Your first pages – 5 more book openings critiqued by literary agent @agentpete , writer @simnett and me!

I’ve just guested again at Litopia, the online writers’ colony and community. Each week they have a YouTube show, Pop-Up Submissions, where five manuscripts are read and critiqued live on air by literary agent Peter Cox @agentpete and a guest, or sometimes two. This time the other guest was one of Litopia’s longtime members, thriller author Ed Simnett (who has a frighteningly interesting CV that will probably keep him in thriller material for years).

The format is simple. Five manuscripts, each with a short blurb. We hear the opening pages, then discuss how they’re working – exactly as agents and commissioning editors would consider a submission. And there’s now an added goody – each month, the submission with the most votes is fast tracked to the independent publisher Head of Zeus, and several writers have already been picked up after appearing on the show. (So we take our critiquing very seriously… no pressure.)

As always, the submissions had many strengths, and much to teach us. There were blurbs that told us too much and blurbs that left us puzzled. There were blurbs that promised a different tone from the actual text. There were scenes that drifted into confusing reverie before we had grasped where we were and whose experience we were following. There were titles that were too generic for the striking ideas in the actual book. There were awkward expositional parts, where clearly the writer was anxious about how soon they should be ‘explaining’ everything. Find the full show here.

And if you’ve got a manuscript you’d like critiqued, apply here.

If you’d like help with your writing, my Nail Your Novel books are here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.

Your first pages – 5 more book openings critiqued at @Litopia by literary agent @agentpete , reader @kaylie_finn and me!

I’ve just guested again at Litopia, the online writers’ colony and community. Each week they have a YouTube show, Pop-Up Submissions, where five manuscripts are read and critiqued live on air by literary agent Peter Cox @agentpete and a guest, or sometimes two. This time the other guest was one of Litopia’s longtime members Kaylie Finn, who knows her way around a critique.

The format is simple. Five manuscripts, each with a short blurb. We hear the opening pages, then discuss how they’re working – exactly as agents and commissioning editors would consider a submission. And there’s now an added goody – each month, the submission with the most votes is fast tracked to the independent publisher Head of Zeus, and several writers have already been picked up after appearing on the show. (So we take our critiquing very seriously… no pressure.)

As always, the submissions had many strengths. And also much to teach us. Issues we discussed were unfortunate connotations in names, how to make fantasy ‘special’ enough, what signals a blurb gives about tone and genre, whether a blurb is misleading, how a title sets up expectations, whether a prologue is a good idea or an unnecessary distraction, how much exposition to include in a first scene, when we might need more explanation in a first scene, when action might be confusing, how much you need to explain when your story world is a well known historical event, and tricky considerations when writing in dialect.

Enjoy! And if you’ve got a manuscript you’d like critiqued, apply here.

If you’d like help with your own writing, my Nail Your Novel books are here. If you’re curious about my own creative writing, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s been going on on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.