Thrills, spills, heartbreak ... could YOU write a bestseller and win £20,000?
DO yOU dream of topping the bestseller charts with a heartbreaking romance or a nail-biting thriller? Could you conjure up a historical adventure or a multilayered literary masterpiece?
Well, now is your chance, because today the Daily Mail and one of the world’s biggest, most respected book publishers launch a search for the Uk’s brightest new literary talent — and the prize is every budding author’s fantasy.
The winner of our competition will receive a £20,000 advance fee, the services of top literary agent Luigi Bonomi, and guaranteed publication by Penguin Random house Uk.
This is our third year of running the competition and there’s never been a better time to write a first novel. The winner of our 2016 competition, Amy Lloyd, whose book The Innocent Wife became a bestseller earlier this year, has now been published in 18 countries and won a literary prize, and rights to her thriller have been sold to a major film studio.
your entry can be a contemporary story about families or relationships, a thriller or a historical adventure, as long as it is aimed at adults (not children) and has not been previously published in any format (including e-books or self-publishing). The only categories not allowed are sagas, science fiction and fantasy. entrants must be 16 or over — but don’t worry, there’s no upper age limit!
And we don’t need the finished novel, just the first 3,000 words plus a 600-word synopsis of the complete work: beginning, middle and end. See the box below for more information. The full terms and conditions that you must sign up to are available online.
But before you start typing, read our advice from the writing experts. Literary agent Luigi Bonomi, who receives thousands of unsolicited manuscripts every year, explains how to make yours stand out. And Selina Walker, one of publishing’s most esteemed editors, tells you the vital elements of a successful novel. They will judge the competition, along with bestselling popular novelist and TV presenter Fern Britton, crime writer Simon kernick and the Daily Mail’s Literary editor, Sandra Parsons.
KEEP ME AWAKE AT NIGHT WITH A ROLLICKING READ
LuIgI BOnOmI’S agency represents bestselling writers Josephine Cox and Simon Kernick. I AM looking for a novel that will keep me up at night, left unable to sleep as it has been so tense, or such a terrific rollercoaster of a read. Or a novel that will make me wish I were young again and on the cusp of falling in love, looking up at the Statue of Liberty in the pouring rain with a beautiful girl beside me.
Or an emotional novel about someone looking back on their life and thinking about lost love and regrets; or one that is a journey, where the characters learn truths about themselves and the world in which they live.
I want Up Lit: well-written, feelgood fiction that teaches us about the human condition. And I want to cry (real men do cry!) and smile and be excited by what I read, and thrilled by it. Is this a big ask? Not really, because I know such a novel is out there waiting to be discovered, and it could be yours!
PULL READERS INTO ANOTHER WORLD
Judge Selina Walker is publisher at Century and Arrow Books, part of Penguin Random House. I LOOk for authors who can tell stories that pull you into a world that feels more real than the one around you, who can create characters you care about and shape a narrative you can’t put down.
It’s hard to find a writer who can do all three but, when you do, it jumps out and bites you on the nose! Take Amy Lloyd’s entry, The Innocent Wife, back in 2016. There were more than 5,000 other submissions — yet there it suddenly was, the story of a young British woman who falls in love with a convicted killer in a Florida jail and determines to fight for his release.
What a brilliant premise, we thought, and how great that it takes as its model a true-crime TV series. I still have the opening page with my handwriting saying, ‘We’ve found our winner!’
Last year Luigi and I were unhesitating in our choice of My Name Is Alice, Lizzy Barber’s story of two young sisters, one of whom vanishes on holiday. We see the missing sister growing up in an oppressive fundamentalist household in America wondering who she is, dreaming of relations she doesn’t know she has.
We see her real family in London still grieving, still trying to find her and not being able to move on with their own lives. Ask yourself what your novel is about. This is one of the most important questions, and so often writers don’t ask it.
In your covering letter, tell us why you’re uniquely placed to write this book. If you’ve done a writing course or have a job that feeds into what you’re writing about, this is useful to know.
LET THE CHARACTERS TAKE CHARGE
TV PReSenTeR and judge Fern Britton has written seven novels. All have been bestsellers. Her first, new Beginnings, was published in 2011. WheN I know I must make a start, I give myself a week or so to invite a story into my mind. Walking and cycling or simply sitting at my desk and asking for inspiration hasn’t let me down yet.
The story comes first and I start to visualise how it might start and end. Pinning this down is like trying to remember a dream, so I try to write it all down before I forget.
Once I have the plot, I build a physical image of my characters. It helps to know what they look like and what makes them the people they are. In real life nobody is all good or all bad, so I like to give even my good characters something that they’d rather people didn’t know they were capable of.
Some of them are definitely based on people I have met or know. Others are people that I would like to meet or know.
The best advice I was given when I started was simply to keep going. Once you’ve got the first sentence down just carry on.
Don’t constantly revisit what you’ve written or you’ll get nowhere. Also, relax. If you’re tense, the words won’t come and you’ll start doubting yourself.
I do believe that there are some outside forces that take over when you’re sitting at the computer. I’d heard other authors say the characters take charge and dialogue flows out of you and thought it sounded mad. But it really does happen.
WRITER’S BLOCK DOES NOT EXIST
AnTHOnY HOROWITZ is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter who has written more than 50 books including crime, the official James Bond adventures, Sherlock Holmes mysteries and children’s books. Here, he offers some advice. I ThINk I’m unusual in that I knew I wanted to be a writer from about the age of ten. I was at a particularly horrible boarding school in North London and I wasn’t clever or good at sport. I always seemed to be in trouble.
But then, quite by chance, I discovered I had the ability to tell stories. I slept in a dormitory and every night, after lights out, I would entertain the other boys with stories I would make up… usually about adventure and escape.
One thing led to another. I still remember asking my father for a typewriter — this was long before computers. he got me a Biro. My mother gave me an account book. Pen and paper. I was away!
That’s the greatest thing about being an author. Teachers need a school. Astronauts need a rocket. But there isn’t a person in the
world who can’t afford the basic tools to be a writer. How to get started? You already have. The very fact you’re reading this is an indication of the writer in you waiting to get out. Even now, 40 years after I was first published, I get that same feeling that I have to write. Sometimes I wonder if I’m merely a transmitter someone else has turned on. Where do ideas come from? I have no true idea. My advice for new writers is:
READ. The more you read, the better you’ll write.
don’T worry about being published and don’t think about ‘the market’. Write what you want to write and what you believe in.
ENJOY your writing. If you’re not enjoying it, the chances are something has gone wrong.
THERE is no such thing as writer’s block. If the words aren’t coming, go for a walk, go to the cinema, have a drink with a friend. When you come back to your work, you’ll have found a way round.
BELIEVE in yourself. This is probably the most important thing. Remember how many publishers rejected Harry Potter. There is only one difference between a successful and unsuccessful writer. The unsuccessful writer stops. I wish you the best of luck with your book but, more than that, I wish you great happiness while you write it.
The Word Is Murder by Anthony horowitz is published by Arrow at £7.99.
ALWAYS PLAN YOUR NOVEL TO THE END
COMPETITION judge and bestselling crime/ thriller writer Simon Kernick’s first novel, The Business of Dying, was published in 2002. no Book is easy to write. I had only four months to write Relentless, my breakthrough fifth novel. I’d been working on a different thriller for ten months, and I finally abandoned it, not least because it wasn’t very good. and that’s a lesson all writers have to learn: when to scrap a project. So there I was in july 2005, with a deadline approaching fast. Instead of panicking, I remembered an idea I’d had which had come from a nightmare I’d written down as the rough first chapter of a story.
I needed to have something to build around it, so I did what I always do when I want to produce a story: I walked. nothing gets the creative juices flowing like a good walk. over a fortnight, I developed a plan. The plan is everything.
during the next four months, pretty much everything that could go wrong did. My laptop broke, taking more than a week’s worth of work with it (always back up!); my wife and I split up so I had to force myself out of bed in the morning to write; I had a crisis of confidence about the book quality… But I kept going, page by page, and somehow I got it finished by october.
Relentless taught me that under no circumstances should you ever give up. So, good luck to you all.
The hanged Man by Simon Kernick is published by Arrow at £7.99