Why the Odds Don't Matter

Around midnight this morning Brenda Drake tweeted that she’d received 527 entries for the Pitch Madness contest. I’m one of those entries. The top 60 get into the agent round, which puts my odds at 11.39%, right? Well, no.

This isn’t my first contest. Last year I participated in Authoress’s Baker’s Dozen and Brenda Drake’s Pitch Wars as well as this year Michelle Hauck and Amy Trueblood’s Sun vs. Snow and Authoress’s January Secret Agent contest. One major thing I learned from these? When you enter a writing contest, your chances of getting to an agent round have nothing to do with the odds. The only exception to this is Authoress’s Secret Agent contests, where the winners are randomly determined by a bot. For the rest, the odds don’t really matter.

Think of writing contest odds as points in the show Whose Line Is It Anyway? (I loved that show in high school. We even played our own version of it in my theatre classes.) What was it Drew Carey said every episode? Something like Whose Line? was “the show where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.” Throughout each episode, he’d pass out points like candy. Each episode’s winner had nothing to do with how many points each person had—Drew Carey often just picked someone, anyone, because. The same is true for a writing contest.

Sure, your “odds” of getting to an agent round would be better if there were fewer entries, but contest winners aren’t randomly selected—it’s not just a numbers game. For that to be true, the entries would all have to be “equal” and the selection process would have to be unbiased, like when Authoress has a bot pick her Secret Agent winners. So what, if not odds, determines whether you get to a contest’s agent round?

YOUR WRITING: Writing contests usually say in the rules that you shouldn’t enter if your MS isn’t complete and ready, but we all know there are different levels to MS readiness and our awareness of that readiness. I was one of those people in Baker’s Dozen who didn’t know that I wasn’t ready. Even in Pitch Madness where there’s such a small sample—35 word pitch and 250 first words—the slush readers can tell if your writing is polished. Since my first contest, I’ve rewritten my first 250 words (and many other scenes) innumerable times, adding more tension, cutting out exposition, making sure I had a hook, a good hook. (See my post First 250 Woes if you want more on this.) While most people who entered Pitch Madness probably have polished entries, there’ll be those like mine used to be, those that’ll be eliminated pretty quick.

WHAT THE SLUSH READERS & BLOG HOSTS LIKE: Like I said, writing contests like Pitch Madness aren’t unbiased. If your entry has polished writing but doesn’t grab the slush reader’s attention, it’s not going to the next level. There are several levels in Pitch Madness, and the readers in each will be more selective than they were in the last. Of course they’re going to pick the ones they like. Wouldn’t you?

WHAT AGENTS WANT: Each contest has different agents and each agent wants different things. Readers who pick which entries make it to a contest’s agent round know what agents want. If your MS doesn’t fit an agent’s wish list, it won’t make the cut. Simple, brutal, but true.

Odds or luck or whatever you want to call it has nothing to do with your success in a writing contest—you’ve gotta write well and you’ve gotta write something that’ll sell to the contest’s readers (and agents). This is part of why, when it comes down to it, I know that this, my fifth contest, will be my last for this MS. I don’t know if I’ll get into the agent round of Pitch Madness, but no matter what happens, I’ll have to start querying. I have to get out there and find agents asking for what I’ve written. Querying is just like a writing contest (and Whose Line Is It Anyway?) where the points don’t matter, but there are so many agents that I have to hope at least one has my MS on their wish list.