What Award-Winning Manuscripts Have in Common

By Tisha Martin

One of the first stories I wrote won an editor’s choice award and was published in an anthology. But it probably wouldn’t have been considered if I hadn’t included one small but valuable ingredient. 

Fragrance. The theme of the contest was “fragrance,” but my story didn’t mention it at all. So, at the advice of an early reader, I infused a heartwarming scene at the end, tying in the theme, which won the heart of the judges.

Truthfully, there is no specific formula for an award-winning manuscript. 

I have judged contests for fourteen years, evaluated more than 3,000 manuscripts, and watched the authors I have worked with win sixteen book awards. If there were a formula, I would have found it by now.

What I have found instead is a pattern. This quality appears in manuscripts that win, across every genre I have judged and is absent in manuscripts that almost win but don’t.

The quality is commitment.

What commitment means in a manuscript

A committed manuscript is one where the author was fully present for the entire duration of the writing.

One of my authors spent nearly four years crafting and revising their suspense novels, elbows deep in character arc, plot twists and turns, the messy middle, dialogue, and emotional reward. Then entered their books into a prestigious contest committed to celebrating creativity, originality, and unique voices—and won a bronze medal for Series–Fiction. Another author, who had revised their opening several times, placed in ACFW’s First Impressions and in a writer’s conference’s writing contest. 

My authors were fully committed to the whole manuscript. The exciting parts—the opening pages, the setting, the moments of emotional climax that the author had been working toward since the first draft—keep you invested, but it’s the scenes where the character has something to lose, the moments where the author realizes that a taste of their own story is stirred into their character’s story that bring the commitment full circle. 

Commitment shows in the middle of a manuscript more than anywhere else. The beginning is written with the energy of beginning. The ending is written with the clarity of arrival. The middle is written by an author who is in the difficult sustained work of a book, and whether or not they stayed fully present for that work is visible to any reader who is paying attention.

Like the judges who evaluated my award-winning authors’ books, the award-winning manuscripts that I have evaluated are the ones where the middle holds steady and exciting. Where the author’s commitment to the material did not waver when the writing became hard. Where the presence that was established in the opening pages did not dissipate under the pressure of the long, messy middle section.

Specificity

If commitment is the quality that defines award-winning manuscripts, specificity is the technique that makes commitment visible.

The committed author writes specifically. 

You do not write about grief—you write about the specific grief, in this specific body, on this specific afternoon, with these specific sensory details that make the general human experience feel like this particular human experience.

You do not write about courage—you write about this decision, in this meeting room, with this specific combination of fear and certainty and the knowledge that the right answer was not yet clear.

Several memoir authors whose books infused meaningful, emotional flavors placed first, second, and third in various national contests. 

Specificity is not the same as detail for its own sake. It is the selection of the right specific detail—the one that is most true, most unexpected, most capable of carrying the weight of the general experience you are trying to render. A manuscript full of details is not a specific manuscript. The award-winning manuscript is not the most detailed—it is the most precisely true.

The willingness to be uncomfortable

The last quality shared by award-winning manuscripts is the one most authors resist. 

I once asked an author what faith meant to them. They were writing about their spiritual journey that meandered through dark backroads and highways. Sitting in that virtual call, they squirmed in their seat.

The willingness to be uncomfortable. To write the scene that is the hardest to write. To stay with the moment that you most want to move past. To answer the question the book has been building toward with the full honesty that the question requires—not the partial honesty that protects you from full exposure.

Across fifteen genres and fourteen years of book editing and judging experience, the manuscripts that win are the ones where the author is willing to go somewhere that costs them something. Not suffering for its own sake—but the willingness to be honest at the depth the material requires, even when that depth is uncomfortable.

That discomfort, rendered with specific care and commitment, is what makes a reader set the book down in readerly contemplation. What makes them underline the sentence. What makes them finish the book and sit with the story before they start the next one. What makes each of my authors’ award-winning manuscripts (and yours) valuable is that they were committed to the investment of refining the story they wanted to write.

That is what every award-winning manuscript or book I have judged has given its reader. 

Full presence, from the first page to the last.

FOR REFLECTION
What would you have to be willing to write—specifically, honestly, uncomfortably—for your manuscript to be its truest version? Tell me in the comments.

Award-winning editor Tisha Martin edits transformative stories: memoir, fiction and prescriptive nonfiction. Contributor: The Horse of My Dreams: True Stories of the Horses We Love (Revell, 2019). Writer: historical fiction and self-editing blogs for writers. Joy and peace are her superpowers; relationships her jam. Visit www.tishamartin.com or follow Substack, https://tishamartin.substack.com/.