep learning curve expected of the newly-signed author, and how the budding writer might handle the industry and land a publishing deal.

At secondary school, teachers often encourage students to use a thesaurus to find more interesting options for their creative writing and expand their vocabulary. If you study the craft at university level, though, most tutors will tell you not to use one, to simply use the words that come naturally. Fiction should be true to the author’s voice, not striving for a preconceived – probably elitist – idea of good writing.

Reading is above all else an emotional experience. We read to connect with characters, to experience their emotions and to compare them to our own. Nailing emotion is therefore essential to writing compelling fiction. But how to be sure to write emotion in a way that is realistic and relatable?

Olivia Maidment joined the Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency in 2020. Previously, she worked with award-winning authors and global literary brands during her time at The Blair Partnership and United Agents. As well as representing a list of literary, upmarket and book club fiction as a literary agent, Olivia was recently promoted to Head of Books, working closely with the directors to implement wider agency direction and strategy. In this Q&A, I ask Olivia to explain more ful

Saloni Surah worked closely with Blue Pencil Agency’s head editor and founder Sara Sarre on an Early Reader book Flora Investigates: The Case Of The Missing Gold Eggs which she has recently self-published. We were curious about her self-publishing journey – an option which continues to grow in popularity within the writing community – and asked Saloni if she would accept to do an Author Q&A so that we might glean some insider tips on the dos and don’ts of a more hands-on appr

Imagine you were brushing your teeth or daydreaming on the underground this morning when suddenly you were hit with an amazing story idea. How might that story first come to you – in words and sentences or as images, like a film?

Many of our BPA First Novel Award and Pitch Prize judges say they’re looking for an attention-grabbing opening and a stand-out first line. The first line of your novel is undeniably important, but terms like ‘attention-grabbing’ can be easily misconstrued. That’s part of the reason we decided to start sharing our favourite opening lines from your entries on Twitter. Some of these sentences are subtle and some are bold. Some are simple and others are lyrical. Some are long, so