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Chapter 1: What is the purpose of the Beta Reader matchup?
Have you been sitting on the fence about signing up for the Beta Reader matchup? Or have you signed up before but haven't yet found your writing soulmates? The next matchup is the last one for the summer, so don't snooze on it. Get matched up with those writing in a similar genre and or time zone so they can critique your work as you critique theirs.
Your manuscript doesn't have to be complete to sign up for this 3,000 word evaluation. This particular matchup will be open to registrations from now until the 1st of June with the matchup emails going out on the 2nd of June. For more information and to register, go to BiancaMarie.com and go to the Beta Reader matchup page. Hi everyone, welcome back to another Books with Hux.
We are starting off as we usually do by diving straight in. Cece, can you please kick us off with your query letter? Let's do this.
Dear Cece, Years after a tragic event tore them apart, two former best friends finally fall in love just as the past rises up, threatening to destroy their relationship forever. I am writing to seek representation for How to Be Good, a dual point of view, accessible literary novel of 94,000 words.
It will appeal to readers who enjoyed the evolving intimacy of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. the morally complex characters in Heart the Lover by Lily King, and the vivid sense of place in The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller.
I notice that you are looking for literary novels with morally ambiguous protagonists, as well as dysfunctional families, and I think this will be of interest to you. Thank you for everything you do on the podcast. You have transformed the interiority in my writing in particular." Esther and Louis grew up in households where love was conditional.
So their unconditional love for each other was everything. Until at 13, Louis sent their classmate plunging from a cliff. Esther wanted to believe it was an accident, but she saw what happened. Their friendship tore apart. One sweltering summer, ten years on, Esther and Louis return to the coastal English village where they grew up and where their friendship imploded.
Both still live in the shadow of their overbearing families. Louis is shame-himmed into doubting his dream job offer, while Esther's mom insists she continue the career that's destroying her. Rekindling a friendship with one person who truly understands is sweet relief. They become close. Neither mentions what happens on the cliffs.
As the heat intensifies, they teeter on the edge of falling in love. But Louis sees reluctance to talk about the incident that destroyed their original friendship unnerves Esther. She can't go on without knowing why he acted the way he did on those cliffs. But Louis can only live with himself by suppressing the memory.
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Chapter 2: How do query letters impact literary representation?
Thank you so much. I loved the disruption. Like the whole, oh, these two people, you know, they grew up in houses where love was conditional. And then they have unconditional love for each other. Doesn't that seem sweet? So my brain is going down this road of, oh, this is going to be a sweet story. Oh, how sweet. And then one of them sees the other pushing someone off a cliff.
Now, that is very surprising to the brain. The reader brain likes surprises. So that was very, very good. I really liked that. It made me wonder, though, as I finished reading about the plot, is it dual timeline? Because I don't know there's enough plot in the present day timeline. Just because like, okay, they rekindle and then what?
Like we spend however many words I already forgot 94,000 words. Do we spend 90,000 words or 85,000 words with them just figuring out what happened in the past kind of like rehashing the past? It's not that you can't do that in literary fiction. There's so many literary novels out there that have very little plot and just tons of character, and it's all about the execution.
So it's not that it's necessarily a problem, but something that I'm always on the lookout for is, you know, are there sufficient plot points to, I guess, keep the reader turning the pages? And then if the plot points aren't the reason to turn the pages, what else is going to be the reason? And we can talk about that when we talk about the pages.
I also really liked the comment about the imaginary cat. That was really sweet. So thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Cece. Okay, Carly, handing it across to you. All right. So I really like this title, How to Be Good. I'm not entirely sure that I understand how it relates to the rest of the book necessarily, but it is a good title. And once we read the pages, I think it's a bit more clear. But in the query, I didn't really understand the title. But it is a good title.
So I'm like a little bit torn about it. But good titles can get you pretty far, especially at this stage. So good job for a good title. I agreed with Cece, like, do we need this word accessible? What is it doing? Especially so early in the query letter.
If you have any sort of word early in the query letter that can, you know, provide an agent with any reason to pause, you really have to think about whether you need that word. So if both of us are kind of stumbling on that word, that's something to think about. Now, dual POV. That suggests that both sides, Esther and Lewis, we have their equal point of view into this situation.
What I struggle with about here is everything hinges on Lewis sent their classmate plunging from a cliff. If we get Lewis's point of view about what happens, then we're going to know really early on the crux of everything. So the reader's kind of getting what they want really early. So then what's potentially the point of reading the rest of the book? Or if you...
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Chapter 3: What makes a compelling friends-to-lovers story?
And the fact that Cece is citing a bestselling novel written by a very talented author suggests that is such the caliber in which is required to be able to pull that off. So I never say that something can't be done.
I always want to be surprised and I always want somebody to pull it off, but I'm just making sure that the author understands how high the bar is here to pull this off without irritating the reader. while keeping us entertained. It's just a tall order, right? There's no reason why anybody needs to shy away from a tall order by any means. But I can see how this could be a struggle.
And I think there's a lot of ways that this could fall apart, I guess would be my main note. And also the reader's going to think, which is a classic love story question, which is why can't these two just sit down and talk? Like classic love story thing where you're like, what is it that these people can fall in love with each other and yet not talk to each other?
And literary fiction can do this really well because there's so much of that like cerebral and we're in our own head and it's possible. It's all possible. But the fact that this person had accessible literary fiction in the opening line makes me wonder how all of this is going to come together. Those are kind of all of the thoughts that are swimming in my head here.
In terms of the author bio, genuinely love it. I have a question about, I've been writing for 15 years. That part I'm a bit like, huh, you've had some success with the fiction competitions. Aslexia is a British women's magazine, which I know of. Why the 15 years? Is it a classic case of like, I want to talk about how I've been writing for so long?
Or because of my agent brain thinks, what made you turn from, casual hobby author to wanting to be a novelist. I wonder about that shift in the mentality and why now. I wonder about a lot of that. I'm assuming it's because maybe you were doing your medical training and now you have more time and this is how you want to balance your life between medicine and creativity.
But those are some things that go through my head. Thank you, Carly.
Okay, Cece, will you let us know what was in those opening pages?
okay let's do this so we have esther our protagonist just thinking just in her head dreaming of the surf the fact that her ankle is hurt that she won't be able to surf that it's a problem and then she sees something in her peripheral vision and she looks and meters away there's a pair of women having an orange picnic blanket and what transpires is that they just got engaged yay but
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Chapter 4: How does dual POV influence storytelling?
But if you're like, I'm querying, then I think that you might be querying too early because I don't quite see the depth in the first five pages. Maybe it's different later that I would need to see.
Thank you, Cece.
Okay, Carly, across to you now. All right. I feel like the query and the opening pages aren't fully matching up because I was pitched a book that was very focused on relationships and potentially this friendship love story. And then I felt like these opening pages, I felt so distant from this character and the choice about why she chose to walk away from that engagement ring that she saw.
She suggests that by watching this potential engagement that she has these, I don't know, kind of feelings about watching it, whether she should be helpful, whether she shouldn't. But we never really get to the heart of what was pitched to me in the query letter. To me, if I saw this query letter in my inbox,
requested the pages, which I sent to my Kindle, which I would read later, I would forget what book this was related to based on the query that I requested. I'm feeling like these are very separate concepts, which makes me wonder, yeah, where we are in the process. Is this book finished? Are we pitching a book that is imagined to be versus the book that it is? I have a lot of thoughts about that.
But coming back to the actual pages that are in front of me, I agree with Cece. The most interesting point of these pages is when she...
finds the ring but walks by it that is incredible that is like you know claps to you I don't know if you can hear me clapping on my microphone that is great I absolutely loved that part that was very very well done the rest of it I just felt so distant from her because she still felt so distant from her own life and when you pitched me an accessible literary novel and I felt actually very
far away from this character. I struggled with that a little bit. This is a classic case of this book was pitched to Cece and this book was not pitched to Carly. And there are reasons why you pitch different agents for different things. Because I really like the idea of a complicated love story. But what I'm seeing here is really starts off very internal. suggesting to be internal.
But again, I actually feel very distant from her because she feels like she's sleepwalking through her life. So I feel like I'm watching somebody sleepwalk through their life a little bit, which just felt really distant for me personally. Classic case of
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Chapter 5: Why is surprise important in narrative structure?
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Okay, Carly, we're now handing it across to you. Let's hear your query letter.
Dear Carly and Cece, thank you so much for all you do for writers. In Somewhere Only We Know, my YA contemporary romance with survival elements, a girl who doesn't believe in love gets stranded on a deserted island with the one boy she tried to avoid. As they fight to survive, she's forced to confront the grief that made her stop believing in love and the boy she might be falling for.
Complete at 62,000 words and set in the tropical islands of French Polynesia, it will appeal to fans of Nicola Yoon and K.L. Walther. 18-year-old Emmy Davis stopped believing in love the day her mom died two years ago. If she's learned anything from grief, it's this. Letting people in only leads to losing them. And if that's the case, why bother?
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Chapter 6: What challenges arise with accessible literary fiction?
I liked the interaction between the two of them. I really liked the line because she's talking about how her friend, her best friend has a boyfriend now. And she says, you know, but she's into him. So I'm trying to be supportive, even though I think it's a mistake. Most relationships are. I love that.
She just like, you know, has these strong opinions and she's just like, you know, don't want to bother with that. I think a lot of teen girls can relate to that moment where their best friend gets a boyfriend and they're like, well, Don't want to deal with that. Overall, I thought it was really strong. I didn't really make a lot of notes.
You know, I was really curious by the end about why when she sees her mom's former best friend, her mom passed away, you know, sees the mom's best friend walk in, why her instinct wasn't to talk to her. Instinct was to run. Love that. You know, I mean, clearly she's a teenager and feeling all of her feelings. So I felt like this was a very accurate portrayal of a teen experience.
And I didn't really have a lot of, you know, inline notes other than, you know, am I cringe for writing LOL?
Thank you, Carly. Okay, Cece, handing it across to you.
You are not cringe, Carly. As the youngest one of our group, you are not cringe. Because if you're cringe, we're cringe. And we can't be cringe. Our first line. Our first line reads, whoever said you can't outrun grief. Well, I've got a boarding pass and tanning oil that says otherwise. It's a good line. I like it. I don't think it's your first line.
I worry it's a little too on the nose, thematically speaking. I would have preferred to be surprised by her reason for going on this trip. I think the reader brain would most likely assume a teenager is really... Looking forward to getting away because she wants to get away from some boy or because she's looking forward to an adventure or like all these teen reasons.
And then we could have had the surprise of her reason being grief when her mom's friend comes into the store. And that would have like recalibrated everything in my brain. And that would have been a more, in my opinion, of course. just I guess more powerful way of introducing the themes of grief and how she's trying to outrun grief.
It just felt way too... When I say on the nose, I think honestly, if I were a listener, I'd be like, this is very confusing to me. Like, I'm supposed to deliver pages that match the query letter, but it can't be on the nose. I just mean... At the same time that you do have to deliver pages that match the query letter, we can't be unsurprised by all the five pages.
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