You know the famous first line, but did you also know Pride & Prejudice has a killer entire first chapter, which is almost entirely dialogue? Bri and Mer use Jane’s brilliance to chat about all the ways dialogue can be used to convey setting, stakes, personality and character dynamics when done well. They also give their hot take on eavesdropping at coffeeshops and dole out advice about when to use adverbs in dialogue tags. Come for Mer’s theatrical turn as Mrs. Bennett and stay to find out what Leonardo DiCaprio’s love of pasta has anything to do with it.

*If you'd like to read the first scene in Pride and Prejudice, check it out here!

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1342/pg1342-images.html#Chapter_I

Book Recs!

Black Bag by Luke Kennard

The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley

Getting Away with Murder by Shari Lapena

How To Write a Murder by Jessica Brody

Could these references be any more millennial? Bri and Mer chat about how to add stakes–low and high–to your manuscript, how to make zany set-ups feel important, and how knowing your characters makes it all so much easier. Come for the advice about creating ticking clocks in the plot and stay for us gushing over How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

Books Discussed

Ravenous by Sara Cooper

The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies by Kate Westbury

Can you still get burnout when you’re doing your dream job? Join Bri and Mer as they chat about *gasp* ambition, tapped creative wells and figuring out how to push yourself just the right amount. Come for the commiserating over the fact that writing is really, freaking hard and stay for the ladies’ new dream job that’s everything the movies say it is.

Books Mentioned

Dissection of a Murder by Jo Murray

Ravenous by Sara Cooper

Will there be fisticuffs? Possibly! (Probably not). But join Bri and Mer anyway as they talk about conflict and how it goes far beyond the seven main categories you were taught in school.

They discuss how to create minor layers of conflict that amplify your book’s theme, how to make your audience care, and how stakes play a role in all of it. Come for the reasons why Bri thinks conflict makes everything easier, and stay for the fight! Fight! Fight!

Hey, agents are humans, too. And to prove that Bri and Mer bring on their brilliant, shared agent, Abby Saul of The Lark Group, to talk all things publishing. Abby spills the tea on queries, comps, the state of publishing, and more. Come for the tips on preventable query mistakes and stay for the burning question: what ever happened to that god-awfully named genre “chick lit”?

Episode Outline

00:00 - 22:00 - Intro

21:57 - 1:23:15 - Our Chat with Abby Saul

1:23:15 - 1:39:20 - Book Recs

Books Mentioned

The Housewife by Natalie Barelli

Buckeye by Patrick Ryan

Dad Had a Bad Day by Ashton Poliantoff

Is it editing or revisions? Either way, it’s really freaking hard. This is where the manuscript becomes a book and where you earn your paycheck. Bri and Mer discuss self-editing and dreaded blindspots, beta readers and feedback from friends, and the emotional stakes of being professionally edited.

Come for tips on how to find the message behind the editing note and stay to find out what 19th century viscounts have to do with anything.

Books mentioned:

She’s a Lamb! by Meredith Hambrock

Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer

Falling Back in Love With Being Human by Kai Cheng Thom

Found Time by Caroline Goldstein

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Episode Outline

00:00 - 08:35 - Intro

08:36 - 58:46 - Editing discussion

58:46 - 1:10:03 - Book Recs

A book is so much more than just the spark of an idea. A ton of people have the spark of an idea—and now can plug it into a plagarism machine to spit out a story. But you become a writer in the millions of choices you make between the story idea and putting the words down on the page.

Bri and Mer both lay out their creative process, from where they come up with ideas to how they create their characters and plot beats, highlight the different ways that can work for every individual writer and have one or to revelations about their own writing process ten years in. Come for mini-rants about AI and stay for Mer’s brush with viral fame.

Isola by Allegra Goodman

Bromantasy by Maire Roche

Single Player by Tara Tai

The Cloak and Dagger Club by Jackie McMahon

EPISODE OUTLINE

00:00 - 14:01 - What is going on in our writing lives?

14:01 - 1:16:02 - Craft Topic: Build-a-Book

1:16:02 -1:22:21 - Book Recs

Gatekeepers, cheerleaders, partners-in-crime, the person you call to talk you down from a panic attack, or the person standing in the way of your dream. Literary agents have been labeled many different things in the publishing industry, but mostly they’re just people who love books just as much as you do. Bri and Mer, who were signed a few months apart in 2016, discuss their journey to getting representation, offer advice on the agent-writer relationship, and, gasp!, read their query letters.

Come for the nuanced discussion about finding the right agent for you and stay for the typos they both find in said query letters.

Books mentioned:

Famesick, Lena Dunham