Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award 2020 The BPA First Novel Award is open to unrepresented and unpublished authors for a novel in any adult fiction genre. We are thrilled to announce the winners of the First Novel Award 2020. Our judges this year were literary agents Caroline Wood and Carrie Plitt of Felicity Bryan…
To kick off BPA’s first online writing weekend, novelist and tutor Emma Darwin shared her insights on staying motivated, silencing inner critics and listening to inner editors. She started by acknowledging that we all want more writing time but it’s not a straight relationship between writing time and words on the page. Many of her…
Discovering the Arc During my creative writing degree, we were taught about Nigel Watts‘s 8-point story arc. As a writer of literary fiction, I was hesitant to consider a formal structure when planning my own novel. I didn’t want it to be formulaic or obvious. But when my tutor told every student to think of…
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 that should make the agent…
We are thrilled to announce the BPA First Novel Award 2020 shortlist. This year’s judges, literary agents Caroline Wood and Carrie Plitt from Felicity Bryan Associates and best-selling author Anna Hope (Expectation, The Ballroom, Wake), found it difficult to choose six titles from an impressive longlist. Prizes include agent introductions as well as cash and…
Neil Daws Neil Daws, who is represented by Nelle Andrew of Rachel Mills Literary after being commended in last year’s BPA First Novel Award, has signed a three-book deal with Amazon Publishing imprint Thomas & Mercer. In Spite of all Terror, the novel he submitted to the award, will be published in September 2021,…
Marina de Pass joined The Soho Agency after several years working in the editorial departments of Little, Brown and HarperCollins. She is currently building her list of Fiction clients. Marina also published her first YA novel The Year After You shortly after completing the Faber Academy. BPA’s own Emma and Sara taught a Faber Academy class…
I was delighted to attend Emma Darwin’s BPA workshop on ‘Editing your Novel’. Emma’s memoir This is not a book about Charles Darwin, an account of her struggle to write a historical novel based on her family, was described by the Daily Mail as ‘a masterclass’, which certainly made me curious to hear what she…
‘When you work in a convenience store, people often look down on you for working there. I find this fascinating, and I like to look them in the face when they do this to me. And as I do so I always think: that’s what a human is.’ Lockdown has revolutionised the way many…
Blue Pencil Agency offers editorial reports to writers who want their manuscript to be in the best shape possible before they approach a literary agent or self-publish. Our editors are bestselling authors and industry experts with shrewd eyes and a passion for supporting upcoming writers. We asked Sara Sarre, Oliver James, J. David Simons, Saskia…