Rebellion 1776 tells the story of Elsbeth Culpepper, a 13-year-old girl working in a Loyalist judge’s house when Patriot cannon fire marks the start of the Siege of Boston. When Elsbeth’s only living relative, her father (her mother and siblings died in an earlier smallpox epidemic), goes missing and the judge is banished from Massachusetts with other Loyalists, Elsbeth has to figure out how to survive on her own. To avoid the orphanage, Elsbeth finds work as a maid for a wealthy family, though things take a turn for the worse when smallpox finds its way into Boston and debate rages about the risks and benefits of inoculation. 

After the conversation with Dlouhy, Anderson spent much of the five intervening years intensely researching the lives of people living in Boston in 1776, a great deal of which made it into the novel. “When I was trying to figure out what furniture would be in the house that’s a central setting in the book, I went to the probates, meaning the inventories made of a dead person’s estate of wealthy Bostonians so that I could see the kind of furniture they [had],” Anderson told WD. “But I was also interested in trying to find out about the lives of ordinary people. I spent months learning about the Almshouse in Boston. How did the town take care of people when the breadwinner of the family was dead or very ill and the children had to be fed? What kind of choices did families have or didn’t have when it came to the care of their kids during this sort of crisis?”  

Anderson doesn’t just write picture books or deeply researched middle-grade historical fiction. She’s well-known for her contemporary YA novels, including National Book Award finalist Speak, ALA Best Book for Young Adults and New York Times bestseller Twisted, and Amazon’s Best Young Adult Book of 2019, the nine-time star-reviewed memoir in verse, Shout. 

Regardless of which sub-genre she’s writing (“I just write what’s consuming me,” Anderson says with a laugh), her stories depict children and teens trying to make the most of their lives often during extraordinary or challenging times. Because living during uncertain times is a recurring theme in her books, we pick up our conversation talking about writing about an epidemic while living during a pandemic. 

You’ve written about an epidemic before (Fever 1793), but in this case, you had, like the rest of us, the unfortunate experience of living through a pandemic. How did that impact your writing compared to writing that earlier book? 

Where I was living at that point, in early 2020, was just on the border of Philadelphia, and we were pretty close to a hospital. I will never lose the memory of the—because it’s a very densely populated area—ambulance sirens that were 24 hours a day. It was just constant. Desperately sick people being taken to the hospital that was very soon overwhelmed. That’s such a strong sense memory in me.  

But also, at the same time, those of us in children’s literature were trying to figure out what role can we play in our community to support American families or families around the world in this hard time? A number of families had reached out to me to tell me that, as a family, they were reading Fever 1793, and I wound up doing a read-aloud for a couple of chapters of the book and putting it somewhere online. I had some emails from parents who really appreciated having a book that, because it’s set in history, it’s touching on the same themes of fears and concerns and this disease coming out of nowhere.  

But my books end in hope, and it gave families a much-needed tool. There’s a bunch of other books I’m sure they were using too, not just mine, but the families were using literature as a way to help their kids process what they were going through, what we were going through as a country at that point. That really stuck with me as I started to narrow my research a little bit with the idea that I’m going to write a middle-grade novel about this and what kind of information is going to be, first of all, fun and interesting for my readers, but also give them a few things that they can take away from the story.  

What kind of research did you do for this book, and generally speaking, where does research fit into your writing process? Is it before you draft or as you hit upon a question? 

No, the research usually takes a couple of years before I even start writing the book, and that’s why people sometimes give me a hard time, because I don’t write books very quickly. But some people don’t take the research thing as seriously as I do. I just feel so strongly, especially when you’re talking about the founding of America, we have seen a lot of information be manipulated. It’s very important for those of us who work with kids to try to find an appropriate, a sensitive way—because we’re talking about children here—but also an accurate depiction of what was going on in those years of the American Revolution. So, for me, research is first and foremost what I have to do. 

My job as a fiction writer is to deeply ground myself in the facts of the situation. Using, for example, government documents from the Boston town meetings. They had to discuss not only the stuff going on with the war, but [also] the smallpox epidemic that raged across America. For all the years of that war, smallpox epidemics were popping up all over the country, which caused real problems for the military as well. So, town records, newspapers, journals, letters, probates. … 

There was just so much. Caitlyn had to push hard to get me to actually turn the book in because I could have worked on it for another 20 years. 

You do quite a bit of research for your contemporary novels too. Does the research or your process differ based on whether you’re writing historical fiction or contemporary fiction? 

So far, it’s been dramatically different, which is why I think I’ve enjoyed going back and forth between the two subgenres, because I get bored kind of easily. When I’m writing for today’s teenagers, I don’t have to worry about the details of the time and place. I can make certain assumptions about what my readers already know about the world, and my readers for my YAs are older too, so that is also different.  

My historical fiction starts in setting, in terms of time period and place, and I have to understand what really happened. Then I have to figure out a plot that will somehow mesh well with that. I begin slowly as I—it feels like if you can imagine a statue rising from the middle of the ocean—as I’m doing this research and trying to hold all these threads in my head about what happened, what I think I want to write about a character begins to emerge. Then I have to figure out the external life of that character in terms of how that person interacts with the plot, as well as all the internal life. What is it about this character that makes them the right person to tell the story about?  

My YA fiction always starts with character. Always starts with character. It starts because there’s something I’ve found in our culture or the world where teenagers are being really disrespected, or something about teen life that is poo-pooed by the adults in the world. That really makes me angry, and I write really well from anger. So, I start thinking about the kind of character that whatever, fill in the blank, for any one of my YAs. Then I have to structure a plot. 

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One of the things I loved about Elsbeth was her inner monologue and reading what she wanted to say compared to what she actually said and how she reigned it in. How did you develop her as a character and her voice? 

One of the challenges of writing a different time period for children of today is language and voice. I try really hard not to put in anachronistic language—language from the wrong time period. Shout out there to the online dictionaries that help me make those choices! But I also have to remember that in some cases, these books are read by 9- and 10-year-olds. I can’t get bogged down in the way we think people might have spoken because of the language we read in letters that were written by one rich person to another rich person. So, I do take some liberties with voice and not necessarily with—I don’t have my teenage character chewing bubble gum and saying words that we use today. 

But she does have a pretty fresh attitude, you know? She’s like every 13-year-old I’ve ever met in my whole life. I don’t think 13-year-olds change that much from century to century. I wanted to get inside of her because I kept thinking, we’ve been through this pandemic, we’ve been through some real political divides, and here I was writing about a character who was living not only during the smallpox epidemic, but also during a time of real political divides trying to figure out, how am I going to eat today? One of the incredible strengths I see in children and teenagers of all generations is that the world is affecting them, but they’re also trying to grow up in this world. So, they still are being fresh and frustrated and sometimes naïvely hopeful.  

How do you know when a story idea has legs, when it’s going to turn into something that you can continue with?  

That’s a great question because, thinking back, I started writing in the early ’90s and it probably took 15 years, almost 20 years maybe, for me to understand that some things are just a good idea, and some things could become a book. There was a time when I was starting a lot of books, and then I just dropped them, because I had that initial flame, but without fuel, it doesn’t go anywhere. And again, everyone’s process is different—but maybe that’s why I think about a book for a long time before I start writing it. When we’re talking about the world of historical fiction, I’m doing a lot of that early research, and I’m thinking particularly about Rebellion 1776, I couldn’t wait to get out of bed in the morning to learn more about this time and place: Boston, ’75 through ’77. I couldn’t wait. I skipped so many lunches because I was so deeply into wanting to learn about this experience.  

Then, when I started writing, I missed a lot of lunches the last five years, because I was just dialed into this character. There’s this intensity of the connection with characters and the story that for me, lets me know this is the book I’m supposed to be working on. If it feels like I’m painting by numbers, then I should probably look for a new project. 

I saw on your website that you have done a lot of school visits. Do you still do them? 

No, mostly because of book banning. 

That was going to be my next question: How have the school visits changed in the face of book bans and censorship? 

What worries me the most is, just before the pandemic hit, in children’s literature, we had finally begun to open the doors to all kinds of stories. We were finally—the people who held power were recognizing that there’s a lot of different stories about and for children, especially in America where we have people coming from so many different backgrounds and different cultures. It’s a ginormous country, so a story for a kid in one part of the country is different for another. Lots of different faiths, lots of different understandings of gender identity and sexuality, and the way families are structured. Kids’ publishing was just beginning to embrace all that with amazing results. Authors like Angie Thomas and Nic Stone and Jason Reynolds, and just incredible, talented people. 

Then we had the one-two punch of lockdown and book banning. What I worry, really deeply worry about, is that the people who are the generation younger than me, a lot of them are these new authors that we’ve recently seen published in children’s publishing, they don’t have the ability to do school visits the way that my generation did. It’s very hard to make a living as an author and in children’s publishing. Anybody who made a living as an author—who didn’t write a fantasy novel and made a fortune—usually a part of their income stream was visiting schools, which is a win-win for everybody. The staff in the building and the students get to listen to an author talk about writing and learn about writing and keep kids really jazzed about books. And it also provided a more or less reliable income for the author. There were years when my kids were young, I could budget the family budget on the school visit income, and then if royalties came in, well that was just bonus.  

So, what happens to our pool of writers and illustrators and children’s literature, if they don’t have that option of school visits supplementing their book income? What happens is they have to go back to their day job,s and that means we’re not going to get the books. Maybe they’ll write a book every five years, every 10 years, but they’re not going to be able to do a book every year or every other year the way they could have if they’d been able to do school visits.  

And then you have the book bans themselves that are removing so many books. I’m just one of thousands of books that have been removed from great swaths of the country. … 

There was a point when I was traveling 150–170 days a year—now that includes travel time to get to back and forth—and last year I had two school visits. 

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When you were doing the school visits, I can only imagine the impact of talking to those young readers, what that did for you as a person, but also for your writing. What was that like? 

I loved doing school visits. I mean, the school visits I would do for—for a long time I was writing picture books too—elementary and middle schools are very different than what I was doing at the high school level. When I would go to a high school, I would always have the administrators sign off on what books I could talk about because those are issues that in some school districts people were not comfortable with. But with the younger kids, middle school and younger, oh my gosh, just that amazing energy and joy and those kids!  

I was there to talk about the writing process obviously, and research. Usually, if I was talking about my historicals, I’d be talking to kids between fourth and eighth grades. And if you think about it, somebody writing historical fiction for kids, basically I get to be a fifth grader every single day. A fifth grader with an assignment: Study this thing and then write about it. And the kind of frustrations that kids have in terms of that sort of assignment from school, it’s exactly what writers deal with. You procrastinate. You don’t want to revise. You just want everybody to tell you it’s awesome. And you still have to do the hard work. Then when you finish it and you wake up the next morning, you have to do it again. I think we have a lot of things in common.  

It was really moving sometimes to hear from my readers of historical fiction, how my books affected them. I had one young girl, I was at a school visit in New Jersey, I think around 2003. She was a sixth grader, and she had read Fever 1793. She told me the reason she liked that book is that the main character goes through really hard things, and she liked the emotions. Her father had been in the Twin Towers on 9/11. Thankfully he survived, but it was a very traumatic experience for their family that was still echoing two years later. She said that was the first character whose inner life was something that that girl identified with because she had also been through hard times.  

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What additional advice do you have for readers of WD? 

Very early on, I can remember—and this has all changed so much, so it’ll sound like I’m talking about a different planet—but back then you would send, for children’s literature, you would either send the entire picture book manuscript or opening chapters in a novel through the mail because we didn’t have email yet. Usually, they would come flying back with a standard rejection letter. But every once in a while, I would get a personalized rejection letter—got those for several books—and I felt like somebody had turned up with a cheerleading squad to cheer me on. Even though it was a rejection, it was a quality rejection. I kept them taped on my wall. One of the hardest lessons that took me a long time to learn was to not take those kinds of rejections personally, and to recognize that sometimes it was that I had sent the wrong story to the wrong editor. Because you have to learn about the business as well as learning about the craft. But also learning that because somebody rejected my work, sometimes it meant that it really sucked. Sometimes it meant that it wasn’t ready.  

The most important lesson of all was, I had no control over if my work got accepted. I had complete control over the quality of work that I sent in. It’s sometimes very tempting to spend all your time studying the editors or worrying about your platform or those sort of things—it’s a game I think we play with ourselves as authors when writing feels hard.  

Here’s what I want all writers to do: I want all writers to find a photograph of themselves when they were 4 or 5 years old, and I want them to put that photograph close to where they write, either a physical space or a space on their desktop. Every time they start to hear the negative self-talk in their head, I suck, I’m wasting my time, all those terrible things we tell ourselves when we get down, I want you to look at that little kid. Would you say those words to a child that age? No. No human with a heart would say that.  

To be your best writer self means being gentle with yourself sometimes, especially when you’re creating something. Creation is best done with an open heart and a gentle spirit. Sometimes you’re going to write crap, but that’s OK because then you can fix it and make it better. That’s what you would tell a 5-year-old: “I’m so proud of you for finishing that draft. That was a really hard thing. Have a cookie and then tomorrow we can start revising it and make it better.” 

I started to talk about people who spend a lot of time on their platforms. I think that kind of work, for many, is a sign that there’s something they’re not feeling cool about in their manuscript. You should want to be with your manuscript all the time. That’s where your energy needs to be, is the quality of your work. Be gentle with yourself.

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(Writing Sibling Rivalry for Middle-Grade Readers.)

I was wholly unprepared. When I saw blood in the bathroom that day, I thought something was terribly wrong with me. That I was dying. I’d had a brief talk with my mother before the trip, and I’d had a vague puberty education in fifth grade, but nothing had prepared me as I should have been prepared.

It was a frightening, lonely, traumatic, distressing experience that I can remember to this day, as though I’m still in that bathroom, panicking about ruined panties.

I wrote about this experience in my middle-grade book, The First Magnificent Summer.

Some people are uncomfortable with discussing periods in middle-grade books. A friend of mine told me about an editor who asked her to take the mention of a period out of her book, because it wasn’t a central part of the story’s plot. But what’s so wrong with a mention?

Middle-grade literature is intended for readers who are 8 to 14 years old (8-12 for middle grade, 10-14 for upper middle grade, where many of my books fall). That is squarely in the age range of puberty for most kids. And what does puberty mean for cisgender girls?

Periods.

The average age of menarche (a first period) is 12. Some adolescents get it earlier, some later. Almost half of girls get their first period before age 13.

Fiction provides access.

It’s not that we have to focus every middle-grade story that features a female protagonist on a first period or on periods in general. But here are some reasons why we should consider at least a passing mention of periods.

1. Fiction creates emotional distance.

A first period—and those thereafter, particularly for this age group—are new and scary and mostly unexpected. They just show up without any warning. Sit with that for a second, if you dare. One day there’s no blood, the next day—

Fiction provides a place where young readers can explore emotions and facts of life and pain and fear and puberty with some emotional distance. The “scary” things explored in fiction can make them seem less scary.

Girls don’t always get an education about their period, and parents don’t always talk to them about it, which can intensify their fear of this very normal life experience. When you don’t know much about something, how do you know what’s normal? Or even what to expect?

Reading about periods in fiction can help young readers learn more about the ways their bodies work—which then helps them feel less embarrassed and more confident about their bodies.

Check out R.L. Toalson’s Something Maybe Magnificent here:

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2. Periods are a regular part of an adolescent girl’s life—either because they’ve already experienced their first or they haven’t.

Not every middle-grade character we write will have experienced their first period yet—that’s fine. But it’s something every author should consider when creating characters. If a character has started their period, that will be a regular part of their life, even if those periods don’t happen every month (because cycles can be unpredictable at first—another reason they can be scary!).

If a character hasn’t had their first period, it will still be a part of their lives, because some friends will likely have started and girls compare notes, and they might wonder when their period will come or why it hasn’t yet. They’ll likely have questions—even if they never ask them aloud.

Puberty in this age group is a big deal, and for many it’s uncomfortable. If they never see a character wrestling with that they may feel alienated or confused, or they may think there’s something wrong with them or weird about them because they are wrestling with it.

Representation matters.

3. Including periods in books can help normalize them.

Fiction has a powerful normalizing effect—when readers can explore something in fiction, it removes all the baggage of societal implications. While our society may have progressed on the women’s rights front, it still has a long way to go. How often do we talk about periods? How uncomfortable does it still make us?

Periods are still often portrayed negatively in the media—or just completely ignored. Shameful things are hidden away, kept secret. The underlying message is, Periods are shameful and gross, and so are the people who experience them.

The more we talk about something the less shameful and misunderstood it becomes. The more normal it becomes.

The writers of middle-grade fiction have an amazing opportunity to show periods as something that’s part of life, no big deal. We can make it something girls don’t have to whisper about.

But what about the boys? some might ask. Aren’t we alienating boy readers when we write about periods or include them in our books?

No. Boys can benefit from learning about menstruation, too. Fiction’s gift to readers is it fosters understanding and empathy for the experiences of others. And it can help break down gender stereotypes by showing boys periods are a regular part of many girls’ lives—and periods don’t make girls gross or weak.

As a tween who did not get much of a puberty education—and especially did not get nearly enough of an education about periods—I would have appreciated reading the narrative of characters who were dealing with the same thing, even into my young adult years, when my period became a nuisance that made my back ache and cramp every month and affected my running schedule and performance.

Now, any time I start a middle-grade story, I ask myself: Have any of my characters started their period? How will that play out in this story?

Even a passing mention is better than ignoring periods entirely. The more education menstruating tweens get, the more equipped and confident and comfortable they’ll be when the day comes and they get their first glimpse of blood.

That’s something worth writing toward.

The post Why We Should Consider Periods When Writing Middle-Grade Books appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Being a kid, in many ways, is a mystery. How do you interpret how it feels to grow up, the changing dynamics within one’s own family, the fear that accompanies adolescence and the unknown? For middle-grade authors, gaining a readers’ trust is paramount. But how do you do that when the story’s purpose is a mystery even to the main character? How do you introduce an origin of cultural significance? Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson knows this first-hand and tackles it head-on with her latest middle-grade novel, combining fiction with mythology to broaden her readers’ understanding of the world and help them through the ever-treacherous waters of growing up.

Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson is a tribally enrolled Iñupiaq author and illustrator, born and raised in Alaska. She studied studio art at Cal Poly Humboldt, as well as philosophy and marine biology. With several careers to her name, including documentarian and schoolteacher, her focus has always been on reclaiming Indigenous culture and creativity. This she succeeds at in Eagle Drums.

Eagle Drums (middle-grade magical realism, September, Roaring Book Press) is the story of Pina, a young hunter who must travel up a mountain to collect obsidian to shape through the process of knapping—the same mountain where his two older brothers disappeared and likely died. When he reaches the mountaintop, he is stopped by an extraordinary and terrifying eagle named Savik. Savik gives Pina a choice and an answer: Come with me or die like your brothers. What follows is trial after trial put upon Pina, with no clear reason as to why, if he’ll ever go home, and what he might gain from the experience.

Interwoven through the narrative are Hopson’s own illustrations—works of art in colored pencil and ink that show Pina and the eagle Savik, of Pina’s lemming friend, of shadowed, mysterious figures who would, in time, reveal themselves to Pina and the reader. The interplay of visual storytelling and traditional storytelling add to the sense of timelessness and history that Hopson hopes to convey throughout. “It’s a middle-grade adventure story based off of traditional Iñupiaq myths and mythologies,” says Hopson. “I took that myth, and I filled it with actual culture. It’s a mix of fiction, mythology, and real Iñupiaq values and activities.”

Eagle Drums incorporates what it means to experience loss and grief, of growing up and finding confidence, and ultimately the importance of community, forgiveness, and moving forward. But originally, it started as a story that was hardly three paragraphs long. “It was extremely brief,” she says. “It started with the mythology itself, and not a whole lot of this story survived Christianity, modernization, and colonization of our people.” To expand the story into what it is today, Hopson found inspiration through her husband’s relationship with his brothers and incorporated those dynamics into the book. This, she says, helped create necessary stakes and gave the story a certain sense of urgency. “I had to add in that dynamic to explain why this boy would stay with the eagles. You would imagine that given the chance, he would run. But adding that backstory gave him a reason to stay.”

Order a copy of Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson’s Eagle Drums today. 

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For Hopson, there was the added challenge of not only maintaining reader engagement when the characters’ purpose isn’t entirely clear, but also in introducing them to something that is already resonant and culturally significant to her. She did so by dialing into universal truths of what it means to grow up. “It’s a relatable experience,” she says. “They go through it with school and growing up, they’re learning things and not always getting the big picture, where they’re not too sure why they’re learning things. That helps to keep their attention and their interest.

“There’s a lot of things that are common with kids in the story,” she adds. “Like family dynamics, relationships with parents, relationships with siblings if they have them, and how that changes as they mature. I think that helps because every kid goes through it. I see it as taking that relatable experience and I kind of coat it in chocolate or something unique and different, and a point of view that hasn’t really been seen in books their age, and that’s my culture and my experiences and our mythology.”

Eagle Drums acts as an origin story for what is known as the Iñupiaq Messenger Feast, a Native Alaskan tradition that continues today. It’s a piece of historical oral storytelling the author grew up with, and when considering introducing it to readers, she dialed into the child version of herself. “I imagined the reader I was writing to was myself,” she says. “I was lucky enough to grow up with a couple of traditional storytellers. I grew up hearing these stories and telling my younger cousins when I was in high school all these stories. These stories had the most impact on me, so when I think of these stories and I tell these stories, it is automatically in that age range.”

Her hope is that readers will walk away with a better understanding of her culture. “We exist and we are a modern part of this world,” she says. “We’re still going, we’re still thriving, the Eagle Feast is still going on to this day, so we’re still here. I grew up in the 1990s, and I’ve experienced running into people from the Lower 48—which is the lower 48 states—where they didn’t believe our culture, the Iñupiaq, were real. They thought we were mythological creatures like centaurs, and that we’re just made up. That stuck with me my whole entire life. I really want for the people who are not from my culture to take away that we exist, and our stories are interesting and fun. Maybe they could see our world the way we see it.”

But more than her hope for readers at large does she hope that future generations of Iñupiaq recognize their value and uniqueness when reading Eagle Drums. “For our own children, I hope that it brings a little bit more pride and the knowledge that we have cool things and that we are expressive and exciting, and the things we grew up on are neat—and that they are neat.”

Click to continue. 

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In this post, A. J. discusses how the writing process differed from previous projects with his new middle grade novel, Just Shy of Ordinary, his hope for readers, and more!

Name: A. J. Sass
Literary agent: Jordan Hamessley at JABberwocky Literary Agency
Book title: Just Shy of Ordinary
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Expected release date: January 30, 2024
Genre/category: Middle Grade contemporary
Previous titles: Ana on the Edge; Ellen Outside the Lines; Camp QUILTBAG (with Nicole Melleby)
Elevator pitch for the book: A 13-year-old nonbinary kid must balance attending public school for the first time while managing their anxiety in this heartfelt story that explores the connection between academic giftedness and emotional health, LGBTQIA+ identity, and Jewish heritage.

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What prompted you to write this book?

Growing up, people considered me academically gifted. To most, this would be a good thing, and to an extent it was. But I also struggled with anxiety and as-yet undiagnosed autism during my adolescence; the expectations I placed on myself to excel in school adversely impacted my emotional health.

I managed my anxiety on my own all through middle school, assuming everyone felt queasy before giving a school presentation or felt their pulse pick up when the teacher called on them in class. Then my family moved from Georgia to Minnesota midway through my freshman year of high school. A month later, I was skipped from ninth to 10th grade. Struggling to connect with my new classmates and trying to keep up with tenth grade honors classes exacerbated my anxiety.

It took me years to unpack my deeply rooted perfectionism and realize that it’s OK to ask for help when I’m struggling.

I wanted to explore this through Shai, a kid who’s always been a strong student but who is thrown for a loop due to circumstances outside of their control—mainly, their mom losing her job during the pandemic, requiring them to move in with family friends to save money. The pandemic isn’t over yet, but as I started to brainstorm this book back in 2021, the first vaccine had just been developed. People were seeking their own “new normals” and trying to figure out what that looked like. Just Shy of Ordinary was born out of my desire to explore that through the lens of a queer, neurodivergent kid who approached life a lot like I did when I was the same age.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The first inkling of an idea for this book appeared in the summer of 2020. I was in the process of co-writing the opening chapters of what would become my third novel, Camp QUILTBAG, with Nicole Melleby. That book was set in the Minnesota Northwoods, the first story I wrote in the Midwest where I spent the majority of my childhood. It made me want to write another story from a small-town Midwestern kid’s perspective.

For a year, all I knew was I wanted to set the story in Minocqua, Wisconsin, where my family visited during summer trips to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan where my grandparents lived when I was a kid. I started outlining the book and shaping the plot in summer 2021, sent a proposal to my editor in the fall, and accepted an offer of publication in early 2022. I spent most of 2022 drafting and revising the novel, while 2023 was all about copyedits, pass pages, and fine-tuning various other elements. The book releases on January 30, 2024. The process took about three and a half years from idea to publication.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

My wonderful editor, Caitlyn Averett, left editorial at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers while Just Shy of Ordinary was still in the process of being edited. Caitlyn was a fantastic editor who saw the heart of my story through an admittedly very rough first draft; her editorial feedback was invaluable as I worked through developmental edits that were in turn quite extensive. Caitlyn moved on after I’d completed line edits, and I began working with another editor, Erika Turner, starting at copy edits and through pass pages and proofreader queries.

The editor-author relationship involves a lot of trust. As an author, my stories are very personal for me and very dear to my heart. Sometimes, they can also make me feel vulnerable, because I’m often unpacking challenges I encountered when I was younger via a fictional lens. Initially, it felt unsettling to shift working relationships from someone I trusted, someone who knew and loved my story and characters as much as I did, to a new person.

Fortunately, Erika seamlessly picked up where Caitlyn left off. Their editorial approaches are unique to both of them but, like Caitlyn, Erika inherently understood the story I wanted to tell, and her guidance was invaluable to fine-tuning the story as it got closer to publication. Now I can say I had the honor of working with not one but two very talented editors on this novel.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

I was surprised by how difficult the first draft was in comparison with my past books. I sold Just Shy of Ordinary on proposal, meaning I’d written a few chapters and created a detailed outline but hadn’t yet drafted the entire manuscript at the time my editor acquired it. I’d sold past books on proposal as well but when I sat down to start drafting this one, I struggled to weave all the moving parts I’d included in my outline together in a way that felt organic.

I was a mix of emotions when I sent that initial draft to my first editor, Caitlyn. I was embarrassed by how rough it was and frustrated that I couldn’t get it more polished on my own. When Caitlyn sent me the first developmental edit letter, I wasn’t surprised that it was 17 pages long—what did surprise me was just how well Caitlyn understood the story I wanted to tell and how effective her letter was in turning my embarrassment and frustration into motivation to make improvements.

For the first time in my writing career after receiving an edit letter, I sat with Caitlyn’s feedback for a full week. I took some notes but mostly I just mulled over her notes and brainstormed how to incorporate them. Ultimately, I realized I needed to start from scratch.

I won’t say the process was easy—I don’t think any author wants to rewrite their book once they’ve already drafted 300+ pages—but in this case it felt necessary. Ultimately, the decision to rewrite from the ground up resulted in a final product I’m incredibly proud of, surprises and all.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope for a lot of things when I share my stories with readers. I hope some readers will feel seen by my main character Shai’s identities and the challenges they encounter throughout the story. I hope other readers whose identities differ from Shai’s are offered a window into another person’s experiences that allows them to empathize with others. More specific to Shai’s story, I also hope readers who might be struggling with something in their life know it’s OK to ask for help from their friends or family. Even if they may be successful in some aspects of their life, it doesn’t invalidate their struggles in other areas.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Developing your writing craft is not always going to feel like a linear process. If writing Just Shy of Ordinary taught me anything, it’s that each story is different and may present challenges I didn’t encounter writing other stories. As an example, the writing process for my third novel, Camp QUILTBAG was a night-and-day experience compared to writing Just Shy of Ordinary (which is my fourth novel). Camp QUILTBAG was a joy to write. The outline was relatively easy to convert into prose. In comparison to the 17-page letter I got for Shy, Camp’s edit letter was only 2 pages long.

At first, this made me feel like I was moving backwards. Shouldn’t each book be easier since I understand the drafting process better and have presumably improved my craft as I go?

As I made my way through the editorial process for Shy, I realized I was trying different things with it from my other projects. For the first time ever, I included poetry as part of the story, for one. I was also focusing on my character’s struggles with their mental health, which was emotionally taxing on me and made drafting it more of a challenge.

Each project is different and may have different needs. As a result, some projects may feel more difficult than others, even if you’re a seasoned writer. That’s OK. It’s all just part of your writing journey.

The post A. J. Sass: Every Writing Project is Different appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this post, Gary discusses the process of writing his new middle-grade graphic novel, K Is in Trouble, his hope for readers, and more!

Name: Gary Clement
Literary agent: Hansen Literary Agency
Book title: K Is in Trouble
Publisher: Little, Brown Ink (the graphic novel imprint of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Release date: January 16, 2024
Genre/category: Middle-grade graphic novel
Previous titles: My Winter City; Swimming, Swimming; The Great Poochini
Elevator pitch: If Franz Kafka had grown up in 1960s Toronto and attended Associated Hebrew Day School, he would be me or … if I’d grown up in 1890s Prague and attended Deutsche Knabenschule Boy’s Elementary School, I would be him.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I have long admired the work of Czech German writer Franz Kafka. My initial intention was to write/draw a nonfiction graphic novel about the events of his childhood that formed the tormented, hilariously absurd, idiosyncratic worldview of his adult writings.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication?

The short answer is approximately four years from the writing of the first story during a brief residency at The Center for Cartoon Studies till now. But I was recently going through some old sketchbooks and found notes and sketches for K dating back to at least 10 years ago!

And did the idea change during the process?

I had intended to write/draw a nonfiction graphic novel about Franz Kafka’s childhood. Instead, I ended up with a stew made of ingredients from Kafka’s childhood, my own childhood, bits and pieces from Kafka’s fictional universe, and stories of my own invention.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I think my greatest surprise was when my agent asked me who my intended audience was. What she actually asked me was, “What shelf does it go on?” I answered, somewhat unconvincingly, “Adult Fiction.” She immediately set me straight and told me, very firmly, that it was for middle-grade readers. I absolutely agree with her.

But adults can read it, too.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

There are always surprises in the evolution of any creative process I have ever undertaken! Stories and drawings always evolve from the earliest versions to the final draft and when I think of it, that is really no surprise at all. Things that I thought were indispensable were cut to improve narrative flow and new plot elements were added to enhance it.

And I ended with an entirely different book than I had originally intended.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

First: I hope that anyone who has ever felt maliciously tormented, unjustly persecuted, or unfairly treated by teachers, peers, or parents will discover that they are not alone.

Second: I have forever been inspired by artists such as William Steig, Maira Kalman, and Edward Gorey, who merged their wonderful pictures with equally wonderful language. I hope my words and pictures resonate with middle-grade (and adult!) readers.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Hold on to ALL your notes!

The post Gary Clement: Adults Can Read Middle-Grade Too appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this post, Nashae discusses what inspired her new middle-grade rom-com, Courtesy of Cupid, her hope for readers, and more!

Name: Nashae Jones
Literary agent: Chloe Seager
Book title: Courtesy of Cupid
Publisher: Simon and Schuster (Aladdin)
Release date: January 2, 2024
Genre/category: Middle-grade rom-com
Elevator pitch: In this middle-grade rom-com sprinkled with a dash of magic a girl uses her newfound ability to make people fall in love to sabotage her rival.

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What prompted you to write this book?

When I was in middle school, I was a pretty avid reader, but there was a sizeable gap between the books I loved in elementary school—The Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, and Matilda—and the books that I would come to love as an adult. At 12, I wasn’t ready for Stephen King, but I also felt like I grew out of my Madeleine L’Engle phase.

As a result, my love for reading waned in middle school. As I got older, both the young adult and middle-grade markets exploded, but there were still limited books for this liminal space between late middle grade and early young adult. And there’s even fewer of these books with BIPOC characters at the helm of the story. So, I set out to write a book that my younger self would’ve wanted to read.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I came up with the original idea for Courtesy of Cupid in January 2022. So, it will be exactly two years from the time I got the idea to the time it is officially published. Although the manuscript itself has changed more times than I can count, the actual original idea and the heart of the book remained the same.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Honestly, the whole publishing process has been a major learning experience for me. Publishing is drastically different than any idealized, romanticized version I had in my head. And for me, that makes the end result of getting to hold my book in my hands all the more satisfying.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Courtesy of Cupid was my second middle-grade book. My first book, which I had worked on for over a year, died on submission. One thing that surprised me about writing this book was how quickly I was able to write it. I was still mourning the loss of my original book, but for some reason I had a clearer picture of how to write Courtesy of Cupid. I think it was always meant to be my debut, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope the readers will find joy inside the pages of my book. The world can be a dark place, and I want my readers to be able to escape into the pages of my book where they can laugh, swoon, and witness the power of Black girl magic.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Find a community that supports you. Writing, and subsequently publishing, is such a particular journey that it’s hard to communicate your experience to people outside of the writing community. Find a group of people to both commiserate and celebrate with. I will be forever grateful for my 2024 Debut Group for being this support system for me.

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The post Nashae Jones: Writing What My Younger Self Wanted to Read appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(3 Tips for Writing Cosmic Horror That Goes Beyond.)

At night, my grandmother might tell us the tale of Lord Krishna dancing on the head of a fierce serpent king. Or my mother would tell us about the manannggal, a monster who appeared as a beautiful woman by day only to sever herself at night so that her torso could fly about the sky slurping down entrails. 

These stories often finished in the same way: “Welp. Anyway. It’s late. GOODNIGHT.”

And there I would lie, petrified, imagining a snake coiling around my ankle or the window creaking open to admit the blood-slicked tongue of a monster. It is a wonder I ever slept.

When I was little, there were few words that struck as much terror in the hearts of me and my siblings as the sentence: “Can you grab [assorted food item] from the basement?” Immediately, the three of us would point at each other.

You do it!

No, you! I went last time!

She was asking you! Not me.

You see, we knew the basement was haunted. By what—or who—it was hard to say. Sometimes it was a battalion of undead centipedes. Other times we shushed one another, convinced we heard a little girl’s giggle in the dark.

In the end, the three of us would venture to the basement together. We’d tremble at the landing, staring down the roughly carpeted steps into that camphor-scented gloam. Down the stairs we went, clutching the banister for as long as we could, hitting one light switch, then two, then crossing the tiled floor to the basement fridge or pantry where whatever our mother wanted us to retrieve was waiting for us. The moment the item was snatched, we would all race up the stairs. Sometimes on all fours.

As the oldest sibling, it was my duty to protect my brother and sister.

So, when I reached the top of the stairs first, I took it upon myself to allow the runner-up to cross to the other side before slamming the door in the straggler’s face, turning off the light and making spooky “wOoOoOoOooOo!” sounds on the other side of the door while the unlucky sibling shrieked and howled and wept.

Childhood is a scary place. Perhaps I scared my siblings because I was scared. Perhaps I was just a monster.

Often, my siblings and I sit around talking about our antics with varying degrees of horror. A few years back, once we had all solidly entered our 20s or, for me, teetered into our 30s, conversation turned to the basement of our old house. The peculiar smell of it. The corpses of insects lining the windowsill. How loud we were and how fast we would run up the stairs to avoid the entity that lived in the basement.

My brother—or maybe it was my sister, goodness I can’t remember, I am disintegrating by the day—commented: “Now I feel bad for the ghost.”

Imagine going about your day, patiently haunting and skulking about, and here come these shrieking children disrupting your unholy quiet and ruining your evening of eldritch horrors. THE NERVE.

This is the sort of sideways humor that I have always loved as a reader and a writer. Humor is a sly and vital thing, particularly when it comes to telling stories. Connoisseurs of children’s literature know that children’s fiction courageously engages with calamities of all kinds. As such, the gravest mistake we can make as authors is to condescend, thus belittling a child’s wisdom, and wrest away their ability to engage with darkness. 

But telling the truth doesn’t require a display of guts, gore, and other grotesqueries. To me, this is where the union of horror and humor proves essential, and it is ultimately what allowed me to tackle a story that I have danced around writing for years.

I am often asked (yes, mother, I am referring to you) why it has taken me so long to write a book that exclusively celebrates Filipino folklore and mythology. After all, I’ve written eight novels that drink from the roots of Hindu myths and explore my father’s heritage, so what was holding me back? In a word: colonialism.

The era of the British Raj lasted roughly 90 years. During that time, ancient Sanskrit works were translated and preserved. Christian missionaries came, but the Hindu faith continued. In contrast, the Spanish domination of the Philippines lasted more than 300 years. 

Catholicism profoundly changed the spiritual terrain of the Philippines. Native religious practices were banned. Shamans were persecuted. Stories were forgotten. I might know the names of the pre-archipelagic deities of the Philippines, but the record of stories is, at best, incomplete and, at worse, intentionally erased. What I know with true familiarity are the tales of ghosts. I know superstitions. I know the names of monsters.

I balked at the idea of turning this into a middle-grade story. How could I avoid this legacy of pain? What would I do with this inheritance of monsters? No matter where I turned, I couldn’t avoid them. Therein lay my answer. I could not avoid the ghosts and monsters. And so, I didn’t.

But what if, rather than shrieking up and down the basement staircase where The Entity of My Childhood lived, I considered what it might be like to be them? This is the perspective that informed the writing of The Spirit Glass.

Corazon’s world is rampant with ghosts. Every Sunday, she has dinner with the ghosts of her parents. Every weekend, she and her aunt sell enchantments and potions to the unearthly denizens of the Filipino Otherworld. There are ghosts from the 1521 Battle of Mactan. There are ghosts who sell sorbetes with flavors like “Schadenfreude” and “Discovering Forgotten Candy That’s Not Too Stale In Your Pocket.” There are ghosts who lived during the era of Spanish colonization, carrying wounds so deep they have chased them into the afterlife.

Check out Roshani Chokshi’s The Spirit Glass here:

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Corazon’s world has the monsters my mother told me about too. There is the capre, the giant who smokes cigars and lives in the balete tree, only this time he is a librarian. There is the fearsome manannggal too. Just like in my mother’s stories, the manannggal is a flying, severed torso who wants to slurp out your organs and hides her legs in a grove of banana trees. But she also suffers from arthritis! And she can’t trust what people eat these days and it’s affecting her cholesterol! Times are tough! Life is hard for everyone!

If there is anything I hope readers take away from the story, it is a lesson in multitudes. That which scares us does not exist in a single dimension. Things can possess more than one aspect. They can be fearsome and funny; sad and sweet; horrific and hopeful. Life is a wilderness of unknowns and, yes, this is frightening. But if we choose to look at it more than one way, then perhaps those events which are painful can, with time, become something else: precious.

The post Finding Humor Inside the Horror appeared first on Writer's Digest.

She invites you to visit her online at julieabebooks.com. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

In this post, Julie shares her most important piece of advice for writers, how her book combines a great legend with missing a loved one, and more.

Name: Julie Abe
Literary agent: Sarah Landis, Sterling Lord Literistic
Book title: Tessa Miyata Is No Hero
Publisher: Little Brown Young Readers/Hachette
Release date: August 22, 2023
Genre/category: Middle Grade Contemporary Fantasy
Previous titles: In Middle Grade: Eva Evergreen, Semi-Magical Witch; Eva Evergreen and the Cursed Witch; Alliana, Girl of Dragons. In Young Adult: The Charmed List
Elevator pitch for the book: A thrilling and charming middle grade fantasy steeped in Japanese lore and mythology. When 12-year-old Tessa Miyata accidentally unleashes an evil god, she (only a very ordinary mortal) must stop him in his tracks or Tokyo—and her family, who she loves more than anything—will be lost forever.

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What prompted you to write this book?

Sometimes, stories are so fascinating, they take root in our minds and won’t let go. Tessa Miyata Is No Hero started like that for me. A while back, while researching for my debut book (Eva Evergreen, Semi-Magical Witch), I came across the Japanese legends of Taira Masakado. He was a renegade samurai who tried to overthrow the government but was assassinated by a friend—yet, even his death didn’t stop him from being a legend.

A plot of land in one of the busiest areas of Tokyo is dedicated to Taira Masakado as a burial ground. Once, there was an attempt to build something there—his grave is in the middle of Tokyo’s financial district, after all. However, worker after worker began to fall ill, then the minister overseeing the project died under strange circumstances. With that, the project was quickly stopped. For those in buildings around his grave, all make sure to be extremely respectful, so such ill fortune won’t befall them.

There are other rumors, too—that paying respect to him and providing offerings to his shrine has led to times of great prosperity… I was fascinated with his myths and the way his existence was a part of Tokyo itself. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way a legend grows and expands, and his impact on Tokyo—and beyond. I added his name (Taira) into my first published book, but I wanted to write more about him.

At that time, I was also really missing my grandfather. I was born in Japan but moved to California at a young age, but I used to go back to visit my grandparents during summer vacations. The sweaty, humid heat, the beauty of a nighttime festival—all those moments are seared into my memory, as are the trips he and I used to take into Tokyo, going to pick up some sweets, or to his favorite soba shop. But, all too soon, he passed away before I could see him again, and I missed him—and those adventures we took together—with all my heart.

So, in a spark of inspiration, I combined those legends of Taira with my hopes of writing a fun adventure; a romp through Tokyo that would make me feel like I was there (even when I couldn’t be), and that became what is now Tessa Miyata Is No Hero.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I started writing Tessa more than half a decade ago. The core of the story has remained the same: a girl on an adventure against the backdrop of the great legends of Taira Masakado and glittering, luminescent Tokyo. The three main characters have not changed, either: Tessa Miyata, a girl who is looking for a place to belong; Jin Uehara, her somewhat enemy, but also her next door neighbor, who’s obliged to watch over her even though she’s adamant that she can take care of herself; and Kit, the troublemaking, talking kitsune, a legendary Japanese fox, who accompanies them on their adventures (slightly inspired by my grandfather). And, of course, Taira Masakado, whose legendary shadow stretches into each and every page—and is the evil god that Tessa has let loose onto Tokyo.

However, so much of it has changed, namely the adventures that Tessa goes on. With each draft, I accelerated the fun and action as much as I could, while adding mystical, magical elements.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

No matter how much I loved the story, it needed lots of work and countless redrafts. There were points where I was positive it’d never get published, and in fact, when it came time to choosing the next book to share with my editor, I regretfully knew Tessa wasn’t quite ready, so I set the draft (already rewritten multiple times) aside to work on what is now Alliana, Girl of Dragons.

However, after finishing up Alliana, I knew I wanted to start on Tessa Miyata right away—so I revised, revised, and revised again. With a new, polished draft, I was beyond excited when my editor expressed her interest and offered on Tessa Miyata.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

The biggest surprise came when I finished the mostly-final draft and realized that I’d written my grandfather into the book, ever so slightly. Kit, Tessa’s fox companion, has definite Grandpa Energy. Though my grandfather had passed away years before Tessa was published, he was my home when I was back in Japan. It made me truly happy to realize that my memories of him were as strong as ever, and that his legacy was threaded into the very words of the story I love so much.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I call Tessa Miyata “the cheapest ticket you can get to Japan.” Though it’s not an airplane ticket, within the pages of this book, you can taste salty rice balls, run through the magnificent Meiji Shrine, and feel like you’ve found your own magical gateway into the world of Tokyo’s gods and legends.

I want readers to feel like they’ve spent a summer vacation in Japan—muggy heat, awesome convenience stores, always-on-time trains and all—and close the last page feeling refreshed—but perhaps curious to visit Japan themselves.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Refill your well.

I’ve been so, so guilty of not taking care of myself, but it’s absolutely necessary as a creative. I’ve got my full-time day job, family to take care of, and writing two books a year (along with Tessa Miyata, I have a young adult book, Our Cursed Love, releasing from Macmillan/Wednesday Books later this year, and I released two books last year).

My advice is to find the things that bring you happiness and truly take joy in them. Whether it’s watching anime (any Oshi no Ko fans out there?) to baking (time to perfect my matcha cupcakes) to travel (I finally got to go back to Japan for my dear friend’s wedding!), I’ve been much more cognizant of needing to refill my well and find joy—that, in turn, sparks my creativity so I can write stronger, better books!

[Click to continue.]

The post Julie Abe: Refill Your Well and Find Joy in Writing appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Well, given that we are two decidedly not-middle-grade-age people who spend a lot of time at their laptops, the answer is a simple no. But, that makes writing an action-adventure story for middle-graders all the more fun.

In a middle-grade adventure tale, the characters aren’t like Mission Impossible’s Ethan Hunt or even the extended family of heroes in the Fast & Furious franchise—they haven’t done this kind of thing a million times before. So even though we’re older than our main characters Owen, Rose, and Nas, we bring a fresh perspective to action; we can have a ton of fun daydreaming scenes that are vastly different from our norm. (The added bonus is we avoid the risky peril of climbing one of Paris’s tallest statues or journeying to the depths of the Catacombs; we’re much better at Paris activities like eating crusty bread.)

But, before any writer dives into a middle-grade action novel, it’s a good idea to think about certain essentials. These are our six best tips to consider before you dive into your story.

Get your big idea.

While characters will always drive your story, for this adventure, we felt it was essential to know what the quest was before we began writing. In The Jules Verne Prophecy, we decided that Jules Verne—who is interesting not only for his writing but also for all the innovations his fiction predicted—had hidden a treasure in Paris, and that kids were going to find it.

Maybe you already have your big idea or there’s a hint of one nagging at the corners of your brain. Before you get into the details, come up with a one-sentence description of what your story is.

Character counts!

No matter how excellent your story idea is (see tip one), few readers will care if they can’t connect with the characters. This isn’t to say that every one of your characters has to make perfect decisions—in fact, it’s probably more human and relatable if they don’t. But develop characters with a mind toward what about your characters can add dimension to your plotline.

Owen Godfrey, for example, is a 13-year-old who did not want to get dragged to Paris for the summer and then he finds himself at the center of a really wild adventure because of the Jules Verne book he and his friends found. You want kids to understand how this character would go from really wishing he could just play video games and skateboard all summer to deciding he’s going to take up an epic, but possibly dangerous, mission. He was fun for us to write because there were moments in the manuscript where the challenge of the plot point wasn’t only solving the mystery but also giving Owen reasons to want to pursue the mystery’s solution.

Your characters should give you room to work through their motivations on the page, instead of being pawns that you move around the story without considering their emotions and drives. And, to reiterate here, Owen is not perfect. Neither are Rose or Nas.

Owen makes decisions that aren’t always smart or rational—he wouldn’t even be in the Jules Verne seminar that kicks off the adventure if not for tearing up a class paper out of anger at his mom—but your characters’ imperfections and less-than-stellar decision making not only make them more real and relatable, they help drive plot points.

Know your locale.

In our book, Paris plays a huge role, and the city has so many interesting places and landmarks to include. Whether you’re writing about a real place, a made-up city, or a real place where you’ve taken some liberties with what’s there, considering where you want your characters to go and how you can use all of your setting’s offerings to create big set pieces is essential.

The sky is the limit (as you’ll note when you reach a certain hot-air balloon scene in our book); in books, no one will tell you an over-the-top action scene at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or hopping boats across the Seine are over budget, so use everything on the map (real or fictional) to make your story thrilling.

Order a copy of The Jules Verne Prophecy by Larry Schwarz and Iva-Marie Palmer today. 

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Don’t make it too easy.

Because our book is set in Paris and involves an old book that serves as its own kind of treasure map, there’s adventure built in, but an antagonist or two or three never hurts. Pitting your heroes against someone who’s after what they’re after—or who at least seems to be—makes it easier to write scenes that feel urgent and exciting.

Our book has been compared to The Goonies, and in that movie, the kids had to outfox the Fratellis, initially believed Sloth was a bad guy, and had to race against the clock to secure enough money to save their houses from real estate developers before the clock runs out. Throw problems and dilemmas—villains, foils, preadolescent panics—at your characters that go beyond the quest at hand.

Think cinematically.

An action-adventure book needs action and adventure. If your characters are standing in place talking a lot to move the story along, think about the film version—no one goes to an Indiana Jones movie to watch him lecture his college classes.

Thinking about the scenes in a filmic way isn’t so that your book will be turned into a movie, even if that’s your hoped-for outcome someday, but it’s essential for creating the kind of propulsive and thrilling moments that middle-grade readers are seeking when they pick up your book. This ties into the above tip about setting.

Got jokes? (Or other moments of connection?)

Humans are interesting. Even when imperiled—or maybe especially when they are—they’re prone to cracking wise. (It can’t be just us.) Make sure you work in a pass for your drafts during which you’re lightening the mood—through a dialogue exchange or a narrative observation.

The Jules Verne Prophecy, for example, centers on three more or less everyday kids—the way they approach the book’s more death-defying or fantastical moments isn’t the same way a professional explorer or spy or special agent would approach them. We made sure that Owen, Nas, and Rose each had time to react to the outlandish—and sometimes panic-inducing—situations they were in.

Spend time in your revisions ensuring your characters feel truthful and authentic in even the most jaw-dropping scenes so that your readers can connect with them. Because no matter how awesome your story and setting are, connection with characters is what hooks readers—and makes them eager for your sequel!

[Click to continue.]

The post 6 Secrets for Writing a Middle-Grade Action-Adventure Novel appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this country right now, there are two helper professions on the front lines of the escalating threat to our freedom to read: teachers and librarians—and they need help. Or, should I say, we need help.

In addition to being a librarian myself, I’m also the author of the Drew Leclair mysteries, a new mystery series for middle-grade readers. When I set out to write these books, I was focused on one thing: writing books that would make kids feel seen. Growing up, I faced a lot of challenges: I was chronically ill and had social anxiety to the point of missing days and even weeks of school. While I was never formally diagnosed, I was frequently labeled as “ADD” by my teachers who would often tell my parents I had my head “in the clouds” and never on the lesson. As a result of all of this, I was the target of daily, systematic bullying throughout elementary school. The message was clear: you’re different. And that’s a bad thing.

I was (and am) also queer, a fact that I felt I had no choice but to hide when I was already different in so many ways. Writing my debut book, Drew Leclair Gets a Clue, I wanted to write a happier ending for a kid who faced all that. While I’ve always loved mysteries and dreamed of writing them myself, the passion for writing kid’s books was born in my desire to correct an injustice. My aim through it all was the same: I wanted to uplift kids. I wanted them to feel good about being themselves.

Order Katryn Bury’s newest book, Drew Leclair Crushes the Case, today. 

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Imagine my surprise when I discovered that some people were asking for my fun, middle-grade mystery to be removed from a public library in Alabama for “inappropriate” content. And that’s just the one that made the news. Apparently, after Drew Leclair Gets a Clue was featured on the American Library Association’s Rainbow List, it caught the attention of some parents because Drew Leclair is questioning whether she likes boys or girls. When I first heard the news, I almost laughed. My book? The book I actually worried wouldn’t be gay enough to make lists, or be accepted as a queer title? The same book where my main character thinks kissing is gross (unlike her straight friends) and holding hands is asking for a virus? Huh?

But, after letting the news sink in, I admit I felt a familiar pang that took me right back to those days being bullied in grade school. What these parents were saying was so similar to what I’d heard growing up: that kids needed “protection” from queerness—even if it was at their own expense. It was at that moment that I remembered the shame I felt like it was yesterday. People weren’t upset about any content. My character was the content. My character, merely by being herself, was dangerous. Thinking of kids growing up with that shame devastated me. This wasn’t about “moving a book to a more appropriate place”—a regular line used by people who want to convince people they aren’t interested in book bans. This was about erasure. It was about stripping kids of their freedom of expression from the ground up.

The problems with this are many, but here’s an important one to note. If these book bans succeed in changing laws and policies, we’re in a whole lot more trouble. I had a conversation with the remarkable author, Ellen Oh recently, who spoke to me about how many kids didn’t see book banning as a priority. She was able to help them see every other freedom that could fall with the freedom to read. The problem with book banning is books, but it isn’t only books. It’s that the freedom to read is tied up with every other freedom. If this falls, we are looking at a grim future and a long fight.

As a kids’ author, librarian, parent, and former teacher, I’m in a unique place to see just how under threat these freedoms are. Teachers are being held hostage by escalating laws that prevent them from teaching history, social science, and even showing PG-rated Disney movies at school without the threat of being fired. This is all while navigating a job that is much more dangerous than it used to be with the rise in school shootings. Librarians are on the front lines too—risking their jobs and even arrest to provide safe and equitable access to books.

Last month, I joined librarians in blocking a group of far-right protesters from filming children (including my own) at a drag queen story hour. They were yelling hate speech, all while taking video of the kids at the event. To say it was frightening is an understatement, although it was an event that was later framed as “peaceful” on the local news. Librarians, I saw that day, are literally having to put their bodies on the line to protect our freedom.

Something that both of these roles have in common is that they are “helper” professions. Like the ones that gave a young Fred Rogers comfort as a child. Both professions pay markedly less than private salaries, and most of the jobs in the field require years of education in child development and literacy. People in helper professions often feel a sort of “calling” to dedicate their lives to others. I know I feel that call to service as a public librarian today. During the pandemic, librarians fought tooth and nail to make sure the public had access to our books. We masked up all day, bundling together recommended books for families who were struggling, and doing our best to fulfill our duty to the public while following strict health guidelines.

As I think about Fred Rogers, and that shred of hope we give children in dark times, I’m also thinking about my role as a parent. To me, it’s simple. We cannot look for the helpers if they’re not there. To make sure they are, we need to use our voices to stand with them. The helpers need our help right now. And I, for one, am ready to use my words and join them.

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