How to Make Agents Curious While Also Impressing Them With Your Line Level Writing

The Shit No One Tells You About Writing

Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra

Education, How To, Fiction, Books, Arts

4.8 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this special Books with Hooks segment, the team sits down with author Sarah Miller-Adams to workshop her query letter for Bilateral Breathing, an upmarket, literary-leaning novel about three mid-career women in medicine on the brink of personal and professional collapse.

They break down what’s working (a striking voice, emotional depth, and powerful themes) and what needs sharpening—especially clarity around plot, POV, power dynamics, and how to handle multi-POV queries. From title choices to character introductions, stakes, and specificity, this episode is a masterclass in how to make agents both curious and impressed.

Note: CeCe Lyra is a literary agent at Wendy Sherman Associates. If you’d like to query CeCe, please refer to the submission guidelines at www.wsherman.com. Carly Watters is a literary agent at P.S. Literary Agency, but her work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency, and the views expressed by Carly on this podcast are solely that of her as a podcast co-host and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of P.S. Literary Agency.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	What's up, everyone? This is Cece. Do you know something I'm always looking for when I review the slush file?
0:06.1	Strong interiority. Well-written interiority shows what your protagonist is thinking about in a way that is realistic and interesting.
0:14.2	It propels the story forward instead of holding it back, but it doesn't stop there.
0:19.5	A strong writer will leverage interiority into a
0:22.8	superpower into something I call psychological acuity. Think about it this way. Plot is what happens.
0:30.1	Interiority is how your protagonist processes what happens. And psychological acuity is why it matters.
0:36.8	It gives a book depth and meaning and staying power.
0:40.9	All breakout books have psychological acuity.
0:43.8	You have been asking me to teach a course about psychological acuity for years, years.
0:48.7	Well, it's finally here.
0:50.4	Why did it take me so long?
0:51.9	Because my courses take years to build.
1:12.5	They're dense, they're thorough, and they're filled with examples and specific techniques. So this five-day course begins on March 2nd. We'll have an optional interactive component. Students are invited to submit excerpts from their work for a chance to have them critiqued live during a class. If you're ready to take your writing to the next level, join me for writing interiority and psychological acuity. Don't worry if
1:18.5	you can't attend live. The sessions will be recorded. And for more information, check out my bio
1:23.6	on Instagram or the podcast website. I'm looking forward to seeing you there.
1:34.3	Hi there and welcome to our show. The ship no one tells you about writing. I'm best-selling
1:40.8	author Bianca Murray and I'm joined by Cici Lira of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of PS Literary.
1:50.1	Hi everyone. Welcome back to another books with Hook segment. Today we're super excited because we have the author joining us on the show and we always love when that happens.
1:59.5	But today especially we are joined by Sarah Miller Adams. Sarah, welcome to the show. And we always love when that happens. But today, especially, we are
2:01.3	joined by Sarah Miller Adams. Sarah, welcome to the show. Thanks. Glad to be here. It's, it's kind of
2:07.6	cool, kind of terrifying, but great. It's amazing to have you here. Okay, so we are going to kick
2:14.7	things off immediately and we're going to ask Sarah to please read her query letter.
	...

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