I’m so excited to be launching a new course! An Introduction to Writing  Middle Grade and YA Fiction covers so many of the questions I’ve been asked by new and emerging kidlit authors over the years and addresses lots of the most common mistakes and challenges I come across when editing manuscripts. If you’re thinking about writing novels for children…

Sometimes, even though they’re aimed at a completely different age group, picture books contain perfect, concise little examples of storytelling techniques that we can apply to middle grade and YA. Luckily, I get through a heck of a lot of picture books at home: my husband and I read Caeden three books a night at bedtime plus we go to the library at least once a week (we currently have about 60 books on loan 😬) so I often come across lovely demonstrations of writing craft and get super excited mid-story. 

This is a great question and a super important one to ask about any editor you’re thinking of working with. Currently in the UK there is no official accreditation for editors (like you’d find for accountants or engineers, for example) which means anybody can call themselves a professional editor regardless of experience or qualifications, so it can be difficult to…

You’ve heard of reading like a writer (because I talk about it all the time). Now it’s time to book club like a writer! In the mid-nineties, ‘Book Club’ to me meant the Scholastic catalogue handed out after lunch and a pile of paperbacks waiting on my desk when I got back from assembly. In my early twenties, ‘Book Club’…

Wondering how to tell if a book is YA or middle grade just from a quick glance? When you pick up a book, say at the library or in a book shop, how do you know which audience it’s been written for? Sometimes the way books are shelved doesn’t make it obvious: my local library labels its middle grade section…

This is part of Start me up: Mark-up on successful novel openings, a blog series designed to help you read like an editor. I’ll analyse the first pages of some of the middle grade and YA novels on my bookshelf and dig deep into the mechanics and craft. Why did the author make those choices? What clues does this opening…

By now you all KNOW I’m really passionate about the importance of not just reading for authors (although yes, do read! Read lots!) but also reading analytically and with purpose: something I’ve started calling ‘rabbit hole reading’.  It’s brilliant to simply let yourself get totally immersed and enjoy a novel – that’s a really important experience for writers – but you’ll get so much more value from a story if you let yourself go down a rabbit hole when you read. Analyse the plot, the structure, the characters. Ask yourself why the author made the choices they did. Make notes. Annotate. Discuss it with other people. Even mine the acknowledgements page for the names of agents, editors and publishers involved and learn about that author’s writing and publishing process.