✨Fiona Williams on choosing the best POVs to tell your story ✨
We have three guests on the podcast this week including agent, Jo Ramsay, who joins us for Books with Hooks, as well as guest interviewer, Bronwen Keyes-Bevan, chatting with Fiona Williams.
Hello podcast and writing enthusiasts! Happy spring 😍 Is the sun shining on those manuscripts of yours? We sure hope so.
In this week’s episode, Carly and CeCe are joined by Jo Ramsay, an agent at Transatlantic Literary Agency. After which, Bronwen Keyes-Bevan of BoolaBos magazine interviews winner of the Bridport Prize for literary fiction, Fiona Williams, to chat about The House of Broken Bricks 😍 Finally, we share links to Carly’s and Bianca’s upcoming seminars.
As usual, we are continuing our TSNOTYAW Membership Program so you can get even more The Shit No One Tells You About Writing goodness! Our podcast episodes and Friday newsletter issues will continue to go out free of charge (we *love* sharing all this amazing content with writers like you). But as TSNOTYAW has grown, so too have the many, many hours our team pours into it, and in order to be able to keep showing up for our lovely listeners, we decided to launch this exciting new venture.
For just $8USD a month or $80USD a year, you can receive our paid newsletter on Tuesdays which features weekly bonus author Q&As, exclusive content from industry experts, weekly access to Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra’s written notes on queries from the podcast’s Books With Hooks feature, monthly bonus podcast episodes, AND regular Ask Me Anythings / Q&As with Carly, CeCe, and Bianca Marais. If that doesn’t kickstart your writing journey, we don’t know what will!
Thanks for reading ❤️
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team
This Week’s Podcast✨🎙️✨
In this week’s 📕Books with Hooks🪝, Carly and CeCe are joined by guest agent, Jo Ramsay, to critique two queries. They discuss:
The issue of withholding too much of the plot in a query
Highlighting the stakes in your query
The importance of first lines in a novel
The need for your characters to have psychological depth and acuity
The issue of comping to titles that are hugely successful
Avoiding too much backstory in your query, and
The problems with a reader being too removed from a scene, even if it's done intentionally
After which, guest interviewer, Bronwen Keyes-Bevan from BoolaBos magazine interviews author and winner of the Bridport Prize for literary fiction, Fiona Williams. They discuss:
Fiona's debut novel, The House of Broken Bricks
Her background in biological sciences and her shift to creative writing
Fiona’s expert use of figurative language
How Fiona tackled writing four different points of view, and her reasoning for choosing certain perspectives for certain characters
Writing from children's POVs, and
Fiona's feelings around the potential of being conflated with some of her characters
Fiona can be found on Instagram and Twitter!
You can purchase The House of Broken Bricks on our Bookshop.org affiliate page here. Buying books through this link supports a local indie bookstore, as well as The Shit No One Tells You About Writing 📚❤️
Writing memoir? 😍🌟
Join Bianca on the 11th of May from 10am-5pm ET as she hosts a one-day virtual retreat specifically for memoirists!
Speakers include:
Catherine Gildiner – Author of Too Close to the Falls, After the Falls, Coming Ashore and Good Morning, Monster: Five Heroic Journeys to Recovery.
Chelsea Devantez - Emmy-nominated writer, comedian, and filmmaker. Author of the upcoming memoir, I Shouldn't Be Telling You This (But I'm Going to Anyway).
Courtney Maum - Author of five books, including the game changing publishing guide, Before and After the Book Deal, and the memoir, The Year of the Horses.
Bonny Reichert – Award-winning journalist, chef, and author of the upcoming memoir, How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty.
Abby Maslin – Bestselling author of the memoir, Love You Hard, and a contributing essayist in Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Kids.
Ronit Plank - Award-winning writer, teacher, and podcaster who hosts Let's Talk Memoir. Author of the memoir, When She Comes Back.
Each 40-minute session will be followed by a 20-minute Q & A in which delegates get to ask the presenters all their burning questions.
The retreat will be taped, and the recording will be sent out the next day.
The registration fee is US $ 149.00
For more information and to register, click below!
Be part of Carly’s masterclass 😍📝
Have you heard?! Carly’s new course is available! Over 100 of you grabbed it this month and, if you haven’t yet, be sure to get it now. (If you didn’t bag the early bird pricing, Substack subscribers can claim it now with a discount for the month of April! Use code SUBSTACK15.)
Releasing The Mother Load by Erica Djossa is out now! 🎉 Erica is one of Carly’s fabulous clients, so why not show Erica your support and purchase this excellent read through our Bookshop.org affiliate page!
That’s all for this week’s news! If you enjoyed it, why not share the love? 🥰
Until next week, happy writing! Tune in again then for more invaluable wisdom from our wonderful hosts! 😍
❤️ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team
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Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra are literary agents at P.S. Literary Agency, but their work in this newsletter is not affiliated with the agency, and the views expressed by Carly and CeCe in this newsletter are solely that of themselves and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of P.S. Literary Agency.
This sounds like an awesome episode! I just added it to my podcast playlist. :) And the cover of Fiona Williams' debut novel is amazing!
Ideally, the writer should just send the writing. All the talk in the world won't improve that : )