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WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Helping writers become bestselling authors

Phenomenal First Pages Contest – Guest Editor Edition

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Hey, wonderful writerly people! It’s time for our monthly first-page critique contest! This month, winners will receive feedback from a professional editor. So exciting! 🙂

This contest is closed. Please try again next month. If you’d like to be notified when the next one goes live, consider subscribing to the blog (in the sidebar).

If you’re working on a first page and would like some objective feedback, please leave a comment. Any comment :). As long as the email address associated with your WordPress account/comment profile is up-to-date, I’ll be able to contact you if your first page is chosen. Just please know that if I’m unable to get in touch with you through that address, you’ll have to forfeit your win.

*Genres NOT included in this month’s contest: horror, children’s & nonfiction. Please note any content warnings in your work (violence, gore, abuse, sexual assault, etc.).

Here’s the editor you’ll be working with:

Emily Ohanjanians is a professional fiction editor with over 15 years’ experience in publishing. She has acquired, edited and published novels for big publishers like Harlequin and HarperCollins, ranging from debuts to New York Times bestsellers. Her portfolio spans many genres, including book-club fiction, women’s fiction, contemporary romance, romantic comedy, humor fiction, suspense and thrillers, historical and speculative fiction.

She loves the process of helping writers shape their stories, and offers a wide range of editing services, including editorial assessments, developmental edits, line edits, query & submission package reviews. Visit www.emilyohanjanians.com for more details about her services, books she’s edited and testimonials, and to contact Emily directly. She’d love to hear from you!

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Contest Guidelines

  • This month’s contest will work the same as it usually does…except our amazing guest editor will be the one sending feedback if you win.

  • Please be sure your first page (double-spaced in 12-point font) is ready to go so Emily can critique it before next month’s contest rolls around. If it needs some work and you won’t be able to get it to me right away, please plan on entering the next contest, once any necessary tweaking has been taken care of.

  • This contest only runs for 24 hours, start to finish, so get your comment in there!

Three commenters’ names will be randomly drawn and posted tomorrow morning. If you win, I’ll contact you with information about sending it to me. Then, I’ll forward it to Emily for feedback.  

We run this contest on a monthly basis, so if you’d like to be notified when the next opportunity comes around, consider subscribing to our blog (see the right-hand sidebar). 

Good luck! I can’t wait to see who the winners will be. 🙂

If you want to amp up your first page, grab our helpful First Pages checklist from One Stop for Writers. And for more instruction on these important opening elements, see this Mother Lode of First Page Resources.

The 2nd volume of The Conflict Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Obstacles, Adversaries, and Inner Struggles is releasing in just a few weeks. Check back on September 6th to see the fabulous prizes we’re giving away with this launch!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. DJ Smith says

    Hope I see this sooner next month. I see you’ve picked the winners already. I’m writing a memoir. Hope you use that genre sometime.

    • MINDY ALYSE WEISS says

      Hi DJ. I’m sorry you missed the contest this month. It runs for 24 hours, so it helps to receive the Writers Helping Writers blog via e-mail (you can subscribe in the upper right of the page).

      We state which genres aren’t included…anything not mentioned is included.

      Fingers crossed that you’ll make it in time in September!

  2. MINDY ALYSE WEISS says

    Thank you all for entering the contest! The lucky winners are:

    Beverly

    Lola

    Chris L.

    Huge congrats everyone! I’ll e-mail the winners and let them know how to send me their first pages so I can forward them to Emily.

  4. Dina Mousa says

    Thank you for the opportunity! This is very generous. I would love to get feedback on the opening page of my novel.

  9. Susan Ward says

    I’d love to have some proper feedback. An “editor” did a sample edit on my first chapter some time ago and I don’t think it improved it.

  34. Chris L says

    Thank you for having this contest! I would love to get some feedback on the first pages of my book.