July OWL | Focus on the First Five - Get your first five pages submission-ready with Samantha Bond & Robb Grindstaff

Are you ready to submit your work to an agent or publisher? Want to ensure your work has the best chance to impress? Then you'd better make sure your fist few pages sing. We all know that publishing professionals receive thousands of submissions each year and they're often so busy that if your work fails to grab them in that first page or two, they won't persist past that. Sending your work out into the world is a harrowing experience, but if you get those first five pages right, it has a far better chance of success. The focus of this workshop is to get those first five pages in top shape. Work them out at our OWL bootcamp so those agents and publishers will be immediately hooked and wanting more. We'll do it at the group level through online forum discussions, and at the individual level through focused feedback from the presenters to each participant. It's like a mini-manuscript assessment at a micro price! The workshop will start with a technical lesson on what the writer needs to do in first five pages. The macro elements will focus on issues such as character, genre, setting, time period, introductory hook, introducing the romance, posing the story question and whether to include a prologue or not. The micro elements will focus on elements of style and students will receive a critique of their strengths and weaknesses as part of their submission feedback. Participants will be given a week to absorb the lesson and discuss online and with the presenters before revising their WIP. They will then submit their five pages for an individual critique from either Samantha or Robb (the presenters will divide the work equally). Work will be sent back, participants given an opportunity to revise, and then resubmit for a final assessment. Presenters will also encourage participants to share work, questions, and advice on the forum to support one another in making their work submission ready. Once your first five are as focused, impressive and unput-downable as can be, they're ready for release into the publishing domain... This is a highly interactive workshop. To be delivered via Moodle forum with lessons posted at the beginning of the week.It will utilise Moodle for group discussions, and individual email to provide feedback to participants on their submissions. Individual critiques and feedback offered to participants who email presenters their first 5 pages, in addition to forum discussion support.

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About the Presenters

Samantha Bond is a reformed corporate lawyer, now writer and public servant. Her creative work has been published in numerous literary journals, anthologies and magazines. She has an Advanced Diploma of Professional Writing, winning the award for Highest Overall Achievement for her graduating class of 2014 and now tutors in that course. She also runs creative writing workshops, has taught for Romance Writers of Australia, and her novels have agent representation. As a reviewer for Indaily and Glam Adelaide, Samantha has had over 200 articles published, she does freelance corporate writing work, and creative writing mentoring. Samantha is part of the Seasoned With Romance virtual writers group that produces seasonally-themed chic lit anthologies which have been downloaded in excess of 15, 000 times and received grant funding from Romance Writers of Australia. Finally, Samantha is a busy mum of two littlies, is an unapologetic chocolate addict, believes that Buffy would so slay Edward (which perhaps shows her age) and is a writers’ festival groupie. If you'd like her services, she's contactable through her website www.samanthastaceybond.com. In addition to a 35-year career as a newspaper editor, manager, and publisher, Robb Grindstaff has written fiction most of his life. The newspaper biz has taken him from the desert southwest of the U.S. to the rural south, from seven years in Washington, D.C., to five years in Asia. Born and raised a small-town kid, he’s just as comfortable in Tokyo as in Mayberry. He’s had a dozen short stories published in print anthologies and e-zines, and several articles on the craft of writing fiction published internationally. He has two novels out with Evolved Publishing, Hannah’s Voice and Carry Me Away. His third novel sits in his computer and stares at him. His short story, “Desert Rain,” part of his Sonoran Dreams trilogy and his only horror story (written on a dare), won critical acclaim as one of the top horror stories of 2007-2012. Robb has edited fiction and non-fiction books for the past ten years, including published and agented authors from the U.S, Europe, and Australia. He’s fluent in five languages: U.S. English, U.K. English, Canadian English, and Australian English, plus his native language, Texan. He now resides on a few acres of countryside in Wisconsin, and operates a publishing company with a dozen community newspapers. http://robbgrindstaff.com