#TEAMDEVIOUS Pitch Wars Wishlist

Why hello there! We are Hannah Sawyerr and Olivia Liu and we could not be more excited to share our #PitchWars wishlist with you! We are co-mentoring in the Young Adult genre for this year’s Pitch Wars season and before we get into all things #TEAMDEVIOUS, let’s talk a little bit about what Pitch Wars actually is!

WHAT IS PITCH WARS?

Pitch Wars is a mentoring program where published/agented authors, editors, or industry interns choose one writer each to spend about three months revising their manuscript. It ends in February with an Agent Showcase, where literary agents can read a pitch/first page and request to read more. If you’re new to Pitch Wars or want more information, check out the website: www.pitchwars.org!

WHY US:

We were both mentees during last year's Pitch Wars, where we became good friends and had truly life changing experiences! We know first-hand how wonderful (and at times overwhelming!) it is to be a mentee, and what it’s like to edit your manuscript on the tight timeline of Pitch Wars. We get it. Seriously. And we’re both determined to share everything we learned with our future mentee and to create schedules and plans that ensure they are as prepared as they can be! If you’re on Team Devious, we can guarantee a more polished manuscript, AND a good time mixed with a bunch of laughs.

Olivia has spent over four years working in publishing, where she honed her editorial skills on projects across age groups, genre (from high fantasy to horror, suspense to sci-fi), and mediums (books, TV, and movies). Her experience with story on such a comprehensive scale means that she has many skills to apply to your book. She is also well-versed in pitching, having successfully pitched to major celebrities and companies, and will also take your showcase pitch to the next level.

Hannah is currently earning her MFA in poetry at The New School. In 2016, she was recognized as the Youth Poet Laureate of Baltimore and has had bylines and poetry featured in BBC News, gal-dem, and The National Education Association’s “Do You Hear Us?” campaign. Her background in both written and performance poetry means she has a particular interest in language and editing on the line level.

We also have to mention again, #TEAMDEVIOUS is not just made of two very excited mentors but two great friends! Seriously, we talk just about everyday and not to get all mushy, but we truly are cheerleaders for each other. Trust me. We got big “WHEN NOT IF” energy, and we would love to pass some positivity to our future mentee!

(Hannah and Olivia standing and smiling together.)

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM US AS MENTORS:

If we get the opportunity to work with you, we will workshop your query, manuscript, synopsis, and showcase pitch. We will read your manuscript 2-3 times (we will definitely read it twice, and a third time if we feel that is needed), focusing on the big picture on the first reads and taking a fine-tooth comb to the language on the last reads. We will never force you to change something you don’t really want to change; this is YOUR book and we will absolutely respect that. Understanding the emotional heart of your book and your vision for it is so important to us as mentors and editors. We don’t want to require “homework” for our mentee as Pitch Wars can already be an intense process as is, but if our mentee wants recommended reading, writing exercises, beat sheets, or anything of that sort, we are more than happy to provide that. We are also very solution-oriented, as we believe that identifying problems is only the start, and half the battle is knowing HOW to fix them. If our mentee wants, we will help brainstorm ideas!

Both of us have benefited so much from collaborating with peers. Writing can feel solitary at times, but we want you to know that we will always be in your corner! We want to establish an open line of communication. No question is too trivial or small, seriously! Ask us and we’ll do our best to answer! And if we don’t know, odds are we know someone who does and can still get you an answer. We also really look forward to being our mentee’s personal cheerleader. We want to shower you with so much love and enthusiasm, and we hope to form a lasting relationship!

Long story short, we’re here for a good time AND a long time!

MENTORING/COMMUNICATION STYLE:

We will adapt to whatever communication methods work best for you, whether that’s phone calls, video calls, emails, texts, audio notes, whatever! We do hope to have a get-to-know-each-other call when you first get into the program, and then a check-in call at every milestone: when you get our edit letter, when you hand in your revisions, when you prep for the showcase, and so on. We never want our mentee to be faced with radio silence or confusion on what we can do for them. We want to foster an environment in which our mentee feels safe and comfortable asking for help, at any part of the process, as often as needed.

We are also big, big believers in being cheerleaders on top of editors and we want our mentee to feel good about their writing. In addition to our edit letters and revision guidance, we’d love to do a positivity pass on our mentee’s manuscript where we just tell you everything we LOVE about your story and make sure you leave this mentorship feeling confident in your writing abilities.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR:

Let’s get into what it is you came here for…

This year, #TEAMDEVIOUS is accepting all things Contemporary and Contemporary Fantasy! We are especially looking for stories from marginalized authors and we are also accepting New Adult submissions in addition to Young Adult!

WHAT WE LOVE ACROSS THE BOARD:

Unique Formats! Hannah is absolutely IN LOVE with verse novels. Anything epistolary is great in our book! If your manuscript includes a podcast, transcripts, journal entries, poetry, etc, we would LOVE to read it!
Stories with immigrant families or parents
Angry girls, messy girls, unapologetic girls. If your protagonist can be considered “unlikeable” we want to see it. Send us a main character with no manners.
Found family
Settings as characters
Retellings. Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Eros and Psyche, Hades and Persephone, The Phantom of the Opera, Austen, Shakespeare--we love it all.
Open-ended endings
Complex parent dynamics, especially mother-daughter relationships where the child feels more like the parent
Characters who some might find annoying because they can be stubborn and alienating, except you are always going “but are they wrong???”
Sibling dynamics, from difficult or even estranged relationships (like in Yolk), to very loving relationships (like the Song sisters), to extremely chaotic siblings (like in Schitt’s Creek or The Umbrella Academy). Bonus points if you have a sister story. Bonus points if your MC faces the plight of being the eldest daughter or a middle child
Friend group dynamics, especially when they all share one brain cell

CONTEMPORARY

This genre has our heart!

Rom-coms! Olivia’s Pitch Wars manuscript is a rom com and this sub genre is very special to us!
Issue books that appropriately address the issue. Hannah’s Pitch Wars manuscript is a #MeToo novel, so we’re definitely not steering away from important (and sometimes difficult to talk about!) issues. All we ask is that if your manuscript has a sensitive topic, that it is handled with care.
Wild party girl MCs (this type of character is always the side character, but why not be the main one?)
Someone anonymous is exposing (or threatening to expose) the MC’s secrets
Study/travel abroad and gap year stories
High school senior year/freshman year college stories
Summer stories; bonus points if it’s the summer before college
Or, MCs who do not plan on going to college
“I’m going to become really successful to spite my ex” energy; think: Legally Blonde
The aftermath of a great failure or an epic fall from grace
MCs who feel like the side character in their own life
Class issues and characters who work for rich people; think: Such a Fun Age or Parasite
The claustrophobia of friendship, the cult of girlhood
Breakups, but especially, especially, friendship breakups
Stories that explore social media. Maybe it’s as dark as You. Or maybe you’re just unpacking influencer culture
Murder, but make it funny; think: Dead to Me, Dial A for Aunties, My Sister, the Serial Killer
NYC settings, especially if you show more than the glamorous side, and show that this is also a grimy, weird, stupid expensive, lonely, difficult city with rats all over and shoebox apartments that you somehow love anyway
Girls who don’t necessarily like each other, but stick up for each other (think: the bus scene in Sex Education)
A book that really examines rape culture and the patriarchy; think: The Female of the Species, Promising Young Woman or I May Destroy You
Relentlessly ambitious MCs
Alternatively, someone who has no idea what they want!

CONTEMPORARY FANTASY

Fun fact: Olivia was originally a contemporary fantasy writer before she turned to rom-coms! Her heart still remains in that genre and these books are one of her favorite things to edit at work. Hannah and Olivia in particular love these elements in an urban/contemporary fantasy:

We love anti-hero and villain MCs (think: Six of Crows, Vicious) but we also love MCs who both are and want to be a hero (think: Wonder Woman)
Chosen One arcs. We love all the Chosen One tropes, but we’d love to see it spun on its head too, i.e. maybe the MC falsely believes they’re the Chosen One
Villains who are straight-up evil, like Hela from Ragnarok
That said, we also want villains who can be sympathized with and even redeemed, like Zuko from ATLA
Fantasies that blend other genre elements, i.e. horror, mystery, thriller (Crescent City is essentially a murder mystery)
Mythology in a modern setting, like Lore
Unique magic systems; think: Daughter of Smoke and Bone’s teeth magic system
Trials and competitions, especially where the characters’ lives are on the line (think: An Ember in the Ashes)
Prophecies, especially ones that come true in ways you don’t expect
Historical fantasies from the 1800s onward, especially if they’re alternate histories (think: My Lady Jane, where King Edward’s cousin is a shapeshifter)
Worlds with vast history, especially when something that happened hundreds of years ago has implications for the plot today
Light time traveling (think: The Umbrella Academy Season 2)
Secret magical societies and hierarchies within our own world
Ensemble casts and multi-POVs, especially if there are completely separate storylines and characters that eventually converge
Powerful artifacts that must not go into the wrong hands
Faustian bargains / making a deal with the devil
Literary fantasies; think: Addie La Rue, or anything Madeline Miller writes
“Cozy” fantasies where no lives are at stake and the world is not ending; think: The House on the Cerulean Sea
Characters who use their magic/abilities to work “mundane” jobs; think: Ned in Pushing Daisies, who uses his resurrection abilities to assist a private investigator
Learning your worldview was wrong and going against your family and friends to do what’s right
Girls who rely on non-physical strengths to get ahead, i.e. their cunning

SPECULATIVE BENTS

We also love books that wouldn’t be categorized as fantasy, but do have light speculative bents to them!

Books that use speculative elements to explore grief (think: The Two Lives of Lydia Bird, You’ve Reached Same, The Astonishing Color of After) and mortality (think: They Both Die at the End)
Books that use speculative elements to explore love and whether it ever truly lasts (think: Instructions for Dancing)
Alternate realities/”Sliding Doors”/the multiverse; think: Maybe in Another Life, The Midnight Library, Again, Again. We’re particularly fascinated by static fates in separate realities; for example, are your characters destined to fall in love in every version of their lives?
Time loops, especially with a fresh take. Think: Before I Fall, Palm Springs, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, One Last Stop
Getting a chance to relive/redo your life, like in Again, But Better
Cursed characters, like how in Dial A for Aunties, the women in the MC’s family are all cursed to be left by their husbands and sons
MCs that learn of their future and try to avoid it. Think: In Five Years.

ROMANCE

We love love and we love to swoon. Here are some tropes and ship dynamics we love!

BIPOC love stories!!
ENEMIES TO LOVERS
An MC and LI who are not necessarily enemies, but do bicker a lot and not get along in the beginning, like Anastasia and Dmitri
Sex positivity: we’d especially love an MC who doesn’t want to be in a serious relationship and just wants to date around
MCs who are in love with the idea of love and always, always have a crush
Characters who believe they don’t deserve love, but they finally get the love they deserve
Opposites that attract: everything from scientist & artist, realist & dreamer, con artist & rule follower, etc.
Love that you know isn’t going to last, but that doesn’t make it any less important; sometimes the experience, the indelible mark the other person leaves on you, is enough
Learning that you can love a person so much but you shouldn’t necessarily have them in your life
Soft boys and bad boys both
A bet was made; think: 10 Things I Hate About You, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Friends to lovers, especially childhood loves
Will they/won’t they (Love Rosie, People We Meet on Vacation)
Second chance; maybe their lives just took separate paths at one point, or maybe the LI “betrayed” the MC (of course it was a misunderstanding!) and needs to be redeemed
Close proximity: everything from being stranded somewhere together to being forced to work together
Fake/hidden/secret identities; think: Tweet Cute
Sunshine x grump
The pain of unrequited love (bonus points if it’s for your best friend’s brother . . . or your own best friend)
The MC is laser focused on getting with someone unattainable and shenanigans ensue (Never Have I Ever, I Believe in A Thing Called Love)
Slow burn
There was only one bed!!
Using last names/nicknames
Love triangles, but one where it’s not really about choosing between two people, but about choosing the version of yourself you want to be; think: Jane the Virgin
Two people who keep coming back to each other, as if magnetically pulled; think: Normal People

PLEASE DON’T SEND US:

Stories in genres not on our MSWL--which means no high fantasy, no hard sci-fi, no straight mysteries/thrillers/horror (stories that have elements of those genres are fine!)

If you still aren’t sure of whether we’re a good fit, check out the following stories we can’t stop thinking about:

Books:

ANYTHING by Elizabeth Acevedo
Fresh by Margot Wood
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Internment by Samira Ahmed
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han
Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi
Beach Read by Emily Henry
The Hating Game by Sally Thorne
American Panda by Gloria Chao
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

TV shows / Movies:

I May Destroy You
On My Block
Sex Education
The Umbrella Academy
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Booksmart
Edge of Seventeen
Lady Bird
The Half of It
Never Have I Ever

Music:

Lover, Folklore and Evermore by Taylor Swift, especially her Teenage Love Triangle
Any song by Kehlani
Any song by Megan Thee Stallion

Andddddd, that’s a wrap! If you made it this far, cheers to you!

We’re hoping that after reading you think #TEAMDEVIOUS is the team for you! If you have any additional questions, feel free to tweet Hannah and Olivia via Twitter!

(Hannah and Olivia do a cheers to their future mentee!)

Pitch Wars 2021 Young Adult Mentors' Wish Lists

Click here to view all Pitch Wars 2021 Mentors' Wish Lists. To view the wish lists by genre, visit this link.

Hannah SawyerrSeptember 11, 2021PitchWars, TEAMDEVIOUS, Hannah Sawyerr, Olivia Liu