The Fiction Lab

Pitch Wars Blog Tour: Making the Big Edits: What I learned during Pitch Wars by T. C. Duck

Katrina Schroeder — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:43:01 GMT

Hey everyone!

Wow, it’s been *counts on fingers* eight years since my Pitch Wars class graduated. And what a time it’s been! Since the showcase in 2019, I’ve written three books, with my first adult novel, Spider Island, launching on BackerKit May 28th.

For those who don’t know, Pitch Wars is a mentorship competition. Unfortunately, the competition is no longer around. It died, along with most of book Twitter, but it’s still well respected in the industry. Many alumni have gone on to be best-sellers, but some never made it out of the query trenches. That was me, unfortunately. While Drum Corpse did well in the competition (I received 17 requests during the showcase, closing the manuscript at around 30 agent requests for the entire querying journey), I didn’t have any luck with it. And looking back, I can see why. Drum Corpse wasn’t my strongest manuscript, but it was an important book for me in terms of learning.

I might have had one of the biggest overhauls in the competition. I basically cut out everything after the first three chapters and rewrote the book from scratch. I actually ran out of time, having to quickly write an abridged ending that I’d end up changing later (another lesson from Pitch Wars: agents are way more chill than you think. Every agent who requested my full was willing to look at my new ending once I finished it, though it didn’t end up changing much in the end.) All this rewriting stemmed from one big issue—the book didn’t have a proper ending.

And to get to a satisfying ending, the project needed A LOT of work.

But first, let me tell you a little more about the project. Here’s the pitch.

Lady Octavia’s is not your average music school. At this academy, students are expected to master dangerous weapon-instrument hybrids, and Pitch’s mother, the late Sonata Remington, was the best drum major the school has ever known.
Twelve-year-old Pitch dreams of following in her mother’s footsteps. But when a competition for first chair threatens her place at the academy, Pitch must unravel the mysteries of her mother’s past to master the secrets hidden within her piccolo. The more Pitch investigates, the more she realizes that sinister forces haunt Lady Octavia’s halls, and Sonata might not have been a hero after all.

It was a good pitch, intriguing, with the promise of family drama, music battles, and mystery.

Problem is, the first versions of Drum Corpse didn’t really deliver on the premise. It was too bloated with a lot of sit-com-style drama: middle school crushes and low-stakes B plots revolving around friendships and tests. I never got to the meat of the story. I kept telling myself, “This is important character-building, I’ll get to the fun stuff in the next book.”

But when you’re saving all your cool scenes for future books, you end up with a book that isn’t very cool at all.

There’s a reason why agents like the phrase “stand alone with sequel potential”. In trad-publishing, you never know if you’re going to land that series deal. Stand-alones offer more flexibility when it comes to submitting to publishers. Also, when you shift your focus to telling a more succinct story, you often end up with a better book.

Writing all that filler wasn’t even enjoyable. The middle of the manuscript was a huge struggle for me during those early drafts before Pitch Wars. It’s like I could tell something was off, but I didn’t know what. The Drum Corpse in my head was a strange series, filled with magic instruments, evil muses, ghostly drum majors, and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to pull some of those twists off. So I stalled. I created a book that was all set up and no payoff, and when I finally allowed myself to write those weird, exciting scenes, they fit right in—no complicated setup required. The final version might not have landed me an agent, but I swear, it was about a million times better than the bloated book I’d started with.

Drum Corpse isn’t a perfect book, but thanks to Pitch Wars and my amazing mentor Sabrina Kleckner, it’s one I’m immensely proud of. The competition pushed me to my limits. It taught me what I was capable of, and that confidence is probably the most important thing I gained during Pitch Wars.

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Pitch Wars Blog Tour: The Off-The-Wall Editing Trick that Got Me into Pitch Wars by Alex Ames

Katrina Schroeder — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:42:56 GMT

I am a chaotic writer. I’m a pantser of the highest order. I write the ending of a book first before I write anything else, and then I go back to write the beginning. After that, I fill in the middle as scenes come to me. I don’t break the book up into chapters until the whole thing is written. I write out of order, and then move the scenes around later on. These are just some of the examples of how messy my writing process can be.

Don’t come to me telling me that plotting saves you a lot of time when drafting a novel. I’ve done that, too. Guess what? It doesn’t save me any time whatsoever. In fact, it adds more time and effort for me.

My editing process isn’t any better. I typically outline the book after it’s written, and that allows me to see where revisions need to be made. I’ll start with the easiest/smallest edits first, and then work my way up to the big ones. I also use alpha and beta readers, of course, and incorporate their feedback as well.

But my most unhinged editing tip is the one that I know works, because it resulted in the version of The Chamos Project that got me into Pitch Wars.

I wrote the first draft of TCP in 2013 as my NaNoWriMo project that year, and it was a 190,000-word monstrosity by the time it was finished. I set it aside for a while, and then pulled it out again in 2014 to start revising it. But each revision was lackluster, and it wasn’t shaping up to be the story that I wanted it to be.

That’s when I decided to re-type the whole thing from scratch.

I only had a single screen at the time, so I used half the screen on my laptop for my existing draft and half the screen for the blank Word document that would be the newest version of the book. Almost from the moment I started re-typing the novel, it became something different. In the earliest versions of the book, Leander was living an isolated life in a farmhouse. In that shiny new draft, suddenly he was on an ocean vessel. In the early drafts, it was his old friend Captain Reed who persuaded him to come back to space; in the new one, it was the Alliance Fleet that forced him back into service.

So much changed that soon I was writing a completely new book and wasn’t even referencing my old draft anymore. When I finished, I had a much more reasonable 130,000-word draft, and something that I felt was a solid, compelling story. I edited that down to 120,000 words and submitted it to Pitch Wars in the summer of 2018, where it caught the eye of my future mentor, Sarah Remy.

It’s a time-consuming and inefficient way to revise a book. It also got me into Pitch Wars, and then it got me an agent. I don’t do this for every book I write; I simply don’t have the time. But I’ve done it for short stories, and I pulled it out of my back pocket for The Chamos Project because it was the book of my heart, the one thing I’ve written that I love more than anything else.

If everything else has failed you—if your normal revision process isn’t working for a book that you absolutely love, if you know it has the potential to be something more than it is but you don’t know how to get it there—then I suggest throwing out the normal revision ways and doing something completely unhinged. Sometimes the unconventional route is the way to go!

Wanna follow Alexis? Click me!

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Pitch Wars Blog Tour: The Best Thing I Got from Pitch Wars Wasn’t an Agent by Roxanne Blackhall

Katrina Schroeder — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:41:52 GMT

Way back when, there was a mentoring program called Pitch Wars.

On the surface, it was designed to help newer authors revise completed manuscripts and prepare them for the next step, usually querying (sometimes self-publishing.) That was the official goal. And yes, I was one of the lucky ones who signed with an agent after Pitch Wars.

But years later, that’s not what stands out most to me.

The real value of Pitch Wars was not the polished manuscript I left with. It was not the showcase. It was not even the agent offer that followed.

The real value was community.

And that, I think, is the part worth talking about now.

When I first found Pitch Wars, I was already a career editor. I had years of writing and editing experience for magazines and newspapers. I had two books published with a tiny indie press and a rough draft of a very bad romantic suspense novel. I also had very little understanding of the publishing industry as it applied to fiction, and I was deeply burned out from my experience with that indie press. I knew, very clearly, that I wanted something different. I just didn’t know how to get there.

That was the problem.

I knew writing. I knew editing. I did not know the book business.

And neither did most of the people around me.

My writing and editing colleagues were largely in the same boat. Some were in academia, which is not remotely helpful when it comes to commercial fiction. I had professional experience, but I did not have a roadmap. I didn’t have publishing-savvy critique partners. I didn’t have people who understood querying, genre expectations, submission strategy, revision at that level, or the emotional chaos that comes with trying to break in.

What I was missing wasn’t talent. It wasn’t work ethic. It was community.

I found that community first through a Facebook group for Pitch Wars hopefuls, and then on Twitter, because yes, this was a while ago. I was too intimidated to submit for the first couple of years, but I stayed close to the edges. I watched. I learned. I started meeting people. Slowly, I began to understand that what I had been missing wasn’t just information. It was connection.

Eventually, I submitted.

Eventually, I was chosen as a mentee.

Later, I became a mentor myself and ran the Pitch Wars blog. So I saw Pitch Wars from a lot of angles. And no, it was not perfect. Let’s not do nostalgia so hard we lose the plot.

There were controversies. There were personality clashes. There were missteps. Some people had great experiences; others absolutely did not. Some writers found support and lasting friendships. Some were left feeling excluded, disillusioned, or underserved. Both things can be true, and they are.

But setting all of that aside for a moment, because this post is not about defending or condemning Pitch Wars, there is one thing it did do well, at least for many of us.

It helped people find each other.

That matters more than a lot of writers realize, especially when they are just starting out.

Writing can be solitary. Publishing can be isolating. Put them together and you have a process that will absolutely mess with your head if you try to do it alone.

There is a long road between starting a manuscript and typing “The End.” Then there is the equally confusing road that comes after: revising, querying, submission, self-publishing decisions, marketing, career pivots, bad news, good news, and all the emotional whiplash in between.

And what you don’t know can hurt you.

It can hurt the book. It can hurt your growth. It can hurt your confidence. It can cost you time, opportunities, and momentum.

That’s why community matters.

You need people who know what you’re trying to do and can tell you, honestly, whether you’re actually doing it on the page.

Because here’s the truth: we are terrible judges of our own work.

Sometimes we think it’s far worse than it is. Sometimes we think it’s saying something clearly when it absolutely is not. Sometimes we’re too emotionally attached to a scene, a character, or a line to see the problem. Sometimes we’re too discouraged to recognize what’s working.

You can’t revise in a vacuum. And if the only people reading your work are friends and family who love you, don’t read widely in your genre, don’t understand the market, and would rather be nice than helpful? You are probably not getting the kind of feedback that leads to real growth.

Praise is lovely. Encouragement matters. But neither is enough on its own.

Every writer needs people who will cheer them on, yes. But they also need people who will challenge them. People who will tell them when the pacing drags, when the opening is weak, when the romance arc isn’t landing, when the plot twist makes no sense, when the book they think they wrote is not actually the book on the page.

You need people who can say, lovingly but clearly, “This isn’t there yet.”

That is a gift.

Just as important, you need people who understand the emotional side of this work.

You need a safe place to say the ugly things. To admit you’re jealous. To say you’re tired. To confess that someone else’s good news made you spiral for a minute. To vent about revisions, rejections, ghosting, bad advice, confusing feedback, publishing nonsense, and the scene you have rewritten so many times you’re ready to throw both the manuscript and your laptop into the sea.

That place is not social media. That place is your people.

Whether your writing community exists in real life, online, or (most likely) a combination of both, those relationships are what keep you steady when the process gets hard. And the process will get hard. Repeatedly. Rude of it, but true.

Pitch Wars created a lot of those spaces, both officially and unofficially. There were the public forums, yes, but there were also private groups where hopefuls helped each other strengthen manuscripts and submissions. There were query groups. Revision groups. Friendship groups. Side chats. Splinter spaces. Little pockets of support built by writers who needed something and decided to make it for each other.

That last part matters too.

Because one of the biggest lessons I took from the Pitch Wars era is that even when a program doesn’t fully meet everyone’s needs, writers will still find each other. They will build their own spaces. They will create the support systems they wish existed.

And that’s where the magic lives.

Because while Pitch Wars is gone, the need it filled is not.

Writers still need critique partners. They still need author friends. They still need trusted readers, sounding boards, industry-savvy peers, and people who understand both the creative and business sides of this work.

Writing is art.

Writing for publication is also business.

You need support for both.

Would I have learned some of these lessons without Pitch Wars? Probably. Eventually. The hard way, most likely, with more wasted time and more unnecessary mistakes. But Pitch Wars accelerated that learning for me because it introduced me to the people and conversations that made the industry feel less opaque and the journey feel less lonely.

That’s what I’m grateful for. Not because the program was flawless. It wasn’t. Not because every outcome was good. They weren’t.

And not because publishing success can be traced neatly back to one mentorship program or one polished manuscript. My own Pitch Wars manuscript died on submission, which is its own reminder that no single opportunity is a golden ticket.

I’m grateful because it helped me find community at a point in my career when I desperately needed it.

It helped me find mentors who were generous and insightful. It connected me with other writers who understood the road I was on. Later, it gave me the chance to mentor others and be part of their journeys too. Those relationships, those lessons, those shared experiences have lasted far longer than any one manuscript.

That’s the part I still carry.

So no, I don’t think you need Pitch Wars to build a writing life, but I do think you need community.

You need people.

You need the ones who will read your messy draft and tell you the truth. The ones who will celebrate your wins without making it weird. The ones who will let you fall apart for a minute and then remind you to get back to work. The ones who understand that this path is equal parts art, ambition, vulnerability, and stubbornness.

Find those people.

Build those relationships.

Create those spaces if you can’t find them.

Because programs come and go. Social platforms rise and collapse. Industry trends shift. Publishing is always changing.

But community? That’s the thing that endures.

And for a writer, it may be the most valuable thing of all.

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Pitch Wars Blog Tour: Publishing While Trans by Steve Westenra

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 21:41:13 GMT

Online querying spaces look quite different now than they did in the 2010s. While social media pitch contests still exist on sites like Bluesky, a digital environment that once supported myriad opportunities to bypass the famously brutal query trenches and attract agent attention has fragmented following Elon Musk’s appropriation of Twitter. Every day, it seems, I encounter a fellow author expressing frustration at the pressure to join yet another new social media or marketing site, and when agents, editors, and other publishing professionals are themselves scattered across a spectrum of different applications, even successful pitch events have reduced visibility compared with what once was. Depending on your personal experiences with these contests, your opinion on whether or not this is a good thing will likely differ, but what is undeniable is the impact these changes have had on online community spaces for querying authors, agents, and acquiring editors.
One of the biggest and most successful of the 2010s pitch contests was Brenda Drake’s Pitch Wars—a writing mentorship program and agent showcase. The end of Twitter wasn’t responsible for Pitch Wars (and its related one-day pitch event, #PitMad) shuttering in 2022, but its death has made it challenging for another program to step up and assume PW’s mantle. New contests and mentorship programs have (and do) crop up—I myself am an alumnus of the QueeryFest mentorship program, which focused on giving editorial support for queer authors, though without the accompanying agent showcase component. None of PW’s successors, though, has been quite so longlived, beloved, and, yes, fractious as the thing itself.

I’ve said it elsewhere, but it’s difficult to express the level of excitement that Pitch Wars generated in the online querying community. Every year from 2012 to 2022, hopeful authors would scour the websites and introduction posts of that year’s mentors, debating with one another over whom to submit to, or who might be a good fit based on the mentors’ genre wishlists. Community groups and fora offering the opportunity for companionship, peer critique of submission materials, and support while querying cropped up every August, while mentors teased their reactions to anonymized submission packets or remained stoically silent in the face of nail-biting authors await the mentee announcement (which almost always came a day earlier than expected). There were panels and interviews of mentors hosted on YouTube, donated material critiques from past alumni, and live Q&As with agents, mentors, and editors.

My own personal Pitch Wars experiences, which predate my selection as a mentee in Fall 2017, are a little hazy. I do remember that I entered at least three times before I was selected, and then again (unsuccessfully) the year of what would turn out to be the last showcase. I’m unsurprised I wasn’t selected on my first try. The MS I submitted, The Wings of Ashtaroth, was then 250k words (it’s now much longer), and given the length of the program, editing a book of its size would have been challenging for both the mentee and the mentor. I cut the book down, cut it in half at one point—fiddled with it in all sorts of ways—but with no takers I finally sat down to write something new. That MS, which had a working title of Lesbian Vikings (before going on to be retitled Skaldsdottir’s Saga; then Ash, Oak, and Thorn, then So Sing the Barrows), was the novel that got me into Pitch Wars (though even then it took two tries).

The first year I submitted it, I had a couple requests and a close call with an author whose own work I’ve come to respect and enjoy—the wonderful Carrie Callaghan. In SStB’s second year as an entry I was very lucky to have Carrie request again, alongside mentor duo Victoria Lee/R. F. Kuang, and, most importantly, fantasy author K. A. Doore (Kai). I’m not sure I’ve experienced jitters on the level that I did during the long month (or two?) that the mentors were reading. The fact that Carrie had requested a second time made me somewhat optimistic, yet on the other hand, would she be tired of something she’d seen before? Should I have written a new book? Had I made the right choice of which mentors to submit to? I’d had zero requests the first year I entered, then maybe one in my second (out of kindness, I suspect, on the part of the mentor, who by that point was used to seeing me on the contest circuit). This was a very different experience and it was exciting and nerve-wracking. When Kai started teasing her mentee using the nodding viking man .gif, I think I short-circuited.

There was no way that could be another book, right? So many of us knew each other’s pitches off by heart at that point, and I couldn’t think of another Norse-themed MS. Once mentees were announced, I felt like Charlie Bucket with his golden ticket. It was a wonderful experience. It felt like confirmation that, while I might not be good enough yet for publication, I was good enough for PW, and due in no small part to the hype around the contest, (somewhat paradoxically) that felt even better. I was so excited to meet my fellow mentees. I was so excited to get to join our mentee Facebook group.

I was absolutely terrified—and excited—to meet my mentor.

Kai was lovely.

She also very much, I think, picked up on the fact that I was nervous (and more than a little starstruck) right away. It’s a rare skill to be able to put others at ease, to be both very natural and calming while simultaneously choosing to do so with intention and purpose. That first chat felt like talking with an old friend. It was also exciting to hear someone I wasn’t related to sharing their enthusiasm for my characters and writing for the first time.

In Pitch Wars, mentees couldn’t be sure what the editing process would look like. While some authors ended up with comparatively light edits, others might be tasked with rewriting the whole MS, switching tense or person, and even age category or genre. Of course, most edits fell somewhere in the middle. In addition, Save the Cat and Save the Cat Writes a Novel were fairly ubiquitous as introductory craft books that a mentee might be given to help them along in the process, but not all mentors assigned that kind of homework.

As someone with less than stellar personal feelings toward Save the Cat and its cousins, I was thrilled that Kai didn’t have any such plans for me. I don’t fully remember, but I think I may even have mentioned in my entry form or in correspondence with Kai prior to selection that I had a pretty critical view of a lot of beat-oriented approaches. I was also lucky in that my edits were relatively minor or, at least, straightforward. Kai had very generously done up a reverse outline for me and together we worked through that to locate where changes would need to be made. The majority of changes were about enhancing what was there: making one of my three POVs feel more integral to the book, fixing a saggy middle, and adding two chapters to the beginning of the novel to contextualize the story better.

Apart from how much Kai helped improve my editing, however, she was also a fantastic mentor in the sense that, as a fellow queer person, she had a deep understanding of what I was trying to do and why I was trying to do it. She got my story at all levels and never tried to make my work or characters conform in order to sell better to a presumed-straight market. In an industry where even well-meaning allies can accidentally push approaches that dampen or nullify the radical queerness of the stories they shepherd, it was invaluable to have someone working with me on my book who had no interest in heteronormifying my work. While I have no doubt that courting a mainstream, straight audience would have improved my chances in both the showcase and the query trenches, it was (and is) more important to me to authentically express a queer perspective.

When it came to the showcase, I think I had around 9-10 requests for the full or partial MS, which wasn’t fantastic compared with some of the other mentees, but was about par for the course for an adult fantasy in the contest (the heavy hitters were almost always YA, which could command 40 or more requests).

I didn’t land an agent through the showcase. I didn’t land an agent post-Pitch Wars at all.

There’s very much a part of me that I think is still mentally in that space of not feeling good enough, or of being “almost there,” just outside the glass. For a while, I was part of a small cohort of mentees who called ourselves “The Monsters,” and there was a period during which I was the only one of our friends group without an agent. That was challenging, and I second-guessed myself a lot. I felt my work was good, that it could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my friends’ stories, even if I often also fretted that I might be delusional or an imposter. What was “wrong” with my work was a nebulous thing I couldn’t pinpoint. I received rejections fairly regularly that suggested my work was ready and would soon find a home with another agent or press, but neither transpired despite some close calls. When I got similar rejections on The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle, the common denominator seemed to be me—my queerness, my transness, something ineffable, perhaps, about myself that meant I was never “quite right” despite being “so close,” or even “there.” To be “there” and yet somehow always outside, is a uniquely confusing and isolating feeling.

We’re told, of course, not to personalize these things. A rejection of one’s MS isn’t a rejection of the author as a person. I do believe that’s wise advice and, I think, largely (hopefully), true. Yet the increasing prevalence and visibility of transphobia and racism in particular, has made me less certain that it’s equally true for all of us. Certainly, though anecdotally, I’ve chatted with many fellow marginalized authors who’ve experienced rejections or not been extended the same opportunities as their cis, White, abled, or straight peers. Often, it’s not even a matter of what one is saying, so much as who you are when you say it—an unspoken expectation that authors of particular backgrounds ought to write certain kinds of books, while authors of majority groups are afforded the ability to write what and how they like (or are more often given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to flaws in a MS). There’s a privilege, it seems, to being read without suspicion.

Retrospectively, my post-Pitch Wars querying experiences often made me wonder whether I’d have made it into the contest if I hadn’t had a mentor in Kai. This is not because Pitch Wars or any of its wonderful volunteers were transphobic or homophobic. Rather, when we talk about “relatability” in the context of mentor, agent, or editor slushpiles, the ability to relate to someone without the friction of learning through them first is something we typically experience when we already share a common background or positionality with the author. When the publishing industry is largely composed of people from a majority White, cis, and straight demographic, “relatability” risks becoming an unintended cudgel—or, perhaps, a thickened pane of glass—that limits who is “there” in the parking lot, and who’s “there” inside the party.

I’ve shared essentially this same sentiment elsewhere, so I don’t want to belabour it, but going indie (and, specifically, self-publishing) was a way of becoming my own advocate. Acquiring an agent or landing a publishing deal is, it’s often said, as torturous or worse than dating. You have to find exactly the right person for that yes. Being told, repeatedly, that your work is “about to be snapped up,” without anyone actually snapping, is disheartening in a very particular way, and can feel like a reinforcement of the idea that the industry is open to everyone while simultaneously keeping it closed. There came a point in my querying, particularly given a systemic shift toward censorship and bigotry, that started to worry that my only chance to see my work in print was to do it myself. It’s bleak to have to stare that in the face, but it’s also, I think, realistic. As censorship of marginalized voices intensifies, and as bigots grow bolder in voicing their biases aloud, I can’t help but feel that choosing to say yes to myself and go indie was correct. I had the tools Kai (along with my Queeryfest mentor Mary Ann Marlowe) had given me.

When you’re “there” yet perpetually outside, you have to learn to pick locks.

Connect with Steve here!

Connect with other Pitch War authors

How to Convince the IRS Your Creative Pursuit is a Business

Katrina Schroeder — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:14:08 GMT

Author and financial expert Peggy Doviak joins us in the Lab to teach us how we can convince the IRS our creative pursuit is a business. And also how you can convince yourself it’s a business!

Learn the story elements with The Fiction Lab.

Connect with Peggy:

https://www.peggydoviak.com

Buy 52 Weeks to Fearless: https://bookshop.org/a/83665/9798218594329

The Fiction Lab

Pitch Wars Blog Tour: Making the Big Edits: What I learned during Pitch Wars by T. C. Duck

Pitch Wars Blog Tour: The Off-The-Wall Editing Trick that Got Me into Pitch Wars by Alex Ames

Pitch Wars Blog Tour: The Best Thing I Got from Pitch Wars Wasn’t an Agent by Roxanne Blackhall

Pitch Wars Blog Tour: Publishing While Trans by Steve Westenra

How to Convince the IRS Your Creative Pursuit is a Business

Katrina Changes Things Up

How to Be Yourself When Marketing . . . Yourself

Before and After the Fight: Writing Combat

Why Readers Say "I Don't Know, Something Was Off"

Writing Combat: The Basics

Block vs Burnout: How to Tell What’s Actually Stopping You From Writing

Budgeting with an Uneven Cash Flow

Social Media Changes Authors Need to Know

Writing Workflow & Tools with author Seth Ring

Writing Disability in Speculative Fiction

The Intersection Between Activism & Fiction

Breaking into the Industry

Worldbuilding & Infodumping 101

Incorporating Humor into Your Fiction

Changing Mediums