Craft Articles
Join us in exploring others’ craft and building our own.
Here you will find explorations of mentor texts – articles that dive into specific craft elements in published books, interviews with authors, and tips on growing and improving as a writer.
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Creating a Character Readers Love: Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee
Since Lee uses first-person point of view to tell her stories, it’s her main character’s voice that’s in the driver’s seat. Reading her novels is a masterclass in how to do first-person narration well. However, you can use these techniques with third-person and even with omniscient narration. It’s all about elevating your prose to do more than just tell the reader what’s happening.
Empathy and Irony: A Q&A with Stacey Lee
Empathy has its drawbacks, especially when reading the news, but on the plus side, I think it helps me create deeper characters. The secret for creating unforgettable characters is to give them impossible choices.
How to Write a Crowd Scene: Rita Williams-Garcia’s A Sitting in St. James
Rita Williams-Garcia masters the crowd scene--a dinner at the midpoint of the book. In a movie, it’s easy to see the crowd and feel the energy in the room. In fiction, it’s more complicated--you need to balance the minute and individual with the group so that readers feel grounded in the environment and in the particular characters’ interactions.
It Starts with a Daydream: A Q&A with Rita Williams-Garcia
I fully transport myself from my reality into the world that I seek to create. In a word, I daydream. Deeply. I put myself with the character, close to the character, sometimes in the character, to taste the dirt when they're in the dust storm or feel the scratchy bristles of cane stalk whip my face. Then I write it. Later, I make adjustments, because what I have to understand is different from what the reader should feel. Sometimes I have to rein it in or pull back. It's not always the point that the reader should feel each and everything—but the writer must!
Making a Mystery that Mystifies: Part 2
Good mysteries are fun because they keep the reader guessing. One of the most important keys of writing a mystery is writing the story so the reader can try to solve it. Nothing’s more annoying than not being given clues to solve the mystery unless those clues are so obvious that there is no real mystery to be solved. The best way to achieve both goals is to give quality clues but constantly keep the reader guessing so they don’t recognize the clues for what they are.
Making a Mystery that Mystifies: Part 1
A compelling mystery must engage the reader in solving the mystery, and the best ways to do so are to 1) start the mystery off quick, 2) capture attention with consequential stakes, 3) increase tension, 4) keep the reader guessing, and 5) finish strong.
Humor and Heartache: Mary Winn Heider's Losers at the Center of the Galaxy
If you’d like a lesson in the unexpected you’d be hard-pressed to find a better model than Losers. Instead, we’re going to look at how despite (or with the assistance of) all the silly, Heider is able to put an ache and a depth into the stories of Winston and Louise.
The Wacky and the Unexpected: Q&A with Mary Winn Heider
"The biggest leap for me in my writing life happened when I got comfortable with failure. I wrote some disastrous things in grad school. But before that, my writing had gotten stagnant because I was too anxious about getting it right all the time. Allowing myself to fail gave me the freedom to take risks and make mistakes. Those mistakes, in turn, taught me how to write the way I want to write."
Backstory in a Fast-Paced Novel: Amari and the Night Brothers by B. B. Alston
Amari and the Night Brothers by B. B. Alston is an excellent mentor text for how to interweave backstory, using multiple techniques, without slowing down the story one bit.
Backstory for Writers
As writers, we hear all the time that you absolutely have to develop your characters’ backstories. We can spend a lot of time laboring over our characters’ pasts--creating, inventing, discovering--only to have someone read a draft and tell us: “Take out all the backstory!” Too much backstory can drag the pace of a story. Too little, and characters seem unmoored and unmotivated. So what to do?
Confessions of a (Not So) Reformed Pantser
"I understand more clearly that an outline need not be a construct that dominates my writing, a rigid form that must be adhered to, but it can be a tool to help manage what I write, to help me not get distracted or sidetracked, and instead work toward my goal--even if that goal isn’t completely clear to me as I shuffle, twist, and rearrange things on the page, the way I am prone to do."
Using Setting to Externalize the Internal: Words Composed of Sea and Sky by Erica George
As writers, we can look to our settings to provide a wealth of tools to not only add depth to the story but to underline the experiences of the characters, their feelings, their motivations, their desires.
Composing Words: a Q&A with Erica George
"I love that when I have a question, I can reach out and pick the brilliant brains of other talented kidlit writers. I’m always amazed at how quickly plot or character problems can be solved when you get out of your own head. I also love how willing people are to share great examples of kidlit to use as mentor texts."
SUMMER RETROSPECTIVE: TAKING A PAGE OUT OF CLASSIC MYSTERIES TO KEEP TENSION ALIVE AND WELL
To find good mentor text for “tension till the bitter end,” I went directly to one of my most beloved authors—Agatha Christie. Yes, I know. She’s not a middle grade author. However, when I was in my middle grade years, I devoured her books. Surely, that counts. Plus, for a mentor text, why not go straight to the Queen of Mystery?
SUMMER RETROSPECTIVE: OPENING LINES IN JEWELL PARKER RHODES’ “TOWERS FALLING”
Jewell Parker Rhodes uses five different types of opening lines in her novel Towers Falling. Great mentor text for how to hook a reader in the beginning of a scene.
It’s All About the Set-Up: Secrets of the Sea by Evan Griffith
In Secrets of the Sea, Evan Griffith keeps the story active by providing context to explain how important her work was, providing detailed descriptions and examples to prove his points about Jeanne, and employing effective sentences at the ends of spreads that make readers want to turn the page. In each instance, he sets up expectations, context, or questions that lead readers through a delightful story.
The Secrets to a Great Non-Fiction Picture Book: Q&A with author Evan Griffith
"This isn’t specific to PB writers, but I would just say to any writer: Be kind to yourself and your drafts. Many writers, myself included, struggle with self-criticism or perfectionism, so I try to give myself this advice daily. First drafts can and should be messy. Second and third and seventh drafts, too. There is beauty in the mess. Writing is mostly re-writing. When you’re feeling discouraged, reach out to some writer friends for support. Seek community."
SUMMER RETROSPECTIVE: SPARE AND LYRICAL STORYTELLING: FULL CICADA MOON, A NOVEL IN VERSE
Verse happily sacrifices parts of the story to the reader's imagination in an effort to draw a more immediate emotional response.
SUMMER RETROSPECTIVE: RELATABLE RELATIONSHIPS IN HELLO, UNIVERSE BY ERIN ENTRADA KELLY
Erin Entrada Kelly masterfully sets up a series of relationships that require her introverted main character, Virgil, to take a stand or forever feel like a failure.
SUMMER RETROSPECTIVE: HERO’S JOURNEY ARCHETYPES IN BOOK SCAVENGER BY JENNIFER CHAMBLISS BERTMAN
By identifying archetypes in my story, I figure out how to strengthen the conflicts as I revise. In researching this blog post, I realized that I’d chosen the wrong character to be the Shadow in the novel I’m currently writing. Understanding the role of the Shadow archetype, and selecting a more appropriate character to play it, made my book’s external plot and main character’s growth path stronger.