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Chapter 1: What inspired Haili Blassingame's debut novel?
What's up, everyone? This is Cece. So I recently grabbed lunch with an acquiring editor from HarperCollins who told me that the number of submissions she's been getting has nearly doubled. And I wasn't surprised at all because every agent and editor I know has been talking about how the volume of submission keeps increasing.
So personally, that is a wonderful thing, because it's more reading for me, but it also means I have more chances of matching with authors. I consider it a privilege to review queries on Books with Hooks, and of course, in my submissions inbox. But at the same time, I talk to writers who tell me that they wish agents would read more than a few pages because...
And I quote, my story gets better in chapter two. I have to be honest, this kills me. It's like me wanting chocolate chip cookies to have the nutritional value of kale.
Chapter 2: How did a viral essay lead to finding a literary agent?
It's just not realistic. Like it or not, no agent, no acquiring editor is going to stick around to see if a submission gets better. It's not because we're mean, it's because we get dozens and dozens every day. I know it's harsh, but ambitious writers embrace harsh realities. So here it goes.
It's your job to make your opening pages irresistible, to make agents crave it, to make agents want to read more. That's why I'm so excited about my upcoming course, Starting It Right. How to begin your story in the best place and in the best way. I created this course after studying hundreds of books.
I've mapped out elements that are present in the beginning of all successful novels and memoirs.
Chapter 3: What challenges do writers face when creating 'unlikable' characters?
And I've designed checklists, actual checklists, that you can use to ensure that your story's beginning is seducing your reader.
We'll cover how to write a great first line, different types of beginnings and how you can choose the best one, the best place to start and the best way to start, yes, these are totally different things, when it makes sense to add a prologue and when it doesn't, how to frame your inciting incident in an appealing way, how to balance exposition and mystery, how to include context but not weigh it down with too much backstory, and what to do if your story has more than one POV or timeline.
Most of all, I'm going to show you how to make readers want to turn to Chapter 2. Join me for this multi-day course designed to help you break through the noise. You'll leave with a clear, actionable breakdown of exactly what goes into a terrific beginning. If you've already signed up, come prepared to take lots of notes.
We're talking hundreds of slides with real-world examples and specific techniques, plus a super fun surprise that I can't wait to share. I hope to see you there.
and welcome to our show, The Shit No One Tells You About Writing. I'm best-selling author Bianca Murray and I'm joined by Cece Lira of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of PS Literary.
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Chapter 4: How can fiction interrogate personal and political realities?
Hi everyone, today's guest is a producer for the NPR program 1A. She has written for publications like the New Republic and the New York Times, in which she published the viral My Choice Isn't Marriage or Loneliness for Modern Love. She was one of 12 SAS selected to write a follow-up piece for the column's 20th anniversary in October 2024.
She's also been a guest on the Modern Love podcast, NPR's Life Kit and NPR's 1A. She previously worked on NPR's Code Switch and Weekend Edition. She is pursuing an MFA in creative writing from American University. She lives in Washington, D.C. It's my pleasure to welcome Hayley Blassengame. Hayley, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much for having me.
Chapter 5: What is the importance of sensitivity readers in writing?
So much NPR in that bio. Gosh.
I mean, you know, you've got to use everything you can in your bio, right? And we say this to authors all the time. Up your author bio. Love saying NPR so much. Okay. So for those of you who are not watching on our YouTube channel, will you also hold up your copy, Hayley? Because you've got the hardcover. There we go.
Chapter 6: How does the process of rewriting transform a writer into an author?
The book we're discussing is They All Fall in Love in the End. It's a stunning like hot pink cover, kind of paintings, almost like it sort of made me think of Blue Sisters. Yeah, it's got that vibe, right? But it's its own work. It's just absolutely stunning. The cover is stunning. So for those of you who are not watching on YouTube, make sure you look up the cover.
Okay, I'm going to quickly read you the flap copy and then we're going to dive in. It's the fall of 2024, and 24-year-old Kat isn't asking for too much. All she wants is three boyfriends, to write her little novels, and to survive another chaotic presidential election.
Chapter 7: What techniques enhance dialogue in character development?
She's in an open relationship with her college sweetheart, Jay, but non-monogamy isn't just a hot trend she's trying. It's her sliver of freedom in a world eager to wrestle it from her for being a black woman going after what she wants with reckless abandon.
While political tensions roil the campus where Kat is slowly earning her creative writing degree, she finds herself drawn to Jay's best friend Tristan, who's smart, super hot, and in a monogamous relationship. And then she meets Tristan's girlfriend, Nia, a captivating art student with her own gravitational pull.
Friends and family urge her to just be happy with Jay, but Kat is determined to have it all, or blow up her life trying. As she falls for all the wrong people, racking up lies, betrayals, and terrible drafts of her novel, she tries to write her way to a happy ending. But in art, politics, and love, true liberation may take more than rewriting the old scripts. It may mean
inventing something entirely new so and you know what i read a lot of books for the podcast i read a lot of books to blurb etc and this is like one of the most unique stories that i've read
Chapter 8: How can writers convey messages organically in their stories?
So, you know, it's so funny in publishing, publishers are always like, I want something completely different. So it's exactly the same as X, Y, and Z. And so I want you to take us through the inspiration for this and your journey to publication, please.
Oh, God, do you have 10 hours? Okay, so first the inspiration. I was in an open relationship for several years in my early 20s. And I really just stumbled into it. It was like my college sweetheart. You'll notice some similarities. And I just remember being like, we should be in an open relationship. I was excited.
And then I started telling people in my life and they're like, girl, what are you talking about? Like I got a lot of communal pushback that I hadn't anticipated. And this is around the time that Sally Rooney wrote Conversations with the Friends, 2017. So you had some books that gesture at non-monogamy, but weren't necessarily dealing with what it means to exist, not in a vacuum with it.
And so I think as a Black woman, that was what I was saying. I went to school in the South. an HBCU. And so my experience was entirely different, where it was like coming out, and I hadn't, I was not trying to come out as anything. And so I really was trying to look for models on how to how to be in an open relationship. And like many writers, I turned to stories.
So I was like, reading novels, I was watching movies, I was just trying to find anything to sort of to locate myself in this kind of relationship modality and could not find anything. And I was like, okay, well, I'll write a book and this will help me figure it out because as one does, right? So what happened was I had started this book in like
January 2020 which is a great time to start a book right that's set quote-unquote now which you know then the pandemic happens like okay you can never set a book now again um if it's you know realist fiction so I've been working on it I ended up writing a modern love essay at the end of the year that was about my experience in an open relationship and just trying to like
figure out myself through that relationship and why it ended. And that is a funny story because I had recently purchased a house because interest rates were so low and I just like was out of money and I needed a new couch. So I was like, what can I do to make money? Oh, I'll write a modern love essay, which like thinking about it now, I'm like, that's like... I don't know. I was 25.
But they picked it up. I hadn't heard of Modern Love, but I didn't understand the scale of it. So I had, when I knew it was being published, I was reading things like, oh, you could get an agent or a book deal from this. I'm like, okay, I'm not going to get an agent from this essay. Then the essay came out and I got an email from my current agent saying, have you ever wanted to write a book?
Hello from book agent in the subject line. And I was like, yeah, so it's charmed. That's how I got my agent based off of that modern love essay. And so I always do tell writers like, get yourself out there. You don't know what is going to be the thing. So we'd started working on a memoir because that was sort of the pipeline. You'd write a modern love essay and then you'd write a memoir.
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