You snooze, you…gain, apparently. At least if you want to enter a literary contest.

My apologies for not corresponding with you as extensively as usual over the last few months, campers: I could plead deadlines stacked up like cordwood; I could whine about health setbacks that would have made Asclepius turn pale; I could frighten you by references to a workload that would cause Heracles to glance up from his labors and say, “No kidding?” But I’m not going to get away with kidding a fellow writer, right? The fact is, I just kept finding that there weren’t enough hours in the day to write all I wanted to share with the world.

Since I’m relatively certain most of you fine people have some personal experience with that particular dilemma, I’m hoping you shall find it in your collective heart to forgive me. At least, that is, those of you in the market for what we here at Author! Author! like to call Eye-Catching Query Letter Candy.

Or ECQLC, for short. You know, the kind of literary credentials aspiring writers so often worry about not having handy to pop into their queries.

Why might ECQLC-seekers regard me with a kinder eye right about now? Because in recognition of the sad fact that I’m not the only writer in the English-speaking world to know what it is to scramble to find time to write, I’m shoving with all of my force against the imminent deadline for The Sensual Surfeit Literary Competition of 2012, this year’s edition of the Author! Author! Awards for Expressive Excellence from the now-imminent Tuesday, October 30, 2012 — and pushing it all the way to Monday, December 3, 2012, at midnight in your time zone.

Shall I pause while all of you habitual last-minute huggers dance in the streets? Or was that mass of scurrying I just heard half of you scrolling frantically through the archive list, trying to find a link to that handy post in which I showed precisely what a winning entry for this contest might look like on the page?

No, but seriously, folks, I know that you’re busy people, and that many of you struggle as it is to find time to write your books and short stories, much less contest entries. That’s why, in case you’d been wondering, Author! Author!’s contests — the fruit of which look mighty decorative on query letters, incidentally — so seldom ask you hardworking folks to write anything new: as is our little community’s wont, what the judges want to do here is reward you for scenes you have already written.

Yes, really. This year, we’re going to be awarding prizes to writers who can write a darned good scene for adult readers of fiction, narrative nonfiction, and/or memoir. And since I’m a big fan of helping writers earn some nice, shiny ECQLC without having to spend a fortune on entry fees, this one is gratis — and provides the broadest array of entry categories in Author! Author! history.

I see those of you who entered by the original deadline frowning, and who could blame you? “But Anne!” you point out with some vim. “I’m every bit as busy as everyone else, yet I managed to scrabble my entry together before not only this coming Tuesday, but the original deadline over Labor Day weekend. I am, in short, outstandingly virtuous, and while I certainly have sympathy for my compatriots who might even as I type this be rending their garments, trying to polish an entry before Halloween, I wouldn’t like to think my non-procrastinating ways had gone unnoticed.”

Indeed they have not, Johnnies-on-the-spot: those of us on the entry-processing end have been placing metaphorical gold stars on your entries. I’m not saying that there will necessarily be a special prize awarded for the best early entry, but just between you and me, the judges have already been leaning so far in that direction that I suspect it would take only a slight breeze to topple ‘em right over. Also, they — and I — are quite open to judging the more recent of two entries by the same writer, should any of you desire to make a tweak or two and reenter.

I just mention. Writers who beat deadlines by comfortable margins are such a rarity in the literary world that I’m inclined to do all I can to cultivate their good behavior.

So let’s take another gander at the rules, shall we?

The Sensual Surfeit Literary Competition of 2012

Although the last time any of us here at Author! Author! checked, human beings experience the known world through their sensory organs, the overwhelming majority of manuscripts seem to rely mostly upon just two: sight and sound. That’s understandable, of course, since the world is stuffed to the gills with television, online, and movie storylines that must depend upon only those two senses to convey meaning.

On the printed page, however, there’s seldom a reason for a narrative to limit itself to only what could be observed on a screen — or heard on a radio. (Ask your grandparents about the latter, kids.) In order to encourage aspiring writers to incorporate more senses — and more specific sense-oriented detail — in their manuscripts, the Sensual Surfeit Literary Competition of 2012 is calling upon you to wow the judges with just how thoroughly you can make them feel that they are there with your character for one scene in your book.

The catch: we’re calling only for scenes that utilize a range of senses in interesting and unexpected ways. It cannot be a scene that contains overtly sexual activity.

Find other ways to engage the senses. In a scene of 8 pages or less.

So if your novel has a fabulous scene in which the heroine is slowly consumed by a not-particularly ravenous tiger, your memoir features a strong five pages during which you are floating on an inner tube down the Xingu whilst pursued by a school of piranha, and/or your history of Northern Californian gold panning presents the reader with the best description of dishpan hand acquisition ever seen by human eye, well, this is the time to pull it out. The Author! Author! Awards for Expressive Excellence have always rewarded entries featuring strong, sense-based detail and imagery, but this year, how well those specifics leap off the page will be the primary judging criterion. Please wow us with your close observation, descriptive detail, and one-of-a-kind worldview — and we’ll be overjoyed if you show us something we’ve never seen before. Just make sure that it’s all PG-rated enough to publish on this all-ages-of-writer-encouraged website.

On the remote chance that I’m being too subtle here: we will not be accepting sex scenes, period. Nor will we accept an entry containing profanity. Not that there isn’t some great sensual writing dealing with that arena of human experience, as well as some magnificent swearing, but this is a blog committed to making it possible for writers of all ages and varieties of Internet access to participate. Many library and home computers are protected by blocking programs, you see. And I would hate for any members of our community not to be able to view the winning entries in each category — which will be published here.

Winners will not only receive fabulous prizes (hold your horses; we’re getting to those), but may have their scenes and accompanying synopses both published and critiqued in a post here at Author! Author! for all the world to see and admire. To be specific:

The grand prize winner in each category will receive a half-hour Mini Consult on a query, synopsis, and first 10 pages of the manuscript from which the winning scene was excerpted, as well as having the winning entry, bio, and an author photo posted on Author! Author!

First and second place winners will have their entries posted and critiqued on this blog.

Third place winners will receive copies of Tulip Season: A Mitra Basu Mystery.

Because winners will also be awarded life-long bragging rights and coveted ECQLC, the judges reserve the right to award as many (or as few) prizes as the quality and quantity of the entry pool in any given category warrants. Awards are purely up to the discretion of the judging panel.

Entrants may enter more than one category. Please select your category by the type of book from which the scene is taken, rather than the content of the scene itself. The categories are as follows:

Category I: Literary fiction, women’s fiction, and mainstream fiction

Category II: Science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal

Category III: All other genre fiction, including romance and mystery

Category IV: Humor (either fiction or nonfiction, but please do tell the judges which)

Category V: Memoir

Category VI: Narrative nonfiction, cookbooks, and academic books

All entries must be submitted via e-mail to contest(at)annemini(dot)com by Monday, December 3, 2012, at midnight in your time zone. Late entries will not be considered. Please submit each entry in a separate e-mail, in accordance with the rules below.

Those are the general rules. Here are the specific steps required to win. Do read them all carefully. Please be aware that entries that do not follow the rules will be disqualified.

1. Select a scene of no more than eight pages in length from your manuscript or manuscript-in-progress that best demonstrates the use of sense-oriented description and/or imagery.
Scenes may be excerpted from any point in the book, but do be aware that the judges will be assessing the writing by only this scene and your synopsis (see Step #5).

Pages must be in standard format for book manuscripts, in 12-point Times, Times New Roman, or Courier. Work that is not double-spaced, contains shrunken margins, or otherwise differs from standard format will be disqualified.

(For those in whom that last requirement induced deep despair: fear not. You will find step-by-step directions about how to apply the rules of standard format to entries to this contest here. I’m not out to trick anyone!)

All entries must be in English. Whether you choose to write in American English, Canadian English, or U.K. English, however, is entirely up to you. Just make sure it’s spelled correctly.

2. Make sure that the scene in question does not include any overtly sexual act or profanity.
The goal here is sensual description that is specifically non-sexual. Remember, too, that the judges will be looking for a variety of senses to be addressed in the scene.

3. Polish your scene to a high gloss and save it as a Word document, as a .doc file
Only .doc entries in Word will be accepted — not TextEdit, PDF, or any other formats, please. Please title the Word file containing your synopsis as YOUR LAST NAME + SYNOPSIS.

Please name the Word file containing the scene with your name and the abbreviated title of your book (Austen Pride & Prejudice), not just as contest entry or the ever-popular Anne Mini contest. The last time I ran a contest like this, I received 42 entries with one or the other of these two titles.

4. In a separate Word document, list your name, address, e-mail address, and telephone number, as well as the category you are entering. On that same page, please include a 1-paragraph explanation of how the scene fits into the overall story of the book.
This is the only chance you’re going to get to set up the scene for the judges, so make it count!

5. On the second page of the document described in #4, include a synopsis of no more than 1 page, giving the judges an overview of the book’s premise, its main characters, and its central conflict.
Again, this synopsis must be in standard format. If you are unfamiliar with either standard format or how to write a 1-page synopsis, you will find explanations (along with examples) under the HOW TO FORMAT A BOOK MANUSCRIPT and HOW TO WRITE A 1-PAGE SYNOPSIS categories on the archive list located on the right-hand side of this page.

6. Make sure that both documents are properly formatted: precisely as they would appear in a manuscript submission.
Please be aware that correct formatting is a prerequisite to entry in this contest, not merely a judging criterion. If it is not double-spaced, in 12-point type, and featuring a slug line (Author’s last name/book title/page #) in each page’s header, the judges will not consider the entry.

7. Attach both Word documents to an e-mail.
Please include SSLC ENTRY and the category number in the subject line. Please also mention the category in the body of the e-mail. (It makes it easier to process the entries.) Again, the categories are:

Category I: Literary fiction, women’s fiction, and mainstream fiction

Category II: Science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal

Category III: All other genre fiction, including romance and mystery

Category IV: Humor

Category V: Memoir

Category VI: Narrative nonfiction, cookbooks, and academic books

Make sure to say who you are, too, so we don’t get entries mixed up. It’s also a nice touch to say something pleasant (like “Howdy, Anne!”) in the e-mail itself. I just mention.

8. Make sure to mention which category you are entering.
Seriously, we need to know this.

9. E-mail the whole shebang to contest(at)annemini(dot)com by Tuesday, October 30, 2012 Monday, December 3, 2012, at midnight in your time zone. If you are entering more than one category, please submit each entry in a separate e-mail.

Those are the rules! Please follow them closely. If you would like to see a step-by-step guide to how to apply these rules to the entry page, click here.

If you should have any lingering questions about the rules — like, say, what constitutes a scene, something several potential entrants have already asked, feel free to post them in the comments here. Please do not, however, e-mail them; part of the point of a blog is public discussion. If you’ve been having trouble finding where to post comments, as many readers seem to have been experiencing lately, the link is at the end of the post, at the end of the paragraph of categories to which the post belongs. Click on the words # COMMENTS, and you’re home free!

Not seeing it? On today’s post, the relevant line looks like this:

The Sensual Surfeit Literary Competition of 2012 / Comments >>

Use your extra month wisely, campers; I’m looking forward to seeing the results. Keep up the good work!

I know I can write — so why should I care about format in a contest entry? Or a submission to an agency, for that matter?

Every since I announced Author! Author!’s Sensual Surfeit Literary Competition of 2012 a couple of weeks ago, I have been barraged with questions. Admittedly, these questions have not, by and large, been posted as comments here on the blog — where, say, my response to them might be visible to potential entrants other than the one that happened to buttonhole me in a bookstore or e-mail me privately. (The comment section is there for a reason, people!)

If seven years of blogging (as of next month) have taught me anything, though, it’s that for every one aspiring writer brave enough to post a question or accost me in a dark alley, demanding literary answers, there are hundreds or even thousands that never work up the nerve to ask. Or perhaps have not yet progressed from a vague feeling of discomfort to a fully-formulated question. Or, as those that come up and tap me on the shoulder at the grocery store keep insisting is their problem, simply not having the time or the patience to type out a nuanced concern on the tiny keyboards of their smartphones in between quick peeks at the blog.

Whatever the reason, I worry about all of those shy questioners. Writing for a contest entry — or for publication — is a pretty complex business; it’s not as though I could just toss off a 500-word column that would answer every conceivable question floating around out there in the ether. As much as fans of brevity might like me to make the attempt (oh, those people comment!), there are plenty of websites out there that profess to tell aspiring writers everything they need to know about formatting a manuscript or writing a successful contest entry in just a few hundred words, if not a few dozen bullet points, that I have no qualms about not adding to the number.

Besides, in my experience, pretending that complex matters are simple just confuses people. As my extensive archives (conveniently organized by category at the lower right-hand side of this page) demonstrate, I’m perfectly happy being the blogger that aspiring writers seek out for detailed answers to difficult questions.

But in order for me to do that, I need to know what those questions are.

And no, I’m not always able to guess. As I have pointed out many times in this very forum, the issues I might speculate that my readers would like me to address are not necessarily those that would occur to someone brand-new to the challenges of entering a writing contest or submitting to an agency.

Why? Well, to those of us that read manuscripts for a living, matters of formatting and style are fairly self-evident: like our old pals, Millicent, the agency screener, and Mehitabel, the veteran contest judge, I have seen so many professionally-formatted, beautifully-written manuscript pages, as well as myriads that missed the mark, that I can tell at a glance if something’s off. And, like Millie and Hitty, if something’s off with the presentation, it makes it harder for me to concentrate upon the writing itself.

Well might you roll your eyes, contest entrants and submitters: ideally, it would be nice if all that counted in a submission or entry were the writing itself. But Millie, Hitty, and I all know that’s not a realistic expectation — and, frankly, that we would not be doing aspiring writers any favors in the long run if we pretended presentation did not count. Millicent knows that in order for her boss, the agent of your dreams, to be able to sell your manuscript to an editor, it would first need to be free of typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors; Mehitabel is aware that if an entry she likes is to have a fighting chance in the finalist round, it must adhere to the contest’s rules.

And my years of experience helping writers move from concept to publication have taught me that if I just nodded and smiled when those writers insisted that it was a waste of their time to adhere to the rigors of standard format for book manuscripts, they would have gotten rejected by Millicent before their good writing had a chance to impress her. Because there’s just no getting around the fact that to a professional reader, improper presentation is every bit as eye-distracting as a page that repeats the word being on every other line or never contains a single correct spelling of either.

So it honestly wasn’t merely a matter of nit-pickery when I included in the rules for this season’s adult writing competition the stark requirement that entries must be in standard format for book manuscripts, in 12-point Times, Times New Roman, or Courier. Work that is not double-spaced, contains shrunken margins, or otherwise differs from standard format will be disqualified. Nor was it an accident when I included a link to the rules of standard format immediately thereafter.

A lesser writing contest organizer might have left it at that. So might a writing guru with less experience fielding questions from aspiring writers. But I know that everybody learns slightly differently — and not everyone has the time, patience, or web access minutes left this month to follow such a link.

I know, in short, enough to ask those of you contemplating entering the contest: how many of you have ever actually seen a professionally-formatted book manuscript in person? Or a contest entry that won a major prize?

I thought not. So today, for your viewing pleasure, I am going to walk potential entrants (and anyone else that might be interested) through the contest rules, giving visual examples of how an entry that clung to them tenaciously would look on the page.

That’s right, campers: today, I’m going to show you the technical side of how to win.

You’re welcome. And please, should anything in this set of explanations puzzle you, even for an instant, do me a favor and leave a comment asking for clarification. Believe me, if you are wondering, others will be, too. And I can’t answer questions I don’t know readers have.

(Okay, so I frequently do. Humor me this time, will ya?)

One caveat before we start: for reasons best known to itself, my blogging program chooses to reproduce page shots small, dark, and inexplicably blurry. I’ve cleaned them up as best I can, but since the details are the point here, I would strenuously advise those of you reading this on a computer to hold down the COMMAND key and pressing + repeatedly to enlarge the images. (Those of you reading this on smartphones are on your own.)

Everyone seated comfortably? Excellent. Let’s begin where all sensible contest entrants start when figuring out how to pull together a contest entry, at the top of the rules.

The Sensual Surfeit Literary Competition of 2012

Although the last time any of us here at Author! Author! checked, human beings experience the known world through their sensory organs, the overwhelming majority of manuscripts seem to rely mostly upon just two: sight and sound. That’s understandable, of course, since the world is stuffed to the gills with television, online, and movie storylines that must depend upon only those two senses to convey meaning. On the printed page, however, there’s seldom a reason for a narrative to limit itself to only what could be observed on a screen.

In order to encourage aspiring writers to incorporate more senses — and more specific sense-oriented detail — in their manuscripts, the Sensual Surfeit Literary Competition of 2012 is calling upon you to wow the judges with just how thoroughly you can make them feel that they are there for one scene in your book.

The catch: it cannot be a scene that contains overtly sexual activity. Find other ways to engage the senses. And the scene in question must be 8 pages or less.

Winners will not only receive fabulous prizes (hold your horses; we’re getting to those), but may have their scenes and accompanying synopses both published and critiqued in a post here at Author! Author! for all the world to see and admire. To be specific:

The grand prize winner in each category will receive a half-hour Mini Consult on a query, synopsis, and first 10 pages of the manuscript from which the winning scene was excerpted, as well as having the winning entry, bio, and an author photo posted on Author! Author!

First and second place winners will have their entries posted and critiqued on this blog.

Third place winners will receive copies of Tulip Season: A Mitra Basu Mystery.

That’s pretty self-explanatory so far, is it not? The crux of the contest entry is a scene of 8 pages or less that contains nicely-written and creatively-conceived writing about the senses. Smut disallowed.

And already, I spot a forest of hands sprouting up out there. “But Anne,” those of you new to how people in publishing paginate point out, and rightly so, “why doesn’t this contest give a word count as a guideline, instead of a maximum page count? After all, 8 pages single-spaced would contain quite a few more words than the same number of pages triple-spaced — and my computer can produce type in a wide array of sizes, ranging from very small to very large. So am I reading the rules correctly to say that as long as I can cram everything I want to say onto 8 pages, it’s fair game?”

In a word, no. Contest judges are like Goldilocks: they like those pages to be just right.

What would just right mean in this context? Let’s scroll down to the specific rules and see if they offer any further elucidation.

1. Select a scene no more than eight pages in length from your manuscript or manuscript-in-progress that best demonstrates the use of sense-oriented description and/or imagery. Scenes may be excerpted from any point in the book, but do be aware that the judges will be assessing the writing by only this scene and your synopsis (see Step #5).

Pages must be in standard format for book manuscripts, in 12-point Times, Times New Roman, or Courier. Work that is not double-spaced, contains shrunken margins, or otherwise differs from standard format will be disqualified.

Ah, there we go: the entry must be 8 or fewer pages in standard format — in other words, precisely the way a savvy writer would present the scene in a book manuscript intended for the eyes of an agent or editor. So that those of you without the time/inclination/remaining minutes won’t have to follow the link above, here are the rules.

a) Standard format for manuscripts is not identical to the format of a published book; book manuscripts differ from published books in many important respects and for many reasons. To a classically-trained agent or editor, presentation is not a matter of style: what may appear to a writer to be a cool, self-expressive choice will strike a professional reader as a distraction from the writing.

b) All manuscripts should be typed or printed in black ink on 20-lb or heavier white paper. (I encourage my clients to use bright white 24-lb paper; it doesn’t wilt in the hand.)

c) All manuscripts are printed on ONE side of the page and are unbound in any way.

d) The first page of a chapter should begin a third of the way down the page, with the chapter title centered at the top.

e) Contact information for the author belongs on the title page, not page 1.

Okay, all of that is useful to know for manuscript-formatting in general, but this is a contest that you will be entering via e-mail, right? So for the moment, we don’t need to worry about paper quality or a title page. Let’s move on.

f) All manuscripts are double-spaced, with 1-inch margins on all four edges.

g) The text should be left-justified, not block-justified. The left margin should be straight, the right uneven.

That’s helpful, right? If a contest entrant (let’s call him Grover) were constructing his scene from scratch, he would begin by setting up the page like this:

Everybody clear on the margin requirements? Now is the time to speak up, if not. In the meantime, let’s move on with the rules of standard format — which, lest we forget, do not apply only to this contest entry. These are the requirements of a professional book manuscript for the U.S. market.

But for now, we’re still trying to figure out how many words you can fit on a page, are we not?

h) The preferred typefaces for manuscripts are 12-point Times New Roman or Courier.

i) No matter how cool your desired typeface looks, or how great the title page looks with 14-point type, keep the entire manuscript in the same font and typeface.

That last one, frankly, gets broken so often that many Millicents just roll their eyes over 24-point italics on the title page and flip impatiently to page 1. Mehitabel, however, cannot afford to be so tolerant. In most contests, the quickest way to get disqualified is to ignore font restrictions.

Since our last visual aid adhered strictly to both (h) and (i), I don’t feel the need to post another positive example. Just in case any of you might fall prey to that most common of contest-entrant brainstorms, the one that goes gee, no one will notice if I tinker just a little with the font and/or margins, to get a bit more on the page, though, let’s take a gander at what that same page would look like with both fudged.

Do your best to trick us, Grover. I’m curious to see if our audience can figure out on a first quick read what precisely is different.

Any guesses how Grover bought himself some extra lines here? First, the text was transmuted into Arial Narrow, a smaller font than Times New Roman. Then he changed it to 11 point. The margins also shrunk: each is .9 inch, instead of a full inch.

I ask you, though: looking at these two examples next to each other, is there any chance you would not have noticed that there were quite a few more words in the second version? The probability’s even lower for Mehitabel and Millicent, who scan many, many properly-formatted pages at a sitting.

The result in either context? “Next!”

Now that Grover’s presumably learned his lesson about cheating, let’s not rub it in. Instead, let’s proceed to a couple of more standard format requirements that could benefit from practical demonstration.

j) Each page of text should feature a standard slug line in the header, preferably left-justified:

Author’s Last Name/Title/#

This should appear in the same plain 12-point type as the rest of the manuscript. The page number should appear in the slug line and nowhere else on the page.

k) Every page in the manuscript should be numbered except the title page. Do not include it in a page count. The first page of text is page 1.

Let me tackle (k) first, because aspiring writers so often misconstrue it. In any manuscript, the title page is not numbered, because it is not a page of text. Thus, it should not include a slug line, either.

That means, in practice, that if a contest calls for a certain page limit for entries, the title page is not included in the total. In this contest, for example, if Grover decided to include a title page with his entry — not required, but not forbidden, either — he could submit up to nine pages: the title page plus up to eight pages of text. The first page of the scene would be page 1.

Millicent and Mehitabel are perennially shocked at how often submissions and entries disregard (j), by the way. Since manuscripts are not bound (unless a contest’s rules specifically call for them to be), it seems flatly crazy to professional readers that any writer would seriously expect them to read unnumbered pages — or to track down pages that might go wandering into what is often an entire desktop of manuscript.

So (h) is for your benefit as much as theirs, really: it enables M & M to make sure that they are reading the right person’s submission in the right order. Adding a slug line in the header is a small price to pay for that security.

That’s right — I said in the header, not on the first line of text on the page. The slug line is the only text permissible in the top margin; it should fall .5 inch from the top of the page. Like so:

Everyone clear on where it should go? Note, please, that the page number appears in the slug line, not anywhere else on the page. Some contests and agencies do harbor other preferences; check rules and submission guidelines carefully. If they do not mention a specific alternate location, though, you will never go wrong placing the page number in the slug line.

l) The beginning of each paragraph should be indented .5 inch, including the first paragraph of each chapter, no matter what you have seen in a published book.

This is an especially important one to observe in a contest that allows entry via e-mail. Why? Because the rise of e-mail has prompted many, many aspiring writers to believe — wrongly — that indentation is no longer required in English prose. As a direct and deplorable result, both Millicent and Mehitabel very frequently open both paper and e-mailed submissions to find entries that look like this:

Or — sacre bleu! — like this:

While an unusually tolerant Millicent might conceivably keep reading beyond the first line of the former (but don’t count on it), contest rules will almost always force Mehitabel to disqualify an entry like this on the spot. Or at least to dock the entry points for it. And neither professional reader is likely to read the second faux pas at all.

Oh, pick your jaws up off the floor; the publishing industry perceives itself, and rightly, as the protector of a language that’s increasingly seeing its rules blurred. Perhaps that’s why professional readers find standard format so undistracting to read — it enforces norms that have been around for quite a while.

Ignoring the indentation imperative is not the only reason that last example would raise M & M’s umbrage, however. This use of spacing confuses a paragraph break with a section break.

m) Don’t skip an extra line between paragraphs, except to indicate a section break.

n) Section breaks are formed by skipping one double-spaced line, not by # # # or any other marker UNLESS you are writing a short story, article, or entering a contest that requires the inclusion of a specific symbol.

I would show you an example of a section break, but since the Sensual Surfeit contest calls for only a single scene, it should not be necessary for entrants to use one. (Puzzled? Don’t be: section breaks come between scenes, not within them.)

Continuing our practice of concentrating our efforts upon what will help a contest entrant most, let’s proceed to something that might well crop up in a sense-heavy scene: the urge to emphasize.

o) Words in foreign languages should be italicized, as should emphasized words and titles of copyrighted works like songs. Nothing in the text should be underlined.

p) Do not use boldface anywhere but on the title page — and even there, it’s optional.

Basically, these two can be boiled down to a very simple precept: in a book manuscript, the only permissible fancy variant upon plain text is italicized text. (Short story format is different, but it’s not applicable here.) Use it where appropriate. As Grover has here:

Ah, that’s starting to look more like a scene that might appeal to this contest’s Mehitabels, isn’t it? Just two more rules, and we’ll have the formatting down pat.

q) All numbers under 100 should be written out in full: twenty-five, not 25. Dates, times, and currency, however, are rendered as numbers when they are precise (3:02 p.m., June 12, 2012, $1,257), but in words when they are more general (a quarter to three, the fifteenth or sixteenth of June, a thousand dollars).

r) Dashes should be doubled, while hyphens are single, as in self-congratulatory. Dashes should also have spaces at each end — rather than—like this.

Oh, you want to see those in action, do you? Well, it’s late, but I think I have another example in me. Here you go:

(q) genuinely confuses a lot of aspiring writers, and with good reason: in A.P. style (what’s used in U.S. magazines and newspapers), only numbers under 10 are written out. Every part of publishing has its own standards; it’s not worth your energy to try to argue that the norms in one area are equally applicable to another.

Pay particular attention to (r), please — you would be astonished at how often simply employing an emdash (that long line between words that my blogging program favors, much to my chagrin) will set off a red flag for a professional reader. Why? It instantly tells her that the writer is unfamiliar with the rigors of standard format — and thus that the writer will need more coaching than one that is better prepared for professional writing.

But you won’t require that extra coaching, right? We’ve just gone through all of the rules of standard format — and none of them were particularly oppressive to individual writing style, were they?

I’m going to leave you to ponder the implications for your entry. Yes, there are a few more rules to this contest (which you will find in full here), but most of them are matters of content — most notably, restrictions on profanity and sexual content required so that all readers may read the winning entries, without fear of their being blocked by content filters — or simply logistics. (You can handle saving your scene and your synopsis as two different Word documents, right?)

For those of you who would like a guided tour of an entire set of contest rules, tune in next time, when I shall be going over all of the nuances for this summer’s contest for young writers and adult YA writers. That will be as specific as it is possible to be.

A quick reminder before I sign off: if you wish to enter the Sensual Surfeit competition, you will need to whip your entry into shape by Tuesday, October 30, 2012 Monday, December 3, 2012, at midnight in your time zone — so please, if you have any questions about the entry requirements, ask them sooner, rather than later. That way, everyone can benefit from the answers during the brainstorming phase of creation.

I really am looking forward to seeing your entries. The Mehitabels and I are anxious to hand out a broad array of Eye-Catching Query Letter Candy. Keep up the good work!

Give Food Some Thought, by guest blogger Bharti Kirchner — and, in celebration of her latest book’s release, a writing contest!

Hello, campers –

As those of you who have been hanging out here at Author! Author! any length of time have probably surmised, there are few eventualities I enjoy more than when a deeply talented, hard-working writer gets a first book published — unless it’s when a magnificently gifted, ardently committed established author has a new book out. And if, as in the case of today’s guest blogger, it’s also a writer who has not only paid her dues in not one, not two, but three different book categories, but also takes the time to help aspiring writers learn the craft ropes, well, you’ll pardon me if I become downright giddy.

Why, you ask, hesitant to join me in cavorting around the nearest bonfire? Having grown up watching many, many authors that later became household names claw their way to public recognition, word by word and reading by reading, I must confess that I get a kick out of seeing good writers succeed. I also believe quite firmly that those of us that celebrate not only our own literary milestones, but those of our fellow writers, have an easier time keeping the faith over the course of that uphill climb.

And not merely because the road up the mountainside is notoriously windy and steep: it’s hardly a news flash that in the literary world, your garden-variety overnight sensation has often put in a decade or two of intensive toil before attaining public recognition. By cheering on our compatriots, we can reaffirm our sense that a difficult path is not an impossible one: good writing does indeed get published. We can also learn from those who have tread the byways before us how to navigate it — and, if the author in question is generous enough to share her experience and expertise, perhaps pick up a few tips to improve our writing as well.

That’s why I asked the perpetually wonderful Bharti Kirchner, author of five critically-acclaimed novels, four cookbooks, and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, to share her insights into writing today. She’s well worth attending to: in addition to being one heck of a conference speaker on craft (something surprisingly few writers’ conferences have been concentrating upon lately), Bharti is one of the Pacific Northwest’s great food writers, both in nonfiction and in fiction. Her Pastries: A Novel of Desserts and Discoveries is one of my favorite food-related novels of all time; I would urge anyone seriously interested in learning how to handle comestibles on the page — not nearly so easy as it looks — to study it carefully.

Why? Well, Bharti’s a well-established master of sensual detail. Her characters do not experience food merely as a fleeting sensation dancing upon their taste buds: her narratives speak to the eyes, the ears, the skin, the nose, the psyche. Her characters experience life down to their viscera. Pastries is also a wonderfully evocative and accurate portrait of Seattle life, for those of you looking to learn something about establishing a sense of place.

Just of author — and writing — I like to celebrate here at Author! Author! in short. And to help all of you get in the habit of rejoicing that such authors have put in all of that hard work, I’m going to pop a metaphorical champagne cork over her new novel, Tulip Season: A Mitra Basu Mystery, by offering all of you something that could help move you along that uphill climb: the opportunity to generate some Eye-Catching Query Letter Candy.

That’s right, campers: it’s time for this year’s Author! Author! Awards for Expressive Excellence. This time around, we’re going to be concentrating on writing through all of the senses in a competition I like to call the Sensual Surfeit Literary Competition of 2012. This year, we’re accepting novel, memoir, and narrative nonfiction book excerpts in a quest to find the best previously-unpublished sense-oriented writing that’s not in a sex scene. And this time, instead of asking for just a first page, the entries will consist of an entire scene of 8 pages or less.

Why, yes, that is a bit of room to flex your descriptive muscles, now that you mention it. To make it even more interesting, the judges and I have decided to create more separate categories for different kinds of writing.

That’s not all, either. Because some of you asked so nicely last year, I’m not just going to announce the contest’s rules and deadline and leave you to it. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be using this literary competition as a springboard for wrapping up our ongoing discussion of craft in contest entries.

Yes, really: we’re going to be using this contest not only to help build up the writing chops to bring the senses to life on the page, but to learn how to wield those skills to maximum effect in contest entries and manuscript submissions.

You’ll find the rules at the end of this post. Yes, yes, I know: I usually list them at the top, and I shall surely devote an entire post to them down the line, but I think that what Bharti has to say will be so helpful to your initial brainstorming about what you would like to enter in this contest — which is going to call upon all of your creativity — that I am going to introduce her and her insights first.

Because Bharti is so delightfully prolific, I can do that in several ways. First, as always, I can show you the publisher’s blurb for her latest book:

A missing domestic-violence counselor. A wealthy and callous husband. A dangerous romance.

Kareena Sinha, an Indian-American domestic-violence counselor, disappears from her Seattle home. Her best friend, Mitra Basu, a young landscape designer, resolves to find her. Mitra’s search lands her into a web of life-threatening intrigue where she can’t be sure of Kareena’s safety or her own.

And, while we’re at it, let’s take a gander at some deservedly high praise for it:

“Mitra is gunpowder chutney to the mystery genre, her adventures a hot refreshing blast of sumptuous storytelling. Bharti Kirchner has once again conquered another literary field. Highly addictive.”

Skye Moody, author of the mystery THREE BAGS FULL: A SHEEP DETECTIVE STORY

“Tulip Season is an evocative taste of Seattle’s darker side.”

Cara Black, author of the mystery novel MURDER AT THE LANTERNE ROUGE

“A multi-layered mystery, Tulip Season is carefully crafted. Set against the backdrop of spring and its promise of new growth, the heat is on as master gardener, Mitra Basu, pulls out all the stops searching for her missing friend, Kareena, a domestic violence counselor who herself may have been abused. A sense of menace is palpable as Mitra puts together all the pieces that lead her to a bittersweet but welcome epiphany. Lovely and compelling!”

Curt Colbert, co-author of the upcoming mystery novel, DIAL ‘C’ FOR CHIHUAHUA

I could also, to give you a sense of her range, bring up my favorite of her cookbooks, The Bold Vegetarian, of which Publishers Weekly said:

Only a stoical (or very full) cook would not be tempted by the recipes here, which kick off with Carmelized Garlic from Spain, Pecan Mushroom Pate from France and Indian-Style Roasted Potatoes redolent of asafetida, mustard oil, cumin and mango powder. While Kirchner (The Healthy Cuisine of India; Indian Inspired) draws heavily on that subcontinent for inspiration, she includes recipes from China, Spain, France, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Korea, the Middle East and the U.S. She also melds recipes to come up with some truly appetizing new dishes, such as an Asian Pesto that combines the flavors of the Italian original with hints of the lime/peanut/garlic sauces of east Asian cooking. Kirchner is sparing in her use of fat, relying on cooking techniques, spices, flavored oils and judiciously combined textures to create good taste. Her gentle tours through international marketplaces, the extensive “vegetarian pantry” and the descriptions of recipes’ evolutions are likely to inspire readers’ inventiveness, although the more timid can rely on the generous helping of serving suggestions and listed substitutions.

And then I could, I suppose, answer the question that half of you have been shouting out there in the ether — how on earth does a writer move so easily between book categories? — by referring you to the excellentAuthornomics interview in which she talks about just these sorts of practicalities. Or, for those of you with a bit more time and a hankering to hear about craft, I could easily send you straight to a really interesting interview with Book Lust’s Nancy Pearl: