Making Structural Choices to Best Serve a Particular Story

In today's Books with Hooks, Carly and CeCe are joined by Kim and Jessica who submitted their queries for critique. They discuss how to elevate a query so that it matches the quality of the pages, reminding us that the goal of the query letter is to get an agent to read those pages; how to lean into specificity to elevate a query; toeing the line between giving away too much and too little in your query; how to successfully write a multi POV query; and how to balance discussing theme and plot in a query.

After which, Bianca chats with Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of Take My Hand, about how not to not ‘hit’ readers over the head with your moral themes; how to make characters who might traditionally be considered to be 'bad' sympathetic; inner and outer conflict; how to conduct extensive research; and defending your structural choices.

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Dolen can be found at @dolenperkinsvaldez on Instagram, and at www.dolenperkinsvaldez.com

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