Analyzing The Writer's Voice

For those of you DYING to know who Emily and I picked for the prizes in the 'Oh Those High School Dances Blog Hop', we will post those on Monday. If you haven't made it through all the entries, you should and you can go here to find them. They are SO great. Thanks to everyone for participating!

Many of you either participated in The Voice contest (there were 200 entrants) or are aware of it. The amazing coaches are Krista from Mother. Write. (Repeat),  Cupid from Cupid's Literary Connection, Brenda Drake from Brenda Drake Writes, and Monica B.W. from Love YA. There teams are essentially chosen by now which of course leaves 40 writers absolutely thrilled and 160 writers going... 'oh darn.'

I'm one of the 'oh darns'.

And, like many of the 'oh darns' do, I questioned why I didn't get chosen. I, like many of the 'oh darns', thought my idea was original, the first 250 words engaging, that the coaches would scoop it up and beg to have it on their team.

But, obviously, that didn't happen.

There are many reasons us 'oh darns' weren't chosen. Perhaps the query wasn't good enough. Maybe the 250 words were just 'meh'. Maybe these are four people in the HUGE writely world and our story just didn't connect with them.

For those who don't know, I am an engineer by day. I deal a lot with statistics and I thought it would be fascinating calculate the percentages of age groups and genres entered vs the ones that were picked. Because I'm totally a nerd like that :)

So, here is the analysis (out of 200 entered):

Percentage of age groups entered: MG = 13%, YA = 70%, Adult = 17%
Percentage of age groups chosen: MG = 13%, YA = 74%, Adult = 13%

MG genres entered: Fantasy = 59%, Contemporary = 33%, Science Fiction = 8%
MG genres chosen: Fantasy = 60%, Contemporary = 40%

YA genres entered: Fantasy = 46%, Contemporary = 19%, Science Fiction= 10%, Paranormal = 10%, Dystopian = 6%, Thriller = 4%, Speculative = 2%, Historical = 1%, Steampunk = 1%, Horror = 1%
YA genres chosen: Fantasy = 36%, Contemporary = 36%, Dystopian = 7%, Thriller = 6%, Science Fiction = 6%, Historical = 3%, Paranormal = 3%, Speculative = 3%


Adult genres entered: Fantasy = 46%, Science Fiction = 30%, Romance = 19%, Paranormal = 9%
Adult genres chosen: Science Fiction = 60%, Fantasy = 20%, Paranormal = 20%



So there you have it. Again, there are too many variables for why the coaches choose what they do but I still think its interesting to analyze. I guess the thing that stuck out to me the most was that only 19% of YA entries were Contemporary but 36% of those chosen were YA Contemp. Either the contemporary writers are just amazing (which, lets face it, is probably the case. Shout out to all the contemporary writer peeps!) AND/OR the coaches have a tender place in their hearts for YA Contemp.

I wish I could have helped the YA Science Fiction genre... we were 10% of the entries but only 6% of us were chosen...

Anything in the numbers you find interesting?

I want to give another HUGE thank you to the four coaches that are hosting this contest. It is a fantastic way to get our work out there and to constantly work on improving. I seriously can't wait to see how the contest progresses.