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mbarkerWriting Excuses 20.11: Kit Lit. Q&A Aboard the WX Cruise with Mark Oshiro, Kate McKean, and Sandra Tayler
Q&A:
Q: How important is it to have a kid to anchor a middle grade book? Can it be something without children?
A: Yes. Make the situations emotionally resonant with younger readers. It's going to be a hard sell.
Q: How do you balance appealing to the kid and appealing to the people who buy the books?
A: Write the book for the kid, and the ad copy, queries, etc. for the adults. Don't think too much about the librarians and teachers.
Q: Specifically for middle grade and children's books, what is played out and overdone?
A: Captain Underpants and Wimpy Kid. Gross out stories and gory blobs will eat you. Depressing stories.
Q: If your characters have a wide range of ages, how do you decide if you're writing a middle grade or YA ?
A: 13 to 19, probably YA. 8 to 12, middle grade. Look at the conflict and the emotional struggle. Look at the stages that kids and teens go through.
[Transcriptionist note: the audience questions were largely inaudible. I've included some words but I'm not sure about accuracy.]
[Season 20, Episode 11]
[Mary Robinette] Hey, guess what? The 2025 Writing Excuses Cruise is over 50% sold out. During this week-long masterclass, I'm going to be leading writers like yourself through a series of workshops designed to give you the tools to take your writing to the next level. Space is limited, but there is still time to secure your spot. We're going to be sailing out of Los Angeles from September 18th through 26. Regardless of where you are in your writing journey, this event is yoru opportunity to learn new skills while exploring the beautiful Mexican Riviera. Whether you're revising a story, reworking a character arc, or revitalizing your plot, you'll leave more confident in your current story and bolstered by a new set of friends. Join us on board at writingexcuses.com/retreats.
[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.
[Season 20, Episode 11]
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[Dan] Kid Lit Q&A on the Writing Excuses Cruise with Kate McKean, Mark Oshiro, and Sandra Tayler.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Kate] I'm Kate McKean.
[Mark] I'm Mark Oshiro.
[Sandra] And I'm Sandra Tayler.
[Mary Robinette] We are extremely happy to have you here. One of the things we get asked about a lot is writing for kids. Most of the material that we focus on, while it is applicable across the board, is focused on stuff for adults. So we're going to quickly just share with the… With our listeners what our relationship is with writing for kids. I started in puppetry, so most of my early career was going into elementary schools. I have exactly one picture book.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] My agent has questions about that.
[Kate] I'm Kate McKean. I'm a literary agent at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. I have written a YA novel which will remain in the drawer for its whole entire life. But I have a picture book coming out in 2026 called Pay Attention to Me. Out by Sourcebooks. I love children's literature, which I represent and read all the time.
[Mark] I'm Mark Oshiro. I am the author of nine middle grade and young adult books. Some of which are on lists, and have won awards. I love writing for children, I have no plans to stop. I love talking particularly craft of writing for children.
[Sandra] I am Sandra Tayler. I have written two picture books which I self published, Hold Onto Your Horses and Strength of Wild Horses. Both of these grew out of a need in the child books I wanted to answer. I also have extensive experience as being the parent of children to whom I had to read books. That formed a lot of opinions about children's literature in my head.
[Dan] I'm Dan Wells. Mostly known for YA. Have a best-selling YA series, and, of course, the Zero G middle grade series which was an audible top 10 bestseller for three years in a row.
[Mary Robinette] I did not know that part.
[Dan] Yeah.
[Go you]
[Mary Robinette] Whoo. Since we are here, at the Writing Excuses Cruise, we have an audience full of people that have questions. So we're going to invite them to ask their questions.
[Inaudible garbled]
[Mary Robinette] How important is it to have a kid to anchor a middle grade book? Can it be something that doesn't have any children among the secondary… Except among the secondary characters?
[Right]
[Mary Robinette] Can it be something that does not have any children in the primary or secondary characters?
[Mark] I'd like to start as someone who has written a middle grade book with no children in it. I got to… I was very lucky that Lucasfilm Press asked me to write a middle grade adventure novel called Battle for the Arena where all of the characters are adults. The way into it that I pitched was I wanted the adult characters to be dealing with situations that are emotionally resonant with younger readers. So, in particular, the novel is a fish out of water sort of story, where the main character has just moved, for unknown reasons, to a new city, is part of this, like, battling troop of… They're kind of like in between, like, imagine an overwatch arena full of professional wrestlers.
[Mary Robinette] Huh.
[Mark] So everyone has their own character that they portray in the arena, but then they're their own people outside of it. She is joining a group of people who all are part of a clique who all know each other, who know who their personalities are in this arena and outside the arena, and she's the weirdo. Who, by the way, is the only one whose ability in the arena is real. Because she has the force abilities. Everyone else is play. Like, they're imagining it. So then there's an extra level of I'm the weirdo on top of in a group of weirdos. Which is fun, as someone who grew up watching professional wrestling, I loved playing into the sort of, like, ridiculous personalities, which is what kids love. So, for me, it was every chance I was thinking about what sort of emotional decisions am I making for this main character. I had to also think at the same time, is this… someone who is nine years old who maybe is their only way in is they like Star Wars, they like video games, is this something that they can relate to? It was shockingly easy to sort of access those things. So, yes, you can absolutely have a middle grade novel… I haven't done young adult with only adult characters, but absolutely can have a middle grade novel with no children in it at all.
[Kate] Except I'm going to say, you absolutely cannot have a middle grade novel or YA novel with only [garbled] children. As my view from the literary agent. It sounds like why that might have worked with this, with your book, Mark, is because it was an IP project and people already knew the characters. So they didn't have to find…
[Mark] Well, actually, it was a complication, they didn't know the characters.
[Kate] Oh. Okay. Well, it was already in a world they're like, I'm going to pick up this book…
[Mark] Right.
[Kate] Because it's in the world that I already like, Star Wars?
[Mary Robinette] Right.
[Kate] Right?
[Mark] Yes.
[Kate] So they're like I didn't have to be sold on this. They're just like, it's another Star Wars. I'm sure it was not even that good. No, I'm just kidding.
[Laughter]
[Kate] Just another Star Wars [garbled] But if I were to see a query where it was all adults and it was supposed to be a YA or a middle grade novel, I'd be like, where are the kids? I would have a hard time pitching that to editors. I think there could be exceptions. But if you want to try to be that exception, it's an even steeper hill to climb. I do even find it hard when there is say a YA novel where one POV character is the teacher and one character is the student. It can be done. I'm sure anyone could find me five or 10 exceptions, but I find it very hard. The logic from the grown-ups in the room who will probably not… I mean, like, it's the editors and agents and publishers and stuff is that kids don't care about grown-ups. I don't think that's actually true. I think we are telling ourselves that. But I have had a lot of trouble selling books where a POV character is adult in a YA or middle grade book.
[Mary Robinette] I will say that one of the reasons that you might think that you can get away with it is because frequently there are books that are shelved in YA that have only adult characters in them, but they were not sold that way. They were usually written by women, and women will get shelved in YA whether or not they are writing YA often.
[Dan] I am thinking about a lot of picture books as well, and at least when I grew up, lo these decades and decades ago, stuff like Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel, where the main characters are all adults with jobs, and the story is about them doing their job really well. Even in those, there is a secondary kid usually who's there to say, "Mike Mulligan can do it."
[Mary Robinette] Isn't that actually the steam shovel that's the main character? Not Mike Mulligan?
[Dan] I think it's both of them.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah. Because…
[Dan] Welcome to our Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel panel.
[Yeah. Hey.]
[Mary Robinette] Because you might be able to get away with it if they're all inanimate objects.
[Kate] Yeah. Anthropomorphized steam. Absolutely.
[Dan] Or an animal.
[Kate] Absolutely.
[Mary Robinette] But even there, it's always like [garbled]
[Mark] They're usually aged down animals.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Audience] So, the human brain story where your target audience is simply the kids who won't necessarily pick their own books, who usually need others, like librarians or teachers or parents to recommend books. How do you balance trying to appeal to a kid versus trying to appeal to adults who [garbled]
[Mary Robinette] That was the problem with puppet theater. So I want to be clear that there is the audience that you're writing for and there are the people who are buying tickets. They are not the same. So when you write it, you write it for the audience. When you pitch it, when you do your catalog copy, when you do your query letter, you write it for the adults. Those are two different stories.
[Kate] I think that you should not think too much about the teachers and librarians. Because they are looking… Not that you should ignore them and that they're not valuable in the process, it's that they are also trying to entertain the kids or trying to get the book to the kid. They can see the themes, they can see the subject matter that's important. So, just keep talking to the kid, and when you're pitching it to, say, an agent or something, you will talk about it like a grownup, you wouldn't, like, hey, dude, this is cool, you should read it. Like, no one's going to do that. But I would just keep the kid, keep the reader, in the forefront.
[Mark] I wrote one book thinking about the adults who would read it. Which is my first book, Anger Is a Gift. Because at that time, especially in YA and middle grade, there was a lot of talk about what was appropriate to be in a book, and when you haven't been published and you have that fear of, well, I want to make sure it gets accepted… One of the biggest ones was don't swear. In books. So this was 10 years ago when I was working on this book. So even though I knew the content, the actual content of the book, might be something that would be deemed inappropriate, one thing that I was very particular about was I'm not going to have any sort of language that could get the book pegged as inappropriate. So, in Anger Is a Gift, there is one, I think very appropriately placed, F-bomb in the whole book. But the irony is I know I held back in certain ways, particularly in making the language of teenagers realistic, and that that is now my most banned book. So it didn't matter anyway. They banned it by the droves. So every book I have written since then, I've done… I don't care about it at all. I, again, I am thinking of who is the kid who is reading this. If educators find something in it, if librarians find something in it that they believe that they can use, either to teach or to reach a kid emotionally who needs that, that is wonderful. But I don't think about it anymore.
[Dan] Yeah. As a concrete example, every English teacher that I am friends with, kind of across the board, hates Captain Underpants. But they love it because it gets kids reading. So even though it holds no appeal for them, it doesn't have a lot of adult appeal at all, it still gets recommended, it still gets assigned, it still gets a lot of play.
[Mary Robinette] One of the things that we would have to do when we were doing puppet theater is we would have to get things to match curriculum. The thing is the shelf life for that is one season. You can't… The turnaround is also very fast frequently. So, often what we would do is, we would find out what the curriculum was and then we would explain to them why the show that we had had for 20 years met this curriculum. It's about… It is about just telling a different story.
[Sandra] When I wrote the picture book that I wrote, Hold on to Your Horses, it was because I knew a specific child needed a specific story. And I couldn't find the book that already had that story in it. So I went and wrote it. The thing I have discovered since then, as this book is now 15 years old, it's been out in print, and I have adults who had it as a kid who are now giving it to their children, which is a whole thing in my head. But realizing that the adults in their… Those adults also have a child who needs this story. So going back to the idea of you need to tell the story to the child and trust the adults to also know a child that needs that story and to lead this other child to the story that you've written.
[Inaudible garbled]
[Mary Robinette] So, specifically for middle grade and children's lit, what is played out? What is too much, so tired? Kate?
[Laughter]
[Kate] Why would I be the one to… No. Trying to be Captain Underpants. Trying to be Wimpy Kid. Yeah, [Alley Gatos?] they're good. I personally see a lot of, like, the gross out stories from Mars and the gory blobs will eat you. Like, those kinds of stories do not resonate. I also think that there's an abundance of really depressing stories in that age group with… Like, they're valuable, but I do think kids are kind of wanting some fun. So I would personally want to see a lot more fun middle grade, without going into goof. Just fun, just cool fun stuff. And graphic novels are still hot, hot, hot.
[Sandra] Yeah. I was going to say, the reason that Captain Underpants and Wimpy Kid were so incredibly huge is that they were transgressive. They… They were… The book… The kid knows the librarian doesn't actually like to offer this book and that they feel like they got away with something by getting to read it. But the interesting thing about transgressive literature is one generation's transgressive becomes the next generation's, ah, these are the classics. Yes, we all love Captain Underpants, we all are familiar with it. So it doesn't feel like you're getting away with something. So a useful way to approach it, if you want to chase the trends, which I don't actually advise, is look at what's super popular right now and how it's transgressive and then figure out how your story can push a boundary differently or a different boundary or answer a need in the kids. It's looking at the conditions of life now. The kids who have hit school since the pandemic have a different life experience than the kids who hit school and then pandemic hit in the middle of fifth or sixth grade. There are stories out there that they need, and the transgressions that they need in order to cope are going to be different. So it's being tapped into what's now.
[Mark] We mentioned it earlier, talking about adults in kid lit, the animal books. Like, main characters are all anthropomorphized animals or wild animals. Like, those were real big, especially in middle grade for a long time. I have not met a kid in like five years who's like super amped on the animal back.
[Audience] How do you decide you're going to write a middle grade or a YA [garbled]
[Mary Robinette] If you've got a story with a wide range of children ages, like a 13-year-old and a 19-year-old, how do you decide if you're writing middle grade or YA?
[Kate] If I looked at something and they said 13 to 19, I would say that's YA. I usually kind of tag middle grade as 8 to 12, but the reader is reading up a little bit. So the reader is like seven, eight, nine. But I… If I had younger kids and older kids, like, younger than 13, I might look at the primary character and the primary conflict. If the primary conflict is between the 16-year-old and the 19-year-old, like, that would be a YA novel to me. I have not come across many novels that fit this description, so I've not ever really been in that problem.
[Mark] I would actually also look at the conflict and its emotional struggle. Because people ask me all the time, like, how do you know an idea is middle grade or YA? For me, it's about scope and that character's awareness of their place in the world. If you are having a character… At least the main character, their struggle is I am just learning my place in my immediate group of friends, and my family, maybe in my school, and, like, sort of… Which is not to say that middle grade novels can't have that wide scope, but generally speaking, it's like when you're in the 8 to 12 year, you're just starting to get your awareness of the world. Then I find, with my YA, that's where it is you are starting to figure out your place in the entire world. You're starting to have to acknowledge that there are people outside of your city, outside of your immediate group of friends, how do I fit in this? I tend to find that in YA, you may have emotional plots that are more existential in nature. What is my purpose in the world or whatnot? So think about the scope of what your adventure is and does it seem like something for someone whose mindset is of a much younger age or is this someone who's a mid to older teen?
[Sandra] It's also very useful, too, to have some understanding of the emotional developmental stages that kids and teens go through. I really love the book, and I'm blanking on the author's name, but the title is Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls through the Seven Transitions to Adulthood. It talks about these stages that teenage girls go through, from saying goodbye to childhood to finding your tribe to pushing back against authority, and that these stages hit and are fairly measurable in a young person's life. If you know what those stages are, there's definitely things that preteens do and care about and things that a 15-year-old thinks about and cares about. The exact age when one particular child hits those things will vary a lot, but we all go through these transitional stages. If you know and figure out and can peg your story and can say, ah, this is a saying goodbye to childhood story. Well, that probably lands in the 7 to 13 age group. Because that's about when kids are doing that. Where is the off into adulthood, that's your classic coming-of-age story, that's 16, 17, 18. Up there. Then you know you're in a YA range. So, looking again like Mark said, at the themes and what the themes are telling you.
[Mary Robinette] Well, speaking of themes, I think it is time for us to go to our homework.
[Mark] Writing Excuses, your homework, specifically thinking about writing for children. Imagine a moment from your childhood. Something contentious, with conflict that is perhaps more low-level rather than world ending or traumatic. Now, write this moment in first or third person, but imagine it is happening to someone else. How would you write this scene? How would you tap into the character's emotions through voice and tone?
[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
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