Long-listing for Blue Pencil’s First Novel Award

This is the first year I (Frances Merivale) have been involved in every round of reading for our First Novel Award, so I wanted to give you an inside track on what stood out for us this year.

Two key things that strike us are a strong voice and a good story hook. Does this writer have authority to their delivery and does the opening raise questions that make us want to read on? We are also looking for something fresh. When reading hundreds of entries, it is exciting to come across something that feels a bit different. We know voice and originality can be the hardest things to nail, and we plan to run a craft workshop on this in the autumn at Bard Books in London and online. Often, it’s to do with specificity. What specific and unexpected things would your character notice or do in the state of mind they’re in? This is how you can come up with observations that are unique to your story.

Many of the First Novel Award entries that make it to the final stages just miss out because of one or two problems – and they’re problems we can often see how to fix. This year we’re posting a series of common mistakes on social media so do follow us here (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc links). We’re also planning to contact everyone on the longlist and a handful of you who nearly made it with some brief feedback from the judges so you can see what you might want to work on before you submit to agents or other competitions.

We like to think about how each submission that comes to us might one day become a book on a shelf. That’s why we’re continuing to include cover letters in our competition so we can see a pitch. Most competitions keep the work anonymous, and we understand why – but we’d like to treat ours as a chance for you to practise presenting a full submission package exactly as you would to an agent.

My head has been swirling with unpublished books these past few weeks. I keep finding myself thinking of the one thing that might fix a novel that was nearly there – and wanting to email the writer. If we did that for everyone we’d be drowning.

The notes we do manage to send will tell you what isn’t quite working yet. If you want more detail, a submission report or full manuscript assessment is where we can actually sit with your novel and work out how best to solve it. We know this is an investment not everyone can stretch to – but it can genuinely be the difference between nearly making a longlist (or being picked up by an agent) and making it.

We know what it takes to get a novel to the point of submission and have really loved reading your entries. I love nothing more than clicking open a document and feeling that hit in the gut when the writing is good. When my response is physical as well as mental, I know there’s something special there. It’s these stand-out entries that make it to the final stages. We can’t wait to share our First Novel Award longlist soon.