In today’s Books with Hooks, Carly and CeCe critique two queries each, in the process discussing extraordinarily long query letters; why it’s tricky to have a character whose ultimate goal is death; including dual-POV in the metadata; the importance of curiosity seeds in the opening pages through interiority and emotionality; how not being specific enough in a query letter makes agents hesitate to request pages; lack of interiority in the third person; using spelling according to the country the story takes place in and/or where you’re pitching it; framing your memoir so it’s written for the reader, not the writer; starting a memoir with a bird’s-eye view or a summary of what happened; stripping the tension at the beginning of a story; and writing tightly on a scene level

After which Bianca chats with Abby Maslin, author of Love You Hard, about being clear as to why you’re writing a memoir; the universal threads of struggle that connect us as humans; removing shame from experiences; structuring a memoir; getting the reader to invest in the characters before throwing them into the action; not telling too much too soon; recognizing what parts of your memoir need to be cut out because they belong to a different memoir; and writing for therapy vs writing to tell a story

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Websites: www.theshitaboutwriting, www.biancamarais.com, www.carlywatters.com and www.cecilialyra.com

Abby can be found at www.abbymaslin.com and on Instagram at @abby_maslin