Colleen Lindsay, an agent with FinePrint Literary Management and well known blogger, held a really fun contest over at her blog, The Swivet, recently that asked writers to post a query to the novel and Colleen would give the winner’s query and first chapter a serious look over.

The catch? The query had to be 140 characters or under, including spaces and punctuation!

From her post:

First, can I just say? WOW! You guys really know how to rise to a challenge. And, boy howdy, did I ever give you a challenge: To come up with a great book query in 140 characters or less (the length of the average text message or Twitter post). The idea was to A.) have some fun and B.) see if I could get you all thinking about how to convey a clear story idea in a very concise way. And while it quickly became apparent to me that more than a few of you don’t seem to know how to count, the majority of you managed to keep within the contest guidelines very nicely. And a few of you managed to not only hook me with your wee tiny query, but you managed to do it with a unique voice.

There were a lot of great entries, some absolutely hilarious ones, and a few that kinda made me question whether the writer was actually communicating in the English language. But there were several real standouts for me.

The winning query:

What would YOU do if you realized all the kids on your baseball team were vampires? Explains the night practices! Little League Sucks, YA.

With well over 300 entries, everyone had their work cut out for them, so you can imagine how tickled I was when I saw the results and found myself in the Best of the Rest/Runner-up section among about 10 other queries picked!

My Query:

LABYRINTH – (David Bowie and Muppets) + Fey mythology x The dirty streets of Ireland = THROUGH BENDED GRASS, a 90k contemporary Fantasy.

The coolest thing of all is that, via Twitter, Colleen let me know that she’s interested in getting her hands on a realy query for Through Bended Grass! While it’s not a sure bet by any means, there’s nothing like encouragement like that to get someone motivated in finishing their novel!

So, can you pitch your novel in 140 characters?