WriteMentor Novel-in-Development Award 2021: THE LONGLIST

We were so excited to launch this new award for children’s novel writers, where they could dip their toe in the water with manuscripts that were still in progress, either unfinished, or perhaps in first or early draft stage.

And YOU have not disappointed with the standard of the stories sent to us – so good, we had to do an extra round of reading to get the longlist down to a sensible number!

We received a total of 398 entries in the end with 33 Chapter Books, 202 Middle Grade, 49 Teen and 80 Young Adult.

233 were works in progress and 165 were completed novels.

If you elected for feedback, this will be emailed to you over the course of the next week. Please check junk/spam before emailing to ask about this. We will email ALL feedback this week, even if your novel is still in contention.

And finally, I’d like to say a HUGE thanks to all of you for entering, and once again, showing huge faith and loyalty to us and our opportunities. You are at the forefront of our mind with all we do, and to launch a new award and have 400 entries is so pleasing for us, as we’re able to (hopefully) give you all a boost and help you finish that WiP!

A final word on feedback: while the adult readers have been very balanced in their feedback, the kid readers, as always, have been BRUTALLY honest. Try not to take anything personal – they are simply judging the words, not you – and dig deep into how you can use their feedback to improve your work rather than feeling deflated. As I say, our adults have been constructive, as much as possible, and we hope their feedback will be gentler for you.

Keep writing, keep working hard and keep improving! And remember there’s always more opportunities round the corner, with us, and many of the other wonderful organisations that cater for children’s writers!

Good luck everyone, and May the Force be with you!

If your title appears on the longlist below, please note that we judge anonymously, so do not tweet and refer to your story title – you CAN mention you have a title on here, but not the specific name.

LONGLIST

Here are the titles (in alphabetical order) on the LONGLIST:

These titles will be subject to more reading before a shortlist is produced and sent to our agent judge Christabel McKinley.

READER’S FAVOURITES

We also asked readers to note down their favourites (if they had any) during the process and we’re going to publish those below. Again, all anonymous, but you CAN mention your title if it features here as long as it’s not on the longlist and no longer under consideration.

(If your title appears twice, it means 2 readers choose it as their favourite).