The Discoveries writing development programme and prize for unpublished women writers currently residing in the UK or Ireland is open for the fifth year of submissions.

Discoveries 2025 accepts novels in any genre of adult fiction, with entrants invited to submit . . .

• The opening of your novel-in-progress – up to 10,000 words
• A synopsis detailing the outline of your story – up to 1,000 words
• A completed entry form

Of these elements, the opening 10,000 words is the all-important one. The reading team, and in turn the Discoveries judges, will be absolutely focused on that opening material.

We ask for a synopsis so that we can see what each novel-in-progress is intended to be about – and how the story will develop. But we know that many of our entrants are at an early stage of writing, and we don’t mind at all if you don’t have your whole story figured out yet.

Your entry form gives us your contact details (so be sure to double-check they are correct before you submit your form!) and tells us a little more about you and your writing. The answers to the ‘About you’ and ‘About your writing’ questions are the least important element of your Discoveries entry. It’s useful for us to learn a bit more about you and your work but do please be reassured – you will not be judged on these answers.

We know, nonetheless, that Discoveries entrants worry about how to approach this part of the entry form – so Curtis Brown Creative, friends of the Women’s Prize and a partner in running Discoveries, have put together a few tips . . .

About your writing 

Importantly, this is not a pitch letter (or query letter as they’re often called). Our judges don’t look at these answers in the same way that a literary agent does. This is a much more informal exercise – you don’t need to worry about whether you’ve yet perfected your pitch, and you don’t actually need to pitch at all in answering these questions.

Instead of pitching your novel, you might like to tell us more about yourself, and about how you came up with the idea for your novel. You might like to say which authors and books you’re inspired by – and perhaps how and why you’ve started writing. If there are parts of your life, work, experience or interests that feed into this novel, why not let us know about them? If you like, you can give us an indication of how far along with this project you are – some writers only have their first 10,000 words when they enter Discoveries, while others have a complete draft and might be in the middle of their editing process. Again, we won’t judge you on how much material you’ve written – it’s just interesting for us to know a little more.

Remember to stick to the word count at all stages of filling in the entry form. The ‘About your writing’ answer can be up to a maximum of 500 words – but it doesn’t need to be as long as that.

Tell us about your writing experience

We also ask you, ‘Have you ever won any awards or prizes? Do you have any other writing achievements you’d like to tell us about?’ (Max. 300 words) and ‘Have you ever taken a creative writing course, or taken part in a mentoring programme, or similar?’ (Max. 300 words).

We’re asking these questions as it gives us a better understanding of your context, but we don’t want you to worry if you haven’t ever taken a course or entered a competition. We are as keen to hear from you if you’ve never written fiction before and have only just started work on a novel for the very first time (perhaps even in order to enter this prize!) as we are if you’ve won plaudits and taken serious study. You can always leave the questions on courses and awards blank and focus entirely on the space provided to include a short paragraph about yourself and why you write.

Do remember that your Discoveries entry must be unpublished and cannot have previously won a writing award (see our FAQs for more details).

These sections of the form should only be a short paragraph each – don’t get bogged down in the detail – be selective about what you choose to say to us.

Proofread your answers

Read over your answers when you’ve finished writing them to make sure that you’re happy with them. And check your grammar and spelling – we recommend typing them in a word document before you write them into your form so that you can do this more easily. Then you can copy and paste them over into the submission form.

Be positive

Be positive and confident in your form. Writing a novel is an exciting and sometimes difficult endeavour – so be proud of the fact that you’ve embarked on this journey and that you’ve decided to enter Discoveries. We feel privileged to have the chance to read the work of so many amazing women.

Best of luck preparing your submission to Discoveries 2025. Find out more about how to submit by clicking the button below.

Enter by 13 Jan 2025