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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Emotional Resonance Is Key: A Q&A with Tanita S. Davis
A lot of people want to be allies, or seen as friendly and open to the idea of friendship across races, cultures and social strata. This idea of “just talk to each other” may seem like it’s wildly oversimplified, but it turns out that if you want to know someone, it really is that simple. You may be nothing like a diehard gardener or wide-eyed tween, but if you’re willing to see a potential connection between the two of you, it will be there.
KidLit Craft Goes to the Movies: The Emotional Antagonist in Eddie the Eagle
Some great stories make use of what Melanie Jacobson calls the emotional antagonist. The emotional antagonist is on the protagonist’s side, but the protagonist doesn’t have their approval or support.Jacobson believes emotional antagonist can be a powerful addition to a book because it gives a story an extra satisfying ending–a resolution with the emotional antagonist. We can see the emotional antagonist in action in Eddie the Eagle (2015).
Picture Book Poetry: The Reverso Poem in AMAH FARAWAY by Margaret Chiu Greanias
Margaret Chiu Greanias’s new picture book, Amah Faraway, illustrated by Tracy Subisak, matches the reverso form with the story of a girl and her grandmother who begin worlds apart (one in the US and one in Taiwan) in a way that enriches both the story and the form.
Taking Poetic Risks: A Q&A with Margaret Chiu Greanias
Since I began writing picture books, I've longed to tell the story of my relationship with my Amah (grandmother, in Taiwanese). Even though we saw each other infrequently, I adored her. But like Kylie, my main character in Amah Faraway, I always felt a bit shy at the start of our visits--due to my own cautious nature, the distance, language barrier, and cultural differences.
Finding Your Book--in the Bookstore
Knowing where my book would sit on a shelf and what books it would be friends with helped me think more clearly about my revision. When I’m faced with a choice, I can consider what would sit well in the spot I found for it.
Celebrate Your Awesomeness by Getting Back to Work
You’re reading this blog post because you want something different. You can bond with friends over not working later. Right here, right now, you’d like to work. So let’s go. Get to work!
What We Read in 2021: Middle Grade
This blog grew out of a middle grade book group for writers, held in Menlo Park, California, and we're still going strong. Each month, we discuss a middle grade book with an eye to craft. (Last year, I wrote about strategies for starting your own craft book group.) Here's our list of books from 2021, with a sneak peek at our first few books of 2022. We hope they inspire your reading!
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."