How to prepare your entry to Discoveries 2025
BY Discoveries
24th Oct 2024
Curtis Brown Creative and the Curtis Brown literary agency are delighted to be partnering with the Women’s Prize Trust and Audible to run the fifth Discoveries writing development programme and prize for unpublished women writers currently residing in the UK or Ireland. The prize accepts novels in any genre of adult fiction, with entrants invited to submit the first 10,000 words of their novel and a synopsis.
To enter, all you need to do is submit…
- The opening of your novel – up to 10,000 words
- A synopsis detailing the outline of your story – up to 1,000 words
Find out more about Discoveries, the prize packages on offer and how to enter here.
The 2025 judging panel is chaired by Kate Mosse, international bestselling novelist and Founder Director of the Women’s Prize; and includes esteemed writers Claire Kohda, Dreda Say Mitchell and Chloe Timms; Anna Davis, Founder and Managing Director of Curtis Brown Creative; and Jess Molloy, Curtis Brown literary agent.
When asked why writers should enter Discoveries 2025 and what they’re looking for, here’s what the judges said…
- ‘I’m looking for a character that’s going to get inside my head. I’m looking for a turn of phrase that makes me stop and think. I’m looking for, perhaps a question to be asked that I want to find out the answer to.’ – Anna Davis
- ‘There are always opportunities for the opposite voice to speak in your mind, to be saying “don’t enter”, “I’m not good enough”. If you’re feeling like – “yeah, maybe I could do it”. Then just do it.’ – Claire Kohda
- ‘Be you, be yourself. You’ve got a unique voice, and that’s one of the reasons that you’re writing. And you’ve always got to remember that your voice matters. No one else has a voice like you. So be yourself. Because it’s yourself that will shine through.’ – Dreda Say Mitchell
- ‘Discoveries is open to all genres of adult fiction. I’m always really excited to see the breadth of the entries that we might get and how someone is going to begin their story. I love writing that just unashamedly grabs that reader and pulls them in.’ – Jess Molloy
- ‘What I’m looking for in a Discoveries entry is a story that makes me want to read on. Just imagine yourself standing in a bookshop, you’ve got about 10 minutes before you’re due to get on your train, you go to a shelf, you pull a book down, you start reading that first page, and before you know it you’ve missed your train. That’s what I’m looking for, a book that makes me miss my train.’ – Kate Mosse
- ‘I’m looking for a really exciting unique voice, maybe the voice of a character that I haven’t come across before. Just consider, what’s the downside? There is no downside if you enter.’ – Chloe Timms
Watch the judges' advice video here
So, how do you make sure you’re presenting your story and unique narrative voice in the best way? Here’s our advice on how to perfect your submission to Discoveries…
OPENING
The openings of books are incredibly important, a good opening will hook your reader and compel them to keep turning the pages.
Make your opening strong by:
- Getting quickly into your story. Writers often make the mistake of spending a lot of time on scene-setting or introducing characters one by one with lots of information about their personal histories before they actually start the real action of the story. Move straight into the action to engage the reader fully.
- Don’t open with clichés. We’d love to see something fresh, new and intriguing. At all costs avoid openings with people waking up in the morning, characters staggering around with hangovers or long passages about the weather or rather generic landscape. Give us something to hook us in immediately – something which makes the reader curious or establishes a mystery which must be solved.
- But … Openings don’t need to be explosive. An unusual exchange between characters can be as dramatic as a man bursting into a room with a gun. Your opening should set the tone for the novel which follows it.
- Establish the necessary context quickly. We need to know, rapidly, where we are as readers. If your novel is set in the past, drop some clues very early as to when the action takes place. If your story is told by a child, let us know fast how old your narrator is. Help us to settle quickly into your story so that we can lose ourselves in it…
- Read over your material on the page before you send it in. Yes, we do think it’s a good idea to print out your material on the page – old-style – and sit with a pen in your hand to make edits before you enter the competition. It’s also a good idea to read your work out loud to yourself to see how it sounds – particularly when you have lots of dialogue.
SYNOPSIS
We do know, of course, that it’s hard to write a great synopsis before you’ve finished writing your novel. But give it your best shot. We’d like to see one good page synopsis (up to 1,000 words but do keep it a bit shorter than that if you can – around 500 words should be adequate) to show us where your story is headed.
Here’s what you should include:
- One-line pitch. Start with a sentence which tells us what’s really at the heart of your story – this is, essentially, your one-line pitch. If that’s impossible for the kind of book you’re writing, head your synopsis up with a line from your novel which carries some of its flavour.
- Give us the brushstrokes of your story. We want to know the through-line of your plot. Try to be clear and concise, and don’t drop in lots and lots of character names, settings and minor events. If you have a twist in the tale, it’s up to you as to whether you want to include that in the synopsis, but we should certainly get the arc of your story.
- This is a prize for unfinished manuscripts, we understand that your story may develop and change – we aren’t expecting the synopsis you submit to be followed to the letter just be sure to give us the big picture of your narrative. Should you be long or shortlisted, an updated synopsis won’t affect your chances of winning.
- If possible (and without being too corny about it) try to get some of the tone of your novel into your synopsis so that it reads entertainingly and not like a characterless business document. A synopsis rarely works if it is written from the protagonist’s point of view or written in a first-person perspective. So, we recommend writing it in the third-person.
- Remember – this is an overview of your novel, not a detailed plan. We don’t need full chapter-breakdowns – just the key points of your story.
- Avoid putting in any value judgements about your own work. This isn’t a blurb on a published novel. Don’t tell us it’s going to be the next bestseller or that it’s gripping and moving etc. Frankly, we’ll be the judge of that!
TITLE
Make sure that you give your novel a title. It doesn’t matter if you change it later – it’s still better to have a working title than nothing. A title gives your book an identity. It will also make it much easier for the readers and judges to talk about it.
GENRE
Discoveries welcomes applications across all genres of adult fiction. Our entry form asks you to tick the genres that apply to your novel. Pick one or two genres (a hybrid of genres is welcome). If you can’t see your genre in the selection available in the entry form, don’t worry – pick the closest genre. You can always go on to include the genre in your synopsis. Be careful not to invent a genre that doesn’t exist. If you’re writing something that is difficult to categorise you might want to include a comparison title or two in your synopsis.
PROOFREAD
We’d love it if you could make sure that your work is pleasant for us to read. This is how we’d like you to do it:
- Remember to proofread. Check your spelling, grammar and punctuation.
- Make sure you include paragraph breaks and set your dialogue out correctly with a new line for each new speaker – all of this makes your material easier to read by our judges.
- Check that your word count does not exceed 10,000 words.
Best of luck preparing your submission to Discoveries 2025. We’re so excited to read your work!