It’s easy to submit your creative writing
for our critique services, whether it’s a novel,
short story, play or poetry. There’s a submission
form at the end of this page. Please read the following
information carefully on how to prepare your work for submission.
In the submission form you will be asked for your word
count and how many critiques you would like.
Submitting
your writing for review
At the very end of this page is a link to the short Submission
Form. Once you have your work ready, and you’ve decided
how many critiques you’d like, please click and complete
the form – it only takes a minute. Once the form
is completed, you’re taken to an email link and asked
to upload your work as an attachment. The file name should
be the same as the Title of work you supply on the Submission
Form.
Once we receive your work, we will email
you an electronic invoice which allows you to pay, or,
if you have told us
on the form you are sending a cheque by post, we simply
email or post an acknowledgement of receipt. We aim to
do this within 24 hours of receiving your work.
Your Work
1. Novels, short stories and writing for children
Save your work in a Word file or read-only pdf file. Avoid using a smaller
font size than 11 and please use double or line-and-a-half spacing.
Calculate
the word count (in Word, select the work then go to the Tools menu) and state
this on your title sheet, p1.
Add the page number, your name and the title
of the work to the foot of every page. We advise you to
create a header or footer to do this (In Word, see
under View.) Please do not re-start pagination for new chapters.
See Costs for
the price of reviews for the length of manuscript you’re
submitting. We offer up to four independent reviews and
they’re
charged on a sliding scale, so ordering two reviews doesn’t
cost twice as much as one. But they do give you more than twice the value!
You’re
very welcome to submit a separate synopsis of up to 1,000 words. Publishers
and agents always request one for novels and longer children’s
stories. If you’re submitting a novel extract, we recommend you submit
the first 15,000 or 40,000 words. If your extract isn’t the first section,
then a synopsis, indicating where your chapters fit in, is essential.
For
critiques of novels over 120,000 words, please contact
us for a quote.
2. Plays and poetry are
submitted in exactly the same way. For details of presentation,
including fees,
see Plays, Poetry and Short
Stories.
3. For postal submissions of your actual writing (not just
sending a cheque), please click here.
Our Process
1. We will begin the reviewing process as
soon as we receive payment. If you are paying by cheque,
please ensure we know who it’s from and the title
of your work, to marry up with the information you supply
in the Submission Form.
2. Each review is also accompanied
by a checklist completed by that reviewer. See Sample
Critiques.
3. Where the submitted work is 15,000 words
or less, we aim to return your review(s) within 3 weeks
of receiving
your digital submission and payment. We tell you how
much
time to allow if you submit longer work.
4. We return
your reviews as Word attachments to an email address
you specify. If this causes you a problem,
please
tell us when you submit. When you have your work
ready, please complete the Submission
Form.
