April 11th Meeting

At this meeting we went over excerpts of short stories, a short humorous memoir, flash fiction, and many wonderful poems.

These are some of the things that were pointed out to me in the critique of my piece.
1. Have a hook early on the grab the reader (and agent’s attention)
2. Allow the reader to get to know your characters, what they want, what are the relationships between the main characters.

Last night I looked at the first few pages of books from my bookshelf. I had the advantage of having already read these, so I knew what happened in the story. I was able to see how the first few pages gave a sample of the characters and their relationships to each other and what was important to them.

The best example I came across was the novel Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand. In the first few pages we are introduced to each of the four characters. It didn't reveal the conflict of the story, but it illustrated how each character generally acted and the descriptions of them revealed how each of them was dealing with their conflicts appeared to a stranger. One was worried, one sour and the other flighty and distracted.

What did you learn at the meeting or from some other source recently?