Polishing Your Pages - Part II - Written Review

Last year, we had a popular and constructive event called Polishing Your Pages where we edited and provided written and verbal feedback on each other's first ten pages. Many of you have requested that we have an event to review our next ten pages.

You can do just that--provide the next ten pages of your memoir--or if you have a specific chapter or personal essay that you would like feedback on, submit that instead.

Requirements:

1. The piece must be true and about you.
2. Limit of ten pages, double-spaced, 12-point font.
3. You must email your pages to [xtina.howell@gmail.com](mailto: xtina.howell@gmail.com) by August 20 so everyone has time to review in advance of our meeting. Christina will share the file location after you have confirmed participation.
4. Christina will share the file location after you have confirmed participation.
5. By August 31, each person will go through all the entries and comment upon strengths and weaknesses, areas to expand or cut, and other editing suggestions.
6. In this meetup, we will discuss everyone's entries.

Here are agent Paula Munier shared her top 10 reasons she stops reading. Keep these in mind when writing or reading the entries:

1. There's no strong voice telling the story
2. I've seen it before
3. I'm not connecting with the characters, namely the protagonist
4. I can't tell what kind of story I'm reading
5. I don't care what happens next
6. The plot is unbelievable or full of cliches
7. Too many characters are introduced too soon
8. The dialogue doesn't sound like "real people"
9. There are typos, spelling, and/or grammatical errors

Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4400465879?pwd=R0Y0RUp4YjAvdnJCODV0MkhNMXlmdz09