In Praise of the Essay

In today's Books with Hooks, Bianca, Carly, and CeCe are joined by Nicole to discuss her query submission. They discuss the introduction of characters in a query letter to avoid overwhelming the reader; avoiding 'hopping' around in time and switching tenses in a query; ideas to up the stakes within the relationship of Nicole's main characters; examples of how Nicole successfully described a character's appearance using first person POV; advice on how to avoid common turns of phrase; and how to make unlikeable or grumpy characters more likeable.

 After which, Bianca chats with Erin Pepler about her collection of essays, Send Me Into the Woods Alone: Essays on Motherhood. They discuss how writing essays can help with marketing and publicity as a novelist; the process of putting an essay collection together; selling a collection to a publisher; the power of a single essay; how being specific is often what makes stories feel universal; an essay vs an article vs a longer piece of nonfiction (i.e., a memoir); essays that go viral; and showing vs telling in essays.

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More information about Erin can be found at erinpepler.com.

She’s on Twitter @erinpepler, Instagram @erinpepler, and Facebook @erinpeplerwriter.