Category Archives: #amwriting

Creative Quirk or Signature?

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When I first strolled through my new house with the realtor, I noticed a lot of unfinished work. For example, the previous owner painted the barn to match the house but left the tip of the peak untouched. Support posts on the covered porch were all painted, except the top of one. It baffled me. Why wouldn’t she paint those spots? Higher areas, she’d painted.

I could tell she’s creative. Painted butterflies, hummingbirds, and flowers dotted the landscape.

Did I buy the house from an emerging artist?

The support beam in the new addition (living room) has pallet wood wrapped around two sides, with the third side only painted. Gorgeous wood frames the back mudroom ceiling except for one tiny missing piece. The underside of an outside railing has new paint, one bare space, then continues to the barn loft. Four solar motion detectors line the back fence, with one blacked out with tape.

After I moved in, the closer I examined small details, the more my curiosity piqued. What’s going on here? The previous owner clearly has a fondness for 3s (as do I). Or maybe, she knows the importance of the number 3.

The number 3 often appears in nature and fundamental structures:

  • Atoms: protons, neutrons, electrons
  • Dimensions: length, width, height
  • Cycles: birth, life, death
  • Time: past, present, future
  • Essential survival needs: air, water, food
  • Geometric strength: The triangle is the simplest and most stable shape — it’s represented in everything from molecular structure to human-made architecture
  • Monocots: many flowering plants (monocots) have flower parts in multiples of three
  • Tree structure: roots, trunk, canopy
  • Primary colors of light: red, blue, yellow
  • States of matter: solid, liquid, gas
  • Layers of skin: epidermis, dermis, hypodermis
  • Types of muscle: skeletal, cardiac, smooth
  • Germ layers during development: ectoderm, mesoderm, endoderm
  • Circulations: Systemic, Pulmonary, Portal
  • Trinity: Earth, sun, moon… body, mind, spirit
  • Genetic code: DNA instructions are read in triplets (codons) to build proteins
  • Sensory Perception: Human color vision is trichromatic, based on three types of cones in the eyes sensitive to red, green, and blue light
  • Survival “Rule of 3”: Humans can typically survive 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter in harsh environments, and 3 days without water
  • Geographic regions: land, sea, air
  • Insects: adult insects are characterized by a 3-part body: head, thorax, abdomen.
  • Dietary groups: herbivores, carnivores, omnivores

The number 3 represents universal patterns of stability and completeness.

Did the emerging artist find comfort in the power of 3? The mystery haunted me as I surveyed my new property.

Then one morning, I was admiring the sunrise from the back mudroom, when I noticed she’d painted only three sides of a window frame. The floor she tiled, except for one square in the corner by the water heater.

A ha! It’s an intentional act. Her creative signature, if you will.

Kind of a pain for the new buyer (me) to touch up all these spots but I also respect her creativeness — she left her signature on every improvement she made. And helped create the quirkiness I love about the property.

To her credit, she also left the supplies to finish every project. Maybe I’ll leave one or two minuscule signatures in a corner that’s not visible to others, as an homage to her creative spirit. Not the living room beam — that blank side drives me crazy. What she probably never considered was that buyers deduct money from their offer for unfinished projects. It’s automatic. The more a buyer must do, the less they want to spend.

The same could be said for readers.

If a reader runs into too many writing tics, they’ll either:

  • Never read that author again
  • Deduct stars for the annoyance
  • Give the author one last chance; they better deliver in the next book

Writing tics could be seen as a creative signature of sorts, I suppose, but not in a good way. Readers don’t want to be yanked from the story. They want immersion. They want you to sweep them away, to transport them into the scene and hold them captive. Writing tics do the opposite.

Even in my new home, some might look at the unfinished spots in a negative way. Not me. Though I’ll complete most of the projects for continuity, I love the quirkiness of the understated ones. With the mystery of why she did it solved, I appreciate her creative spirit.

The same cannot be said for writing tics. If you made no other writing resolutions this year, add this: Tighten your prose, TKZers!

What a Difference a Word Makes

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By Elaine Viets

When I taught English as a second language, one of my favorite students was a young man I’ll call Sam. Sam was 18, from South Korea. Smart and hard-working, Sam was brushing up on his English that summer before he went to college in the US. Sam had applied to several universities, many of them distinctly second-rate.

“Why didn’t you apply to any Ivy League schools?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said. “I couldn’t get in. I spent my senior year in high school screwing.”

“What??” Sam didn’t talk like that. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t work hard and I got bad grades.”

“That means you spent your senior year screwing AROUND,” I  said, and gave him a quick course in American idioms.

I hope my students learned from me, but I definitely learned from them. English is a complex, expressive and extremely difficult language, fraught with pitfalls.  Consider the South American banker who told me, “My wife and I fled our country naked.”

“Naked?” I asked. “You weren’t wearing clothes?”

“Of course we were,” he said. “But we couldn’t take anything with us.”

Turned out he was using an idiom from his country. “Right. In the US, we’d say, ‘You left with nothing but the clothes on your backs.’”

In the words of Bill Bryson, “Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel and a critical part of a gentleman’s apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.” (If you haven’t read Bryson’s Mother Tongue, you’re missing a linguistic treat.)

Teaching articles, those pesky three words, “a,” “an” and “the,” is another misery. Try explaining that these two sentences mean basically the same thing:

There is little traffic at 4 a.m.

There is a little traffic at 4 a.m.

And don’t forget regionalisms (why is a carbonated drink “pop” in parts of the country and “soda” in others?), and accents.

A Japanese businessman said he was worried about going to South Carolina. He told me, “I can’t understand what the people there are saying.”

“That’s OK,” I told him. “None of us can.”

But before you get too smug, native speakers, tell me which of these ten words is misspelled:

mahagony

embarassed

sherriff

fourty-four

supercede

graffitti

rhythum

syrep

abdomenal

concensus

 

Answer: They all are.

Now in paperback: Sex and Death on the Beach, my new Florida beach mystery, is now in paperback. Check out it out here. https://tinyurl.com/3ut3chuu

 

New Year’s Thoughts from Fifteen Authors

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by Debbie Burke

The New Year is a time when many writers ponder what we want to accomplish.

I thought it might be fun to see what well-known authors, past and present, think about the New Year. Here’s a collection of advice, musings, and cautions:

1. “Cheer up! Don’t give way. A new heart for a New Year, always!” – Charles Dickens (1812-1870), English novelist

2. “We went nowhere without figs and never without notebooks; these serve as a relish if I have bread, and if not, for bread itself. They turn every day into a New Year which I make ‘happy and blessed’ with good thoughts and the generosity of my spirit.” – Seneca, who lived at the cusp of BC and AD.

Frances Burney

3. “I opened the new year with what composure I could acquire…and I made anew the best resolutions I was equal to forming, that I would do what I could to curb all spirit of repining, and to content myself calmly—unresistingly, at least, with my destiny.” – Frances Burney AKA Fanny Burney (1752-1840), English novelist and playwright

4. “‘A merry Christmas, and a glad new year,’
Strangers and friends from friends and strangers hear,
The well-known phrase awakes to thoughts of glee;
But, ah! it wakes far different thoughts in me.
[…] I, on the horizon traced by memory’s powers,
Saw the long record of my wasted hours.” – Amelia Alderson Opie (1769-1853), English novelist and abolitionist

5. “Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.” – Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), English poet

6. “New Year’s Day: now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual . . . New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.”– Mark Twain (1835-1910), American author and humorist

7. “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.” – T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), American poet

8. “Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.” – Brooks Atkinson (1894-1984), American theatre critic

9. “Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.” – Bill Vaughan (1915-1977), American author and columnist

10. “I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.” – Anaïs Nin (1903-1977), French-American author

11. “The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.” – G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), English author

Benjamin Franklin
Photo credit: Wellcome CC BY-SA 4.0

12. “Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.” – Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), American author and a founding father of the U.S.

13. “I have always loved New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Even though our sense of time is arbitrary and human, it still means something. I love the feeling I always get on New Year’s Eve that I am lucky — that the universe has been generous to me, to have let me stick around for another year, and to now erase the slate and give me another chance. Tomorrow I will be gifted with a brand new year — with no mistakes in it yet, and no heartbreaks yet, and no failures yet. I get to try again. Amazing. You will be gifted with this huge blessing, too. A clean and empty book awaits us all. Maybe we will be able to write things differently this time. Maybe a bit better. Maybe we will be wiser this time. At least we get to try. We have all been given a fresh chance. Let’s close the old book, and open a new one.” – Elizabeth Gilbert (1969-), American author

Woody Guthrie Statue
Photo credit: Cosmos Mariner, CC SA-BY 4.0

14. Woody Guthrie (1912-1967), American songwriter, offers his list of resolutions:

  • Work more and better
  • Work by a schedule
  • Wash teeth if any
  • Shave
  • Take bath
  • Eat good—fruit—vegetables—milk
  • Drink very scant if any
  • Write a song a day
  • Wear clean clothes—look good
  • Shine shoes
  • Change socks
  • Change bed cloths often
  • Read lots good books
  • Listen to radio a lot
  • Learn people better
  • Keep rancho clean
  • Dont get lonesome
  • Stay glad
  • Keep hoping machine running
  • Dream good
  • Bank all extra money
  • Save dough
  • Have company but dont waste time
  • Send Mary and kids money
  • Play and sing good
  • Dance better
  • Help win war—beat fascism
  • Love mama
  • Love papa
  • Love Pete
  • Love everybody
  • Make up your mind
  • Wake up and fight

15. And last from Susan Sontag (1933-2004), American author:

“I want to make a New Year’s prayer, not a resolution. I’m praying for courage.”

~~~

TKZers: Which of these quotes resonated with you? Why?

Do you disagree with any of them? Why?

Did you make writing resolutions or set goals? Want to share them?

~~~

Is 2026 the year you want to learn to write fascinating villains and antagonists? Please check out Debbie Burke’s bestselling craft guide, The Villain’s Journey-How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Apple

Kobo

Interested in taking a villain workshop from Debbie? Please visit debbieburkewriter.com to learn about upcoming zoom and in person classes.

That Blinking Cursor

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It is a great honour to write my first post for The Killzone. I’m still pinching myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. So without further ado, my first post of 2025…and my last since we begin our hiatus next week.

About a month ago, I started a new book, and ran into the blinking cursor syndrome. Everything I’d ever learned about writing was gone. Pfff! Vanished. It was like I’d never written a novel before. But I had — eighteen times before, and yes, that blinking cursor syndrome happed Every.Single.Time.

With this book, I even had a one-page synopsis that I’d sent in with the proposal to my publisher. I knew the setting — the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. I had a title — Deadly Connections, and I knew who the characters were. Actually, I only knew their names. I have to start writing and place my characters in difficult situations before I can really know who they are.

Finally, I got tired of looking at that cursor and pulled out my handy-dandy notebook and made a bullet point list of questions to answer.

  • What’s the setting? Why there? — I had that one.
  • What are my main characters’ goals? Why do they want them? What’s going to keep them from getting what they want? Needed to think about this one a little longer.
  • Who are my characters when they walk onto the page of the book?
    • What ghost from the past keeps them from living their lives to the fullest?
    • What’s the flaw that’s going to cause conflict in reaching their goal?
    • What are their competing values? What will they have to give up?

When I answer these questions, I’ll know my hero/heroine’s goals.

  • And last of all, what crime is to be solved now? Why not five years ago? Or six months ago? Or next year?

Why is this last question important? The crime needs a trigger (pun intended), something that rules out any other time frame, and until I nail that, I can’t move forward. In the book I mentioned, the heroine’s sister has been missing for fifteen years, and she’s just now digging into her disappearance. I needed a good reason for the why now question, so I brainstormed a list of reasons. Nothing was off the table. This can take anywhere from a couple of hours to several days.

When I finished, I chose two that I could work with. Then I started writing with James Scott Bell’s signposts in mind. I now have 25,000 words and have a good handle on my story and the main characters. Of course, they will continue to surprise me, but that’s the fun in writing.

Do you have questions that have to be answered before you can start your story? Let me know in the comments. It might help someone else…and me.

Wishing you a blessed holiday season. See you next year!

2025 in the Rearview Mirror

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“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” —Zig Ziglar

 * * *

As we approach the end of 2025, it’s a time to get together with friends and family, enjoy good food and fellowship, and celebrate the joy of the season. Oh yeah, and review that list of goals we wrote down at the beginning of the year to see how we did.

Each time I review my list of goals for a year, I think of that song from The Mikado where Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, sings “I’ve Got a Little List,” which turns out to be a very long list indeed. Here’s a fifteen-second clip from the Austin Gilbert & Sullivan Society performance (with my favorite actor playing the role of Ko-Ko) to illustrate:

 

Why set goals?

 “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.” —Yogi Berra

Setting a goal means you know where you want to go. A goal focuses the mind and gives clarity and direction. Most of us lead complicated lives with lots of things to do, so having a list of goals keeps us from getting overwhelmed by the volume of it all

Not only is it motivating to have something to shoot for, we all know the pleasure and sense of accomplishment that comes by realizing a goal and checking it off the list.

I read an article on goalbuddy.io recently that listed nine benefits of setting goals. (Read the article for an explanation of each one.)

 1. You become more charismatic
2. Goals make you live longer and you are full of energy
3. Goals help you stay motivated during tough times
4. Life doesn’t just happen to you, you make life happen as you want it to be.
5. Goals unlock the potential of your heart
6. Goals provide you with the clarity in which direction to go
7. The goals focus filter solves the problem with overwhelming once and for all
8. You feel like you are winning the game of life and you want more of it
9. Goals help you learn and grow

 It’s a good list. I particularly like #4, and I’d love to always make life happen as I want it to, but realistically, life does “just happen” sometimes. I missed one of my goals this year (completing the second Lady Pilot-in-Command novel) because of the time-consuming adventure of moving to a new home—something that wasn’t even on the radar at this time last year.

As for the rest of my 25 writing goals for 2025, I accomplished some, missed a few, and made progress on others. I even exceeded one: I intended to release one Reen & Joanie book in 2025, but I managed to publish two.

* * *

Moving on to 2026

Now it’s time to make plans for 2026. The second Lady Pilot-in-Command novel tops the list, and I’ll carry over some of the goals that appear every year (e.g., a bi-weekly blog post on TKZ, monthly post on my blog, attend at least one writers conference).

As we finalize our lists, let’s keep in mind that wise guidance spoken by the Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

* * *

So TKZers: How about you? What were your goals for 2025? How did you do? Have you made your list for 2026 yet?

This is my last post for 2025. Wishing you all a healthy and happy holiday season. See you in 2026!

* * *

The Reen & Joanie Detective Agency series

Smart sleuthing, real-world stakes, and heart—join Reen and Joanie as they chase clues, challenge assumptions, and prove that persistence and truth always matter. Both ebooks are on sale for the rest of the year. Click the image to go to the Amazon series page.

From Cockpit to Keyboard: What ‘Aviate, Navigate, Communicate’ Teaches Novelists

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Never wait for trouble. —Chuck Yeager

* * *

 “Aviate. Navigate. Communicate.”

When I was taking private pilot lessons, my instructor drilled this three-word phrase into me in every lesson as essential to successful flying. Although you need to keep all three of these skills in mind and not fixate on any one of them, there is a priority order.

Aviate. Fly the plane. This is always first. The pilot must maintain the altitude, airspeed, and position in the air (attitude). Things can get busy in the cockpit, and a mechanical failure or some other unanticipated issue can divert a pilot’s attention from simply flying the plane. The Society of Aviation and Flight Educators notes:

A famous example of failure to follow the established aviation priorities is the crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 401. In December 1972, the crew of a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar became focused on the malfunction of a landing gear position indicator light for the nose gear. The plane subsequently descended into the Everglades northwest of Miami, killing 101 of the 176 people on board (two people died more than seven days after the accident).

Navigate. When you’re flying an aircraft, you need to know where you are and where you’re going. Whether the pilot is navigating or there’s a separate navigator onboard, their job is to monitor the flight and make adjustments as needed to get the plane to its destination. Mistakes in navigation can lead to loss of situational awareness and accidents.

Communicate. Air Traffic Control is the pilot’s friend. They direct flights to keep safe distances between planes and provide instructions for safe takeoffs and landings. Pilots communicate with ATC using protocols that must be followed or the communication fails. For example, the English language is the standard established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to ensure safety and clear communication. On initial contact with ATC, the pilot uses the “4 W’s” (who you’re calling, who you are, where you are, what you want).

* * *

From Cockpit to Keyboard

It seems like everything I do relates back to writing these days. Fortunately, a failure in the writing process isn’t as dangerous as in flying, but we might be able to map Aviate, Navigate, Communicate onto the writer’s job. Here’s a simplified look at the process:

Aviate: Write the book. Keep it moving forward. Don’t decide to clean out that closet once again because you’re looking for an excuse to avoid writing. And don’t rewrite Chapter One for the fortieth time to get it just right. TKZers: How do you keep moving forward? Do you allocate a certain number of words or hours per day to your work? How long does it take you to write a novel? 

Navigate: While you’re writing, keep an eye on where you’re going. Does each scene move the story forward, or are you getting bogged down in unnecessary subplots or long, boring backstory? TKZers: How do you avoid getting off course when writing?

Communicate: Editors, critique partners, and beta readers are the author’s friends. Use their input to revise and polish the story. Clear communication will enable the author to make the necessary changes. TKZers: What types of communication do you use to improve the final product?

* * *

So TKZers: Do you use a method like “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate” to complete your novels? Tell us about it.

 * * *

 

 

Knights in Manhattan begins on a flight that has encountered rough air. But there may be more turbulence inside the cabin than outside the airplane.

Click the image to go to the Amazon book page.

Reader Friday-Digging Deep

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If you had to choose, which amongst the range of human senses is the one most likely to dredge up memories (good or bad) in that RAM called your brain?

 

 

There are five basic senses: sound, smell, touch, sight, and taste. 

Here’s my example of a good memory, evoked by music:

Hearing CCR on the radio transports me right back to my carefree college days in southern California when I didn’t have a worry in the world. When the studying was done, my friends and I would pile into a light blue ‘60s-something VW bug–it’s amazing how many teenagers you can stuff into one of those–and head for the beach for a little body surfing.

The character-building skill of using the five senses to tell a story is an important one to develop, and is much-discussed here at TKZ.

When I wrote No Tomorrows, I had to dig deep into my fear of losing a child. My parents lost two, my younger brother to a traffic accident and my younger sister, five years later, to suicide. There are sights and sounds in my world today that bring those dreadful memories careening back into my consciousness.

In No Tomorrows, Annie faces that same fear when she loses track of her small daughter in the park. As I wrote the scene, I put her shoes on my feet as she raced around the park, frantically calling Nora’s name. It was a difficult section for me to write. But as I relived my memories and looked my own fear of the death of a child square in its ugly face, Annie became flesh and blood, and in a way her fear took the teeth out of my own monsters.

Your turn! Which of the five senses takes you back in time, or causes you to remember a person from your past, or evokes a feeling of comfort?

 

 

How deep will you go into your own RAM to create a character who will resonate with your reader?

As a reader, which sense/emotion connects you to the story/character the quickest?

 

 

 

 

How Gratitude Helps Writers

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“Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.” – Aesop

* * *

Many years ago, when my husband and I were just newlyweds, I came home from work one night and complained about something. I honestly don’t remember what it was. Maybe it was something I wanted but didn’t have, or maybe it had to do with work. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t happy about it.

Now I’m not normally a dissatisfied person. I’m more of a glass-half-full type, but I guess I was tired and out-of-sorts, and I let hubby know it.

My husband is a guy who loves math and science, and he’ll use any excuse in a conversation to bring up something that has to do with numbers. Percentages are especially dear to him, and Frank dropped a number into our conversation that night that wasn’t just informational—it was a game changer. He said (very matter-of-factly), “Don’t you realize you have more than 99 percent of the people on Earth?”

I’m not sure about the number he used, but his point was well taken. I was grumbling about some minor thing and missing all the majors. My glass wasn’t just half-full. It was overflowing.

I can’t say I’ve never griped about anything else since then, but that conversation made me acutely aware of how fortunate I am. And that knowledge makes each Thanksgiving season a meaningful reminder to count my blessings.

Why is Gratitude Good for You?

I’ve written about gratitude before on TKZ when I referred to findings by Dr. Robert Emmons from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Emmons is a leading expert on the science of gratitude. In his article “Why Gratitude is Good,” he lists a wealth of benefits experienced by people who regularly practice giving thanks. Some of these are

  • Stronger immune systems
  • Lower blood pressure
  • Better sleep
  • Higher levels of positive emotions
  • Relationship strengthening
  • Feeling less lonely and isolated
  • Increased daily word count in their writing (Okay, I made that last one up, but it’s probably true.)

Does Gratitude Help Writing?

As a matter of fact, it does. I found another article by Dr. Emmons in UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Magazine where he addresses the creativity aspect of gratitude. While his article was specifically about gratitude in the work environment, its conclusions on the subject of creativity apply to everyone.

Beyond the social sphere of work, gratitude also drives enhanced performance in the cognitive domain: Grateful people are more likely to be creative at work. Gratitude promotes innovative thinking, flexibility, openness, curiosity, and love of learning.

Emmons goes on to observe that researchers at the University of Zurich observed

grateful people were likely to be “idea creators”: successful with developing new and innovative ideas and reaching solutions in unconventional ways.

So it would seem that gratitude is the key to creativity, and creativity is the gateway to writing great novels.

Ted Talk about Gratitude

In addition to all the above, I watched an entertaining Ted Talk given by Shawn Achor on the role of gratitude in achieving success. I’ve embedded the talk below. It’s worth the twelve-minute investment, but if you don’t have the time, here’s a list of things Achor mentions that you can do daily to achieve that state of happiness and creativity. (Notice that naming three things you’re grateful for every day is first on the list.):

Here’s the Ted Talk:

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! 

* * *

So TKZers: What three things are you grateful for today?

* * *

Three things I’m grateful for:

  1. Having the time and resources to write.
  2. Friendships I’ve made within the writing community.
  3. Characters Reen and Joanie, the sharpest kid detectives ever, who won’t quit until they find the truth. (Click the image to go to the series page.)

 

 

MG is for Middle Grade

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“Access to books and the encouragement of the habit of reading: these two things are the first and most necessary steps in education and librarians, teachers and parents all over the country know it. It is our children’s right and it is also our best hope and their best hope for the future.” –Michael Morpurgo

* * *

I’ve spent the better part of my writing time in 2025 writing and publishing Middle Grade novels, and Sue Coletta’s recent TKZ post on Writing for Children inspired me to share some of the things I’ve learned.

I asked my good friend and TKZ contributor emeritus Dr. Steve Hooley to help me. I had interviewed Steve on my blog earlier this year about his Middle Grade Fantasy series, The Mad River Magic Series. Steve’s thoughts about writing for the 8-12 year old level were so insightful, I asked his permission to quote from that interview and from later email exchanges. So here are some thoughts about Middle Grade books from both of us.

WHAT CONSTITUTES MIDDLE GRADE?

Steve:

Most authors define “middle grade fiction” as being written for ages 8 – 12 (third grade through sixth grade), and containing no sexual content or realistic violence. I think that another way to look at it is the intelligence and information processing skills of the reader. “Children” of this age are reaching the age where they can understand adult logic and reasoning. And they are not yet filled with the adolescent hormone-driven physical and sexual attraction that is found in young adult material, and that clouds their thinking.

They differ from books for younger readers in that they are more like adult books, longer, with plot and structure. And they differ from books for YA and adult in that they usually contain no profanity, sex, or overt violence.

Kay:

I like what Steve had to say about adult logic and reasoning. In my books, the two main characters solve mysteries by looking at things from multiple points of view. I believe this introduction to analytical logic and critical thinking skills will serve young readers well. (And I know Garry Rodgers will like that.)

 

WHY WRITE MIDDLE GRADE?

Steve:

In my opinion, the age group of readers of middle grade books is in the innocent age of transition to adulthood. This permits the reader to learn principles from the book that will prepare them for their adult life. And it gives the author a unique opportunity to present material which the reader can evaluate and consider regarding choices for their adult life.

Kay:

I had included two young girls, 10-year-old Reen and her 9-year-old cousin Joanie, in my third mystery novel, Time After Tyme. The girls were very popular with readers, and several people encouraged me to give them their own series. Although I hesitated for months while I worked on another novel, the idea of writing books that would contribute to a child’s intellectual growth appealed to me.  I decided to try to create an entertaining story that would have traces of problem-solving, teamwork, fair play, and persistence without preaching.

 

HOW MANY WORDS?

Steve commented on my blog that most of his Mad River Magic books are around 80K words, so I would put those books in the Older MG category.

Each of my books is around 30K words, so I think younger readers can handle the straightforward plotting and limited number of characters.

 

WHAT GENRES ARE ACCEPTABLE?

As we mentioned above, Steve’s books are in the Fantasy genre; mine are mysteries, but according to a recent post on Jenny Bowman’s site, MG books can cover a wide range of genres. She mentions mystery, fantasy, adventure, historical fiction, and even the re-telling of classic stories like Les Miserables.

In place of a romance genre, best friends and strong relationships are appropriate. And MG kids love to laugh, so humor is always welcome in Middle Grade fiction.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

Steve included these thoughts in a recent email

  1. The name of genre (Middle Grade) makes no sense. It is not Middle “School” age.
  2. The wide discrepancy of reading skills in that age group. Some are reading adult books by the end of “middle grade”. Others (according to recent testing) are reading very poorly.
  3. Should there be two genres, a boys’ and a girls’ genre? Girls are always asking for romance by the 7th and 8th grade. While boys want adventure without all the icky girl stuff. (ex. Nancy Drew series vs. Hardy Boys)
  4. Marketing is difficult, unless you are trad published. Teachers want to recommend books that have won awards to their students.
  5. At that age, most readers are not buying their own books.
  6. At that age, readers can’t leave reviews on Amazon.
  7. Contact with students for beta reading must be handled with care. The best is to find a gifted and talented coordinator who will be the intermediary, because most teachers don’t have the time or the interest.

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So TKZers: Have you written any Middle Grade Fiction? Have you read any MG novels? What are your thoughts about writing for children?

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Whether they’re searching for hidden treasure in Bellevue or chasing tricky thieves through famous landmarks in Manhattan, Reen & Joanie are up to the job. Join the girls and make the world a better place.

Click the image to go to the Amazon series page.

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A hero on crutches, flying barrel carts, Indian magic, and a glow-in-the-dark magic pond, Bolt and the Mad River Magic gang have it all, living in the enchanted forest with their grandparents and practicing light magic.

Click on the image to go to the Amazon series page.

Profluence in Writing

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Profluence (noun) –  a copious or smooth flowing

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I was re-listening to a Great Courses lecture the other day entitled Writing Great Fiction taught by professor and author James Hynes. The particular episode I re-visited was on the fundamentals of plotting a novel, and Hynes mentioned the importance of profluence in story-telling.

“Profluence” must be a relatively new word because you may not find it in every dictionary. Dictionary.com only has the adjective form “profluent,” but the word has made its way into the online Merriam-Webster dictionary.

However, I couldn’t find the term “profluence” in any of my books on the craft of writing, so I was naturally intrigued.

Hynes credits John Gardner with defining profluence as the feeling you have when you’re reading a novel or short story that you’re getting somewhere. Even if the story isn’t told in chronological sequence, the reader needs to feel the forward momentum.

Specifically, in his work The Art of Fiction, Gardner wrote:

“By definition – and of aesthetic necessity – a story contains profluence, a requirement best satisfied by a sequence of causally related events, a sequence that can end in only one of two ways: in resolution … or in logical exhaustion.”

Along the same lines, in Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster defined the singular merit and fault of a story:

“… it can only have one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next. And conversely it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next.”

Professor Hynes had his own take on this concept.

“A work of fiction can only have one merit: that of making the reader want to keep reading. And it can only have one fault: that of making the reader not want to keep reading.”

So we can think of a novel as one scene followed by another, each drawing the reader further into the plot. The goal is always to get the reader to turn the page. Even if the sequence of events is out of chronological order, the author’s job is to create the sense of forward momentum by leading the reader through the story, one scene at a time.

Forster makes one further distinction between story and plot. He defines a story as “a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence.” A plot, though, according to Forster is “also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality.” He goes on to use this illustration:

“The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a  plot.

In the first example, readers will turn the page to find out what happens next. In the second, readers will want to know what happens next and why it happened. That sense of causality adds depth to the story and encourages the reader to keep turning pages.

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As authors, we know we should create stories with interesting characters, a strong plot, and sentences that are well-constructed and grammatically correct. But the notion of profluence seems to move beyond the mechanics of writing and into the way those elements interact to produce the elusive flow that will keep the reader engaged.

In an article on the Writers Unite website, D. A. Ratliff provides several ideas on how to create and maintain that flow. Here are a few of those suggestions:

  • Create an intriguing hook at the beginning that will grab the reader’s attention
  • Don’t overly describe what’s going on. Let the reader wonder and anticipate learning more in a later chapter
  • Use clear language so you don’t confuse the reader
  • Use effective transitions. Cliffhanger scene endings will compel the reader to turn the page
  • Vary sentence types to create a musical flow

So there you have it. A novel is not just a series of scenes. At its best, it’s a continuous flow of story that’s impossible to put down.

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So TKZers: Have you ever heard the term profluence before? How do you create the flow in your stories to keep readers turning pages? What would you add to the suggestions above?

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KNIGHTS IN MANHATTAN

Reen & Joanie are always moving forward. Whether it’s in dark, secret passageways or running through some of the most famous landmarks in Manhattan, they’re relentless in their pursuit of the bad guys.

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