Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Call For Submissions: Talkin' Heads, Fantasy/SF Edition

This should be fun!

For those of you who are new:

"Talkin' Heads" is a critique of excerpts that are mostly dialogue.  Its purpose is to hone our dialogue-writing skills, asking ourselves these questions:

  • Does it sound natural (do people really talk this way)?
  • Does it propel the plot forward and/or develop character relationships in a meaningful way?
I think it's sometimes a special challenge to write dialogue for fantasy and science fiction.  In an effort to make our characters sound otherworldly or magical or alien, we tend to try too hard.  We end up with stilted, unbelievable dialogue that doesn't work.

So now's your chance to test your dialogue-writing skills!
Here's the scoop:
  • Your submission should include a brief lead-in (50 words or fewer) that sets up the scene, followed by 250 words of a dialogue-rich scene (80% dialogue).
  • Submissions are open to science fiction and fantasy novels in all categories--adult, NA, YA, and MG.
  • Submissions will open TODAY (March 7) at 7:00 PM EST, and will close at 1:00 PM EST TOMORROW (March 8).  A maximum of 25 entries will be accepted.  If there are more than 25 entries, the bot will make the selection via lottery.
  • Submit your entry HERE.
If you have any questions, please include them in the comment box below.

Looking forward to reading your entries!

2 comments:

  1. Hey, if you ever want a little promotion for events like this, tweet me on @writevent. I get your newsletter but can't always get to these sorts of things on time. If you don't want any promotion that's fine too though :)

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