279. Writing Middle Grade Fiction with Polly Holyoke

Author and teacher Polly Holyoke talks about what middle grade fiction is, how to successfully develop a middle grade story, and why it is so important for younger audiences.
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Check out Polly's website:
http://www.pollyholyoke.com/

Follow Polly on her socials:
https://instagram.com/pollyholyoke/
https://twitter.com/PollyHolyoke
https://facebook.com/PollyHolyokeAuthor

Transcript

Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the podcast that takes a whole person approach to everything related to both writing and editing. Today, Polly Holyoke is going to join the show, and she's a children's book author! She writes fantasy adventures featuring mythical creatures. And she's also really passionate about getting kids excited about reading and writing. This is "Writing Middle Grade Fiction."

Jennia: Well, thanks for being here, Polly!

Polly Holyoke: I have been looking forward to this for weeks. We're going to be talking about some of my favorite topics.

Jennia: Oh good. I have too, because as we talked about a little bit over email before the show, we don't really see middle grade get the same attention that we do with adult fiction or really any other audience. Why do you think that is?

Polly Holyoke: Well, I think as a culture we just don't value kids (laughs) and their opinions and their value the way we should. I have been fortunate enough to go to hundreds of schools because I've been on enough state lists, and I have a teaching background. So I don't think people realize when you are promoting children's books, a lot of times going to schools and connecting with school librarians is a really important part of the job.

Jennia: Mmm.

Polly Holyoke: And I'm just astonished how often fourth, fifth, and sixth graders can be so mature. Well, one moment they might be barking at a dog (both laugh) and crawling around the floor, but the next moment they can just be incredibly wise. And I think we do need to listen to kids more often. For awhile, middle grade was a really hot part of the market. It's interesting that it has fallen off in the last couple of years. I'm not quite sure what the answer would be to that or the reasons for that, but I think that we should be respecting kids more. And it's fabulous to have a discussion like this where we really talk about that age group and how important it is to be writing to that age group.

Jennia: Yeah, I completely agree. And I like that you've brought up even speaking to the children. Because that's something else that came up, and that's the importance of knowing that they're your audience and then using them as your feedback group or your beta readers. So what are some of the insights you think you get from them versus if you'd only focused on, for instance, maybe using their parents as a focus group?

Polly Holyoke: So I did sort of write on my own for a long time. I did not get an MFA. I did not go to a writing school. I just came out of college and got a teaching certificate. And then I had summers free, and I thought, "You know, what? I'll just try writing a book. How hard could that be?" (laughs) Turned out to be a little harder than I thought it was going to be. But I think a mistake a lot of starting out, new writers might make is thinking that parents and family and friends can give you the kind of feedback that professionals can. So before we even talk about kid beta readers, friends are just going to be really nice. And what you actually want are people who are not perhaps as kind (Jennia laughs). You want people who are honest, and can really say, "This works and this doesn't work."

Jennia: Mhm.

Polly Holyoke: The very best thing is to get feedback from professionals. Well, how do you do that? You sign up for writing conferences and then you sign up for the critiques, if they are offered. You go into contests and you try to get your book considered. You know, some of the big time contests are judged by editors and agents, and folks who really, really can give you the right feedback. But back to middle grade. So I did figure out fairly early on that for me, making sure I had some kid beta readers was really, really helpful. And they just pick up the oddest things. But it's always good. Sometimes they'll say, "This is great, this is great." But they find special visual details. So in Skyriders, for example—

Jennia: Mhm.

Polly Holyoke: —which is my latest series with Viking Children's Books, it's definitely a fantasy And in it there are these terrible three headed monsters called Chimerae. And I thought I described them quite clearly. And one of my beta readers said, "You know, I just can't really see these things." You know, "What do they look like? What do they look like?" It's like, "Oh! Okay." So I went back and I looked at all the scenes where I had Chimerae in the first book and as I wrote them to make them more obvious and more clear and more specific for my reader, they became more clear in my own mind. So it was a terrific exercise. And since, of course I get these wonderful reviews that say, "Oh, this is so specific and this is so real." So I owe that little beta reader. In fact, I think he gets a little shout out in one of my books for being so perceptive and pushing me to do a better job on my description.

Jennia: Yeah, one thing too that I think is really important with anyone who's writing for any sort of child audience is—and it's easy to forget that they don't think the way we do and their perceptions of the world are going to differ so greatly, not just because we've been around longer and we've had more time to make these observations and analyze them, but just their brains work differently. You know, they're not at that same level that we're at. And it's not that this is bad or good. It's just a different way of processing. And then having to keep that in mind also as we write. But I love that you have learned from your beta reader. And I really—that's kind of the whole point. We don't want it to just be, "Oh, someone's criticizing my work or they don't like, this," but taking that feedback and really absorbing it so that we can improve our own craft.

Polly Holyoke: Kind of taking that to the whole point of critique groups. I'm in one right now where—well, it's more of a writers' group. It's not officially critique group. And it just stuns me when people don't internalize good advice they're given or they fight against it. But, you know, they bring their stuff and they just want to read it, and they say they want a critique, but then they just fight against it—

Jennia: Mhm.

Polly Holyoke: —And I have been a pro in this business for a long time, and so I'm going to listen. If somebody has taken the time to read my stuff or listen to my chapter, I am definitely going to listen to what they have to say, whether they're in fifth grade or whether they're 50 years old (laughs). And you can miss so much. And I think also when people get that feedback, if you're lucky enough to get a personalized response, if you made a submission to a publishing house or you've made a submission to an agent, you really, really want to think about what they've said. You are, number one, very lucky to have gotten a personalized response. It means that you are running away, but that you really need to think about it instead of saying, "Oh no, oh no, oh no." And maybe that's your first reaction, is this person has no idea what I'm trying to accomplish. And, boy, if you get two personalized letters on a submission from different sources and they say the same thing, that's about the time you may have to change some part of your project.

Jennia: Yeah. So well said. So if we go back not to the writer you are now, but who you were as a child. Did anything that you read then influence what you write about today?

Polly Holyoke: Oh I would say I just got sort of hooked on fantasy, thanks to Mrs. McNair in fourth grade. That was really the moment. She read to us The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—

Jennia: Oh yes.

Polly Holyoke: —and within a couple of days, you know, that was just a reading time every day. I just couldn't wait for her to open up The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And it just—it was this entry into a magical world where animals talked. But I think what was more exciting was that kids could have so much power and be so important in that world. Peter gets a sword and a shield, and Susan gets a horn and bows and arrows. They're allowed to go do things and become leaders and save the day. And certainly what I'm writing, I see that I do that—certainly in science fiction and in my fantasy novels. You know, my kids get to really, really make a difference—

Jennia: Mhm.

Polly Holyoke: —at an age where kids don't have a great deal of power in their families and at their schools. They are—if you follow a kid—I actually shadowed a kid once at school when I was a teacher. And they are told what to do all day long. Hurry up. Take your pencils out. Get your books out. They're ordered around. And then the parents kind of do the same thing, because that's just what being a kid is kind of about at fourth and fifth and sixth grades. But when they read a book about fantasy characters, they get to go on the adventure with the protagonists. And then they get to fight with a sword and shield, or ride horses, or really make a difference. And I think that may be some of the magic and some of the pull. Certainly was for me. For going back to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a funny story would be that my dad then read The Hobbit to me and—[my] family was in a Tolkien stage. And that went really well and we loved it. And I think this was by fifth or sixth grade. But then we started on The Fellowship of the Ring and I caught him reading ahead of me (Jennia laughs). This was a terribly disillusioning moment. I thought we were experiencing Frodo's journey together—

Jennia: Yes! The betrayal (laughs).

Polly Holyoke: —and then I found him sneaking pages without me. And after that I started reading The Fellowship of the Ring myself. I think that was the end of—

Jennia: Well, I think you almost had to. What other choice did you have, really? (both laugh)

Polly Holyoke: Right. It's kind of a funny moment. But yes, I think Tolkien, of course, is the world builder of all world builders. I just would say to the fantasy writers out there, you don't have to go into that kind of depth to still write a really fabulous fantasy novel.

Jennia: Yes, I agree.

Polly Holyoke: But at the same time, you probably should be reading Tolkien at some point just to get an idea of how thorough world building can be done. But, yes, most of us will never measure up to that standard.

Jennia: No, that's a good reminder. And I think that's true of almost any genre, for instance, Agatha Christie, if you're going to write a mystery or even now a psychological thriller. Just seeing where some of these tropes and ideas first originated from and how that's influenced that genre today, to see just what we're taking this from.

Polly Holyoke: I think that's such great advice. You should know the lay of the land. You should know the tropes. And that makes it possible for you to choose which ones you want to emulate or which ones you want to borrow and which ones you're going to discard. Or which ones you really want to avoid. But you can't know all that. So that would lead us to, you know, do you want to chase the market? (laughs)

Jennia: Oh yes. That's an excellent point.

Polly Holyoke: And that's another sort of advice I have for folks, is that you don't want to—you should be aware of market trends, but at the same time, you kind of need to do your own twist or your own version of it. My first children's series that sold, sold to Disney Hyperion. It was a science fiction series about genetically engineered kids who have to go live in the ocean (laughs). And it was [a] pretty far out story, but it still is selling quite well. This is, you know, a series that's been out for ten years. It's called The Neptune Project. It's the first book, and it was a time. When I wrote that I was definitely—not emulating The Hunger Games, but I was aware that dystopian fiction was selling really well—

Jennia: Mhm.

Polly Holyoke: —Like, "Ooh." Well, dystopian is just a flavor of science fiction and I love science fiction. You got to write what you love, by the way. We'll talk more about that. I was like,, "Okay, I think I could do this, but how can I give it a fresh twist? I've never seen one set in the ocean." And I did a lot of scuba diving with my husband. I thought, "You know what? I've never really seen one set in the sea." Now, that's become more common now, but I was one of the very first ones to do it. And I could describe the ocean well, because I've actually been down there. But anyway, I was aware that the trend was dystopian was popular, but I also knew I had to give it a fresh twist, or I was just going to be in the pile that—you know, the submission pile with everybody else—

Jennia: Right, exactly.

Polly Holyoke: —By setting it in motion, I think it gave it enough of a fresh look that it was snapped up quite quickly, and it went to auction, etc., etc.

Jennia: So how do you advise people to look for some of these fresh twists? Because it sounds really easy when you just say, "Oh, look for a fresh twist." But I think sometimes when we get down to actually trying to do that, it feels like we're still then just rehashing those same ideas over and over again.

Polly Holyoke: I think true creativity comes when you smash two very different ideas together. I'll go to Skyriders, which is my current series that's out with Viking Children's Books. So Skyriders is a story of brave young couriers on their flying horses, delivering the mail until these terrible Chimerae creatures return. So Chimerae are basically the terrible three-headed monsters that Belarathon and Pegasus fought in the first Greek myth. I think Skyriders came from a coup—different things. Like, first, I knew I kind of wanted to do a Game of Thrones for middle school without the sex and the violence. I wanted to do a great big, you know, empire. It's like, "Okay, so, oh! What if I've if. always loved the Pony Express? What if there were young riders on their flying horses delivering the mail across this vast country? And you have to be kind of young and adventuresome to deliver the mail and to be a pony express rider, especially on a flying—on a flying horse, you have to be light and young and agile." And so that sort of—that kind of got going. No, let's really go with the myth. Let's put Pegasus myth and go back to the Chimerae, plus the Pony Express. I mean, those are two really far apart ideas.

Jennia: Yeah, they are.

Polly Holyoke: And yet they really worked. And so these young riders on their flying horses, and particularly my heroine, she's the only one that remembers how to fight them properly. The Chimerae were a terrible problem 300 years before. And her uncle has saved all this Chimerae fighting lore. So what could have been a pretty traditional fantasy, I'm getting a lot of, "Oh, this is a really cool idea." Well, it's a really cool idea because it's actually two very different things mushed together. And then I'd say The Neptune Project came out of a concern for genetic engineering. I mean, I follow the ideas. I think you need to read a lot and then jot down ideas as they come to you. So I knew that I wanted to do something about genetic engineering, and I really was concerned about climate change. Oh, and I needed to make money, but that's a separate thing (both laugh). So, yes, how do people come up with a new idea? I think that you have some idea of what you want to write, and then you just need to let it simmer for a while. And read, listen to things, watch TV. I mean, Suzanne Collins said that, you know, The Hunger Games came from watching the news and then watching reality TV. And so the idea of putting together war and news reports and reality TV came up with one of our most successful science fiction books in the last decade.

Jennia: I mean, even just from what you said about your own writing and then that tidbit from Suzanne Collins, it really just sounds like you can find inspiration everywhere around you and even just think about your own personal interests. And then how can you add a twist to that, such as the Pony Express? I mean, it works incredibly well in the series. And even though you can see the parallels to the original "Pony Express," I'm not sure it's something that I would have instantly come to on my own and thought, "Oh, this is obviously where the inspiration came from."

Polly Holyoke: And it's been a lot of fun. lot of fun. But I do really believe in keeping notes and keeping journals. I think you have lots of ideas in your twenties and your thirties. You need to hold on to those because, you know, here I am writing a little bit later in life and find that my craft is getting better and better. So I'm selling more frequently because my craft is so good. But it's a little harder to come up with the ideas. So hold on to those ideas, because if you've got a journal with these crazy ideas that come to you, you can always go back, and maybe you find an idea on page five, and then you combine it with an idea on page 30, and there you've got something fresh and new. You certainly need to. And this is some of the advice I give to children and students and writers in general. You need to leave yourself time to daydream.

Jennia: Yes.

Polly Holyoke: It breaks my heart to see kids everywhere on their phones. Kids in restaurants on their phones, kids on airplanes on their iPads, and they're, you know, on their screens. We're changing the brains of the future, for sure.

Jennia: Yes.

Polly Holyoke: But when I go to schools, my message is, "You need to read more, you need to write," and there are lots of fun ways to get into writing. You need to unplug from the gadgets. And I always use me as an example. If I go home after [a] school visit, and I turn on my computer and I start answering email, I will not write anything new. I will be writing a [unintelligible word].

Jennia: Mmm.

Polly Holyoke: In fact, I think Judy Blume said something like, she can't open email. She can only write until noon every day. She will not look at that other stuff, because she will get sucked into it [indecipherable]. So she's unplugging from the distractions. So you need to unplug from the fun stuff and the distractions to leave yourself more time to daydream. And daydreaming, I tell kids, is the same thing—it's spacing out, it's zoning out, it's letting your mind go blank, and that's when new ideas pop into your head. But if your head is always getting messages and always being programmed and you're hearing stuff, if you can clear all that out and practice daydreaming. We do not value daydreaming enough. Even if you want to be a scientist or you want to be a mathematician—

Jennia: Mhm.

Polly Holyoke: —you have to have that ability to kind of zone out of let your mind drift. And that's when new ideas come into your head.

Jennia: I think that's great advice for anyone who's writing of any age, or, I mean, anyone who's involved at all in any sort of creative sphere. Or, like you said, scientists or engineers, where they still have to have that bit of creativity or thinking beyond what they already know, just so we're not unduly influenced by what's already out there.

Polly Holyoke: Yeah, but it's hard to find that time, and maybe there's a time of day that you are more creative. I find a lot of great ideas pop into my head when I'm walking. There's no question. When I'm active, I've got oxygen going through my brain. If I get stumped in the section that I'm writing, I get up. And I move around. And if doing a few chores in the house don't clear the brain, then I definitely go out there and walk and let my mind drift. And it's amazing how often at the end of a walk, the solution to that scene might come to me, or I skip ahead to the most interesting scene that's coming up, because if that scene's not working, I have to still keep writing it for a certain. I set myself a word count for every day. Different people do that differently. But if I can get to my 2000 words a day, and I don't necessarily have to do it in that linear progression. I can always skip ahead to another scene.

Jennia: Well, when you are writing for this audience, and you do have all these ideas that are percolating and taking shape, how do you make sure that you are writing in a way that is going to be relatable to them, but also age appropriate?

Polly Holyoke: That is a tough one. There are some rules to this middle grade genre, and I think it's good that we kind of go there.

Jennia: Mhm.

Polly Holyoke: —Middle grade stories tend to be more about family and friends and the kids' immediate world around them. One way to get in touch with that is to really think about what you were doing, what you cared about in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. You have to time travel a little bit, put yourself in a time capsule, and spend some time thinking about you, what your worries were, what your concerns were. And then if your story tends to have either a lot of violence, if it's getting very hot and heavy romance wise, they're just those kind of those tougher topics, it might be that you're edging into young adult. I think we should have older middle grade because I do think that there's a real need for stories.

Jennia: Oh yeah, there's such a jump in what they're able to handle emotionally and be able to process. And even just how they socialize differs so greatly just within this short two-year time span.

Polly Holyoke: How to write for middle grade? Do be aware of the language that—publishers have pretty strict guidelines about what you can say and what you can't say if you're writing for middle grade. And this just cracks me up, because if you walk down the hall in any middle school or any elementary school in America—

Jennia: Mhm.

Polly Holyoke: —you are going to hear language that maybe your grandmother—(laughs) would make your grandmother blush or make you blush. I mean, these kids, they know all the words now, but you're not allowed to use them when you write for them. And you need to know—well, you'll put it into your manuscript and then your editor will say, "No, you can't do that if you're writing for us." (Jennia laughs). And the funniest one was when I was writing The Neptune Project for Disney, I wasn't even allowed to use the word "crap." I was, like, "Really? You can't even say crap." I mean, these kids are saying words that are so much worse than that. So then the challenge becomes, how do you create language and create a world that the kids will believe in? So here's some tricks. You create your own slang, or your protagonist may have a favorite word that sounds like—not exactly a swear word, but, you know, they can say, "Oh, crackers" or "Oh, something" that is their idiosyncratic, their own little way of saying that they are upset.

Jennia: Mhm.

Polly Holyoke: —I don't use a ton of slang just because I'm not great at it. So I think one of the best writers at this, you should go back to some[one], like James Dashner, who wrote The Maze Runner. There a group of kids that are kind of in an experiment, and they've created their own slang, their own language, their own dialect, which is really what kids would do if they—if you put them in a separate place. So I think it's very convincing to have it in book, but sometimes you have to be careful that it doesn't sound corny or out of place. I know I don't do it particularly well, so I'm very sparing with it. But there are people that can just do it really, really well. Then it won't be dated because it's their own—

Jennia: True.

Polly Holyoke: —slang. And the problem is, if you are using, "Ooh, that's wicked." Or, "That's sick." (laughs) Sick won't be in ten years. It will be something entirely different. So if you can kind of figure out a way to do it yourself, you will make your book a little more timeless. And that's a good thing in the end.

Jennia: Well, speaking about language and word choices, how can authors avoid oversimplifying the language so it doesn't feel like the younger reader is being spoken down to?

Polly Holyoke: Oh, you just have to respect middle grade kids, elementary school kids. I think Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket has an interesting way of handling it. He breaks the plane and then says, "By the way, this word actually means. . ." I find sometimes if I want to throw a little bigger vocabulary word in there, a lot of times the next sentence, I'll make sure that you kind of get a sense of what that word means—

Jennia: Mhm.

Polly Holyoke: —by what I say next. I've never been called out for it, but I have a lot of trust in the kids' ability to absorb vocabulary, and I think that's a major reason why they should be reading books. If your publisher or your editor is uncomfortable with a word, down the road, they can always take it out, or they can say, "I'm not sure kids would understand this." Then you could find a synonym that might be something more that a kid would understand. But I would rather see a manuscript have richer language and more interesting words than to dumb it down for kiddos. Because they're not dumb.

Jennia: Right, exactly. And then you can also use context clues as well within the writing surrounding it, so they can still pick up an idea of what that word means without even needing to have it defined or looking it up on their own.

Polly Holyoke: That really helps.

Jennia: Well, before we end, if you had to boil it down to just one piece of advice for aspiring authors who want to write for this age range, what would it be?

Polly Holyoke: I think that you need to go back to your own childhood and really think about, again, what you cared about, what concerned you, what excited you, what you wanted to dream about. And it takes some thinking. Another way to get at that is spend time with kids—

Jennia: Yeah.

Polly Holyoke: —And you parents out there that have kids that age, you have such a leg up on the rest of us. Because my girls are grown and gone now. But guess what? I go to a lot of schools for my author visits. And I'm like a sponge. I am watching kids. I'm listening to kids. A lot of times there'll be a time before I go into a school where we're all waiting for the door to open and I just get to watch them and listen to them. So if you can put yourself in situations like that, because somehow you need to go back in time, and that's easier for some people than it is for others. But it's a wonderful adventure. And you will probably see things through different eyes if you are hanging out on the school ground or you are near the playground. Of course you don't want to get arrested for lurking (Jennia laughs). But, so, volun—

Jennia: (laughing) Right. Good advice.

Polly Holyoke: —volunteer for your local school—

Jennia: Yeah!

Polly Holyoke: —You know where they really need help is in libraries. All you writer folk out there, you love books anyway. What a wonderful way to know what is being published for kids. Offer to shelve books in your library, and there [are] going to be kids in that library, and they're going to have some free time to go look at books. And then you can eavesdrop (laughs), and then you can get a sense of their language and their concerns and what's really important to them, which might just be what's for lunch (laughs). And it might be who said what about whom. Or the cute boy, or whatever. And that's all wonderful to go on. And make sure that you write the kind of story you wanted to read when you were a kid. That's probably—let's backtrack and just say that's the number one thing I would say. Because I've had so many people say, "Well, you should change this." I had a historical, they said, "Well, put a vampire in it." I don't like vampires. So I knew I couldn't write a good paranormal with vampires in it.

Jennia: Mhm.

Polly Holyoke: But I have done a good job of—I've always loved stories about shy girls who are braver than they realize and they make a difference. That story worked for me when I was that age. And guess what? It seems to be working pretty well for kids out there right now.

Jennia: Well, that's great advice. Thank you!

Polly Holyoke: You're welcome!

Jennia: Thank you for listening! And make sure to check out the show notes for more information, where we'll also have Polly's links. And then please join me next week as author DiAnn Mills talks about how to create characters who overcome their fears, and also how these characters can inspire readers. Thanks again!