How Writing Contests Can Help Launch Your Career

From The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra

In today's Books with Hooks, Bianca, CeCe, and Carly critique an upmarket/southern-gothic query and a book club romance. They discuss a "perfect" first query paragraph; the importance of accurate framing in a query; when a content warning is necessary; tips for elevating your line level writing along with examples of sophisticated writing; writing protagonists' thoughts in a realistic way; mistakes writers make that make their writing appear less polished; and examples of how to build curiosity into your pages.

After which, Bianca interviews Elba Iris Pérez, debut author of The Things We Didn't Know. They discuss Elba's winning of the Simon and Schuster "Books Like Us" award and Elba's subsequent journey to publication; the benefit of taking writing courses; writing magazines as good resources for finding contests; immersing readers in scenes that are unfamiliar to them; and writing children in first person in a convincing manner.

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More information about Elba can be found at: https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Elba-Iris-Perez/195715113

She's also on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/elbaip?lang=en

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