Latest / Story Works Round Table | Conversations About Craft / SWRT 360 | Writing Young Adult Fiction with Catherine Lyon

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SWRT 360 | Writing Young Adult Fiction with Catherine Lyon · Story Works Round Table | Conversations About Craft

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: This is the Story Works Round Table,
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: conversations about craft for writers and readers curious
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: about writers.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Here in Minnesota,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: it is autumn,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: so early nights,
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: cool days,
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: leaves whipping around whenever the wind blows, and man, it is just perfect.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder if you're doing the same thing.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Is that universal?
• 0:32
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• 0:56
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• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Now, you know how much Kathryn and I love to geek out about story craft.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: And this week we get to go especially deep into some of the technical considerations of writing.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Our guest Kathryn Lyon is back at the Story Works Round Table today.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: This time to talk with us about writing YA fiction.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Kathryn is an author of YA.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: But she's also an educator and works in educational publishing.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: So we got to dig into some cool topics like text complexity and
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: the cognitive load we place on our readers.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: I found it fascinating.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: So if you are interested in writing YA fiction,
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: or if you love to read YA fiction,
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: or if you like If you're a dedicated writer who is ready to grow,
• 1:56
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• 2:20
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• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: And now, enjoy this conversation at the Story Works Round Table.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to this week's Story Works Round Table.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: Today, Kathryn and I are thrilled to be joined by Kathryn Lyon.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: Kathryn is a YA mystery and fantasy indie author from the frozen wonderland
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: of southern Minnesota.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: She's a two-time Whitney Award winner and has been honored with
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: the 2025 Minnesota Author Project,
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: Contest Award for Young Adult Fiction and the 2025 Firebird Award
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: for Young Adult Fiction.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: Whether writing fantasy or mystery,
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: her goal is to create characters you know better than you know yourself
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: and worlds you can slip into more easily than a slip of the tongue.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: She previously taught English and journalism for junior high
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: and high school students and now works in educational publishing.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Her first fantasy novel,
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Disciple of Wrath, was released on June 13th and is available on Amazon.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Kathryn, welcome back to the show!
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, thank you for having me back.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited to have another conversation.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: I really enjoyed it last time.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and for listeners who don't know, we,
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: Kathryn and I sat down to talk about going indie after we were both honored with
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: the Minnesota Author Project Award.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: Kathryn in YA, me for adult fiction.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: So we will definitely link to that episode in the show notes.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: And today we wanted to have you on to talk about writing young adult fiction
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: and especially some of the more technical aspects of it,
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: writing for, you know, content and complexity for that particular age group.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: So...
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: I love that you've got a background in educational publishing and teaching
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  SPEAKER_02: in junior high and high school.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: So exciting.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that background is like one of the reasons why text complexity
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: and thinking about the language that we use with our young readers is something
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: that I think about.
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  SPEAKER_01: I've had the opportunity not only as a teacher,
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: but also I previously worked in educational assessment and Had the opportunity
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  SPEAKER_01: to really dive into creating rubrics and using rubrics to evaluate texts
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  SPEAKER_01: for both quantitative and qualitative text complexity.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so that has definitely had an impact when I write for teens,
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  SPEAKER_01: obviously thinking about different reading levels.
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  SPEAKER_01: Because I think it would surprise people who haven't been in a classroom,
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  SPEAKER_01: sometimes just the variety of readers that you get at the junior high
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  SPEAKER_01: and high school level.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well,
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: you're in this unique position where you can approach what you do as a writer,
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: as an educator, as somebody working in publishing, right?
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  SPEAKER_02: So you've got so many different perspectives to bring to bear on this topic,
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: which is fascinating.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'd like to start with the teacher.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: What a great question.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I loved in teaching also was being able to work with readers
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  SPEAKER_01: who really struggled with reading, right?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, who struggled with comprehension.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I taught a few classes with that.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so the question is, like, can you – what do they enjoy?
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  SPEAKER_01: Like, what gets them into reading if it's a struggle for them?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: But then you also have, like, really strong readers, right?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Books that are written for grownups and are just looking for content.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I think when it comes to being a good writer for teens,
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: like I know that this podcast is really focused on craft and I just talked
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: about text complexity,
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: but the ability to tell a good story is so much more important when it comes to
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: that age group than the ability to write a beautiful paragraph.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: They are really looking for characters that they love and
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes that they can see themselves in.
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  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes that they can escape into another world.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of depends on the teen.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that as I worked with those readers,
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: and it's so interesting, like the most fun I had as a teacher was seeing kids who...
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Struggled with reading and hated reading.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Find the book that pulled them in.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: I remember having one student come up to me one day and be like,
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Ms. Lyon, I stayed up late reading last night.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: She was so shocked.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: It ended up being the Twilight series, which I would not have considered maybe master writing.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: But Like, it was a good story and something that she could latch on to.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And throughout the rest of the year,
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: it was fun to see all of these different books that she found,
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: that she really found her genre.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so...
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like being able to foster a love of reading at that age, I think is so important.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like as a teacher, I was often thinking about like, oh, I want to increase their comprehension.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: I want to help them to be thinking in a different way when they approach texts, right?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like understanding the different layers,
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  SPEAKER_01: looking to make inferences,
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: maybe even expanding vocabulary if they're reading things that are like
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: a little bit out of their reading level, right?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I think now that I've been out of teaching for a while,
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: the things that I remember and the things that I'm the most proud
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  SPEAKER_01: of are like those moments where I found those opportunities
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  SPEAKER_01: to make them really enjoy it, to make them really love it.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Or not make them love it.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds like I forced it upon them.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
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  SPEAKER_01: that they discovered a book that they really saw themselves in or
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: that they could escape into and that they really found that love for
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: a specific genre or even found love for a genre that wasn't their usual genre
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: because you also get that.
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  SPEAKER_01: Some kids who are like, oh,
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: I only read fantasy,
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  SPEAKER_01: but they really enjoy something that you read as a class that isn't
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  SPEAKER_01: in their usual wheelhouse.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: So when you're writing books,
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: Do you keep those layers in your conscious awareness,
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: maybe not in the first drafting stage, but in the revision?
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  SPEAKER_02: Because on the one hand,
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  SPEAKER_02: you've just spoken to the importance of the story being something
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  SPEAKER_02: the reader can immerse himself in and really enjoy.
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  SPEAKER_02: But on the other hand,
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  SPEAKER_02: you're talking about layers,
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  SPEAKER_02: inference,
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  SPEAKER_02: complexity,
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: and Increasing vocabulary and maybe giving the reader the opportunity to reach
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  SPEAKER_02: and expand as they read.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: So given that you have this awareness, how does that function in your writing process?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great question.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that I'm a slow drafter, I will say.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: I know that A lot of recommendations are like, write a quick zero draft, right?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, get through it as quickly as you can and then go back and revise.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's just not the way that I write.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm slow and I'm intentional.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: I still end up making just as many changes in revision.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I am intentional about, like, the language as I write.
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  SPEAKER_01: But I try not to get, like, bogged down by it.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think thinking about – and it's so hard while you're in the moment and thinking
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  SPEAKER_01: about, like, is this character going to make this decision?
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  SPEAKER_01: To also be thinking about vocabulary or things like that.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so that, I think, fits well with revision to me.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not, like,
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: as I think about text complexity,
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: as I mentioned,
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: we have, like,
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: quantitative,
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: and then we have qualitative,
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: which includes vocabulary,
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: but also things like, where am I asking my readers to make inferences?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Where am I asking them to really...
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: To think about themes of the story in complex ways.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where you kind of do that check, right?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And say like,
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: maybe in those moments where I'm asking for some abstract thinking
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: or some like really,
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: like for them to make some of these inferences,
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: I can think about making the actual sentence structures a little bit less complex.
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  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's not the place to introduce them to a new word.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And like really trying to think through That's where beta readers can also be very helpful.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: I have gotten feedback before that has been like,
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: oh, you use two words that I don't know on the same page.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Especially for teen readers, that's going to be rough.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd say as I'm drafting,
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not necessarily thinking like, oh, a teenager is going to read this.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Can they make this leap with me?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's I think more of a revision thing that I'm like, okay,
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: maybe the teenagers who love reading and have read a billion books
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: and have really strong comprehension can make that jump,
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: but I probably need to add in some more direct or explicit...
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: When I say explicit language,
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't mean swearing,
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: but explicitly laying out what is happening versus asking them to make inferences.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: So trying to consider different levels.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: And of course,
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: as a YA writer,
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing that so much less,
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: I would say,
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: than somebody writing middle grade,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: which would be kind of those tween years of They're thinking even more,
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: or should be thinking even more about the vocabulary,
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: about even sentence complexity,
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: about how much background knowledge they're needing to bring in
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: to understanding certain points or certain descriptions.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: You said you gave the example of
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: a beta reader saying you used two words I didn't understand on the same page.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so let me be devil's advocate here and say, yeah, so kid, grab a dictionary.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's good for you to go look them up.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: What's your problem?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: So what would you as the educator and expert say to that attitude?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I think When I think about making revisions,
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: like sometimes I will just change the word if I'm like,
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, this is written for teenagers.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of the time,
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: it's not that I don't want complexity in my stories or in my writing,
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: right, in the way that I produce.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: I just maybe want to provide more scaffolding.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm going to include some vocabulary words that I think might be tricky,
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: and this is every fantasy author needs to do this, right?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're making up words in so many cases.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: So they're trying to show you, because those are words that you can't look up, right?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like if If I'm reading Harry Potter and I'm like, oh, I don't know what apparate means.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: I want to think about providing...
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Context clues, right?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Providing scaffolding.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's true whether it's vocabulary,
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: it's true whether there's like background information that would be helpful, right?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think about like in fantasy books, a lot of the time you have horses.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And like some people have worked with horses before, some people haven't.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so like sometimes you need to have like a few additional pieces of scaffolding
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: before you use horse-specific language because it's You're going to have a variety
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: of readers.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's something that all authors need to think about, right?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: As you're introducing concepts that people might not be familiar with,
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: but it's just something that young adult authors and middle grade writers
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: and even like chapter books,
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: like you just have to really consider where that line is.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's going to be different for each teen who reads it.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: So like...
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Is this too much language that's too difficult is the first question.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is this going to scare them away from continuing reading?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And if there are some words that are tricky,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: because we do want to,
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: use beautiful language and sometimes there are harder words
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: or more complex sentences with a lot of clauses jammed in there
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: and making it tricky,
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: but just providing them a little bit of additional information.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Additional support,
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: I guess,
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: and thinking about those different levels of readers and what they can access,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: if that makes sense.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because, yeah, I'm always worried about people thinking that YA or teen lit dumbs it down.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, no, you can have really complex and interesting and beautiful language without...
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Without dumbing it down,
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: but still respecting your readers and understanding where they're coming from,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: if that makes sense.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it makes total sense.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I love the idea of scaffolding and providing those contextual clues for our readers.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: And as you were talking, I was thinking, oh, yeah, I do that.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: In my historical fiction,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: I like to bring in references that are from the period that
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: That we wouldn't necessarily be familiar with today.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so then I've got a level of awareness.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'm consciously dropping this in for my verisimilitude, right?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: But I can't expect my readers to know it.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I need to make it understandable within the context of the story itself.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Historical fiction is such a good example of that,
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: that you just need to provide some of that context and
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: really not make assumptions
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: about what your readers know or not.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a hard balance, too,
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: because I know that I've often heard the writing advice,
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: and I think it's good writing advice, that you don't want to...
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's just a matter of,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: you know, determining where is the best way, you know, like the example that is, um,
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of sad that I think about is where they say,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: like, don't tell us she's sad, show us the empty cradle.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you do that and then say, oh,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: and also she's sad,
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: that is not something that you want to do usually as a writer,
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: but sometimes you do as a young adult writer.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Think about like, okay,
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: struggling readers might not have picked up that these were clues
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: that I was indicating that she was sad.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so finding that balance is sometimes tricky, I think.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: And when you're writing for someone who's not yourself in your own category,
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: like a different age group or maybe ESL or whatever,
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: there can be layers of technical approach that I think are so interesting.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: And you mentioned that you don't, sometimes readers think YA fiction has been dumbed.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: How would you
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: describe where
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: readers that kind of age,
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: would you say 14 to 19,
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: which is a big spread,
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: but how should we think of YA readers in terms of their development
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: or their readiness for complex ideas or for, you know, whatever?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think the real challenge that I found as a teacher,
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: and any teacher will tell you this,
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: like is that keyword of like differentiation,
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: that like when you're teaching a lesson about finding the theme of a story to
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: a group of,
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: let's say,
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: eighth graders,
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: how do you,
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: and I guess we'll look at like ninth or tenth graders because that's more in
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: the teen range,
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: like how How do you handle the span of reading levels that you encounter?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because genuinely,
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: you have kids reading at a fourth or fifth grade reading level,
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: and you have kids that are well prepared to tackle adult literature.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I think the solution that people take is,
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: oh, we'll go to the lowest reading level and make it accessible to everyone.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that's Like, it's a good way to think about it, right?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because we want to make sure that all kids can access good books.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that then they take away some of that complexity and some of
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: that richness that those readers who are more advanced are really looking for
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: and really seeking.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I think about...
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of what we were talking about with the vocabulary, right?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, don't always shy away from using words that might be hard,
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: but understanding that you might need to provide some scaffolding for some
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: of those readers who struggle with it.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think about that with themes as well.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: As I was looking at my book ahead of this and thinking about,
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: there was a section – That I was looking at that I was like, oh,
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: this was a great way to like prime the theme, right,
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: for these young readers as they were thinking of,
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: or not the theme, obviously there are a lot of themes within a novel, but yeah.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I was like,
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: I definitely think that this is not a place where some of the readers are going
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: to be able to access this and kind of tie this in with some of the deeper messages
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: of the story because it's just a character description.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: But there are some readers who will and who will be able to explore some
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: of those complex things within the story.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: And like, would it be horrible if I like read an example of...
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Please do.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, not to, like, advertise my books or anything.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: No, absolutely.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: Give us the title of your book before you start reading.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, this is Disciple of Wrath.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: So this is, I had some mysteries that I wrote, and this is my first fantasy that just came out.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: But I was thinking about, like,
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: this was one of the things as I was writing,
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: there was just a sentence that I had kind of,
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: or I can have kind of this debate with.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: That was just describing a character and it said he was refined,
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: elegant,
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: devastating,
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: an expensive kind of anger,
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: a luxury too rare for common consumption, and all the more dangerous for it.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking about that.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, are my teen readers going to understand what I mean by that?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like common consumption?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like some of this vocabulary is hard.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's a more abstract idea.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: And like I said, sometimes having those things in the same place.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: But then,
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: and yeah,
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then if we look at the next paragraph,
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: I explain, like I give a concrete example of something this man has done.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that kind of shows his personality, his anger.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so if they miss some of those connections with that particular paragraph,
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: looking at kind of the ties together,
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Between anger and social class and things that become big in the story later on
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: as we're looking at collective anger and the anger of large groups
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: of oppressed people and how that kind of ties in with...
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: With, you know, their class.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, again,
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think that not all readers are going to make that connection or even understand
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: that paragraph,
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: but there's enough in that description of that character that they really can latch
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: on to and understand who that character is, right?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: I talk about how he, like, destroys a rival's villa in a fit of anger.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so, I think that...
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of thinking about dumbing it down,
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: we really want to think about like providing opportunities both for readers
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: that are like try to do it all.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that that is challenging,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: but like try to have some of those really beautiful,
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: complex moments for readers who are a little bit higher without leaving behind kids
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: who are going to just need a little bit more help accessing some of these stories,
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: if that makes sense.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, it does.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: Would you read that sentence again and the following paragraph that you said?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: Builds it out a bit.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the first sentence, sorry,
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'll find the,
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: so it's,
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: he was refined,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: elegant,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: devastating,
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: an expensive kind of anger,
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: a luxury too rare for common consumption, and all the more dangerous for it.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the first sentence kind of thinking about,
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: like, and again, with some context clues, right?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Expensive and luxury.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of thinking about like tying that to anger.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then the next paragraph is,
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: not for the first time, I wondered what he'd done to be selected as wrath.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Rumor had it he'd once been a great artist,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: painting frescoes and chiseling marble sculptures until he was arrested
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: for burning down a rival's villa in a fit of rage.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: So kind of giving more of like a concrete,
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: like the important thing to pull out is that this is a man who is well acquainted
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: with wrath, right?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like he understands rage.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: He was well selected as a disciple of wrath.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is the predecessor of my main character.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so some of those,
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: maybe the more abstract idea of thinking of what is an expensive kind of anger
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: and tying that in with his position in society, I think...
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is maybe presented a little bit more abstractly,
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: but then we have maybe a more straightforward,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: concrete of like, this is an angry man.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so providing that scaffolding for the different kinds of readers.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: And do you...
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: No, go ahead.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was just going to ask, like, as a...
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: As a writer of historical fiction,
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: as you're thinking about introducing some of these concepts or even periods
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: of history that some of us might not be familiar with,
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: is that,
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: do you say that's kind of like a conscious choice that you're thinking about?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay,
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: most readers probably know what this is,
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: or like, how do you make those judgment calls as you're writing historical fiction?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: I think as I'm writing,
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: utilizing my discoveries in research or my awareness of history
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: as it makes sense in the story,
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: whether it's scene building or, you know, a character description or plot.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: But then Once it's in there,
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: whether it's while I'm drafting,
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: because like you,
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a slow drafter,
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: or it's in revision when I'm thinking about it and analyzing it,
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm asking myself,
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: is a reader going to get this and how important is it that they get it?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: I actually...
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: I have an example from a chapter that was just with my critique group.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: So Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel called Babbitt,
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: and it's about kind of your middle class American in the 1920s,
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: striving and kind of the puffed up self-importance of being
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: a middle manager type guy with A house and a,
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: you know, a Ford in the garage and all of those things.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: And this novel was incredibly popular.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then during the Scopes monkey trial, the journalist H.L.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: Mencken was there reporting on it.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I forget what town it was in, but he referred to the townspeople there as Babbitts.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so Babbitt It became part of American slang,
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: part of our lexicon to refer to this type of person.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so I've got a moment in a chapter where I drop in that reference,
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: Babbitt,
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: using it to describe that kind of,
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: you know, striving, keeping up with the Joneses, aren't I grand?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: Look at my car,
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: look at my whatever,
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: look at my,
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: you know, um,
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't expect anyone to necessarily know that reference,
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: but they should know from the context what it's alluding to.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's that tier of reader who's going to know,
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: oh, there's a Sinclair Lewis novel titled Babbitt.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's a reference to Babbitt, right?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then there might be people who go look it up,
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: or there might be people who are historians who are really familiar with the era,
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: or You know, whatever, who would get the deeper meaning of it.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: So there are at least three layers to that one word that I
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: placed in
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: my manuscript.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: And in my critique group,
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: I was on mute, you know, taking notes while they talked about the chapter.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: And one person in the group said,
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: oh, yeah, I enjoyed seeing Babbitt in the reference to Sinclair Lewis.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, yes.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: You got it.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yay.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Go.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Go read her.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: I love that example.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think that even those
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: readers who maybe aren't registering that that's an allusion
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: to not only literature,
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: but that it had been popularized at the time,
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: it still creates that aura of the time period,
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: which I think about—this is a confession maybe I shouldn't make— I am definitely one
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: of those readers that sometimes will just skip those references in history
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: that I maybe don't quite know what it's referencing.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm reading like a Regency novel or something like that,
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: that I'm like, oh, I don't quite know what that is, but...
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: But it still feels,
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: it makes the book feel more authentic and creates that mood and that setting.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: It really brings it alive to have some of that stuff in there.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it serves multiple purposes,
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: even for people who don't understand the word or don't understand the reference.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I love that example.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and I think that's what you're talking about doing.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: With YA readers and having that process where you're looking at what's in there,
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: whether it's vocabulary or theme,
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: you know, or that kind of inference and saying, how much scaffolding does this need?
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to use that word.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great word for describing this.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, to keep it meaningful for the reader.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: And part of that is accessible, but then part of it is also accessible.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: thinking about those layers of meaning and knowing that your book is going
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: to reach more than one type of person, we hope, at least.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, I think that's very cool.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think that,
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: as I mentioned in the beginning,
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: teens love, I mean,
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: as you look at young adult literature,
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: so much of it is plot-driven because teens love storytelling, right?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: They love a fast-paced Yeah.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you have an action-packed plot,
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: you can get away – the better that your storytelling is,
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: the more you can get away with when it comes to the actual writing craft
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: and sneaking in some of these beautiful moments,
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: maybe we should say,
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: of the perfect vocabulary word that might just be a little bit out of reach for some
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: of your readers.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: They'll forgive a lot if they're like, ooh, but are they going to kiss?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think as we look at the craft of writing,
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think being able to find that the reasons why your reader is reading are probably,
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: for many teenagers,
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to say,
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: unlike with adults where you do have people who read a lot just
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: because it's beautiful, you're going to see that less with teenagers.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think Exposing them to that beauty while still having
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: an action-packed plot,
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: while still having characters that they really engage with and connect to,
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think, is going to give you a little bit of that leeway.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about story complexity because you were talking
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: about text complexity, but I feel like at the beginning...
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: What a great question.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think that this,
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: I would give a different answer for middle grade,
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: which I don't usually write in middle grade than I would for teen readers.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: As we look at word counts across genres, you see that it drops.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: So like young adult books are on average,
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: and I think that having so many Kindle books and digital books has changed this.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think adult books are getting shorter on average or longer.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Word counts are mattering a little bit less.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think that if you're submitting to agents or things like that,
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: there are very specific word counts.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: And age definitely impacts.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: Your target audience definitely impacts the word count.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have a little bit less room to expand and explore.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I would really argue that you should have just as much complexity in a YA book
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: when it comes to subplots,
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: when it comes to twists,
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: when it comes to all of these different story strands that you want to kind
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: of fit together.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think that an adolescent can absolutely handle all of these different storylines,
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: multiple characters.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: Again, you may just need to be a little bit more I write
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: so much in genre fiction
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: that I often think about much more predictable plot structures, if that makes sense.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: Not that the books are predictable, but that you're following the hero's journey, right?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or save the cat or whatever.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think that as you...
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: You need to make sure that they can understand the whole time why they're reading
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: about this side person,
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: especially if you have multiple perspectives, those kinds of things.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you have time jumps is another one,
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: which as a historical fiction writer, you have a lot of that in history.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: In like dual timeline POVs where you'll have the historical timeline and then
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: the modern timeline,
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think making sure that the teens are able to follow how all
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: of those things stick together
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: the whole time versus sometimes I think adults will give you
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: a little bit more permission to not quite pull it all together until the end.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: And even to have things that are connected more thematically than adults.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: And plot-wise,
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think you can pull that off with young adult readers,
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: but you need to be,
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm trying to think of a specific example and not are coming to mind,
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: but you just need to be a little bit more...
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Intentional about it,
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: and understand that they're going to want some of those more concrete connections.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I wouldn't leave them out.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't leave out those side plots and things like that.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: When you get into middle grade,
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're starting to see your word count decrease to the extent
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: that you will have maybe fewer subplots.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe I think there you also are seeing more of an impact to
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: the actual just quantitative text complexity, right?
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: Your sentences are going to be a little bit shorter and less complex, maybe less meandering.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so that also contributes to the smaller word count.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I, yeah,
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always worried when people are not always worried,
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: but I think that You know,
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: teenagers can handle a lot of complexity in their stories.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: They can handle a lot of complexity in the ideas.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: You just need to make sure that they stick with you the whole time.
• 39:03
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• 39:09
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• 39:11
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• 39:40
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• 39:49
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• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: I find this interesting because I feel like it's a comprehension conversation more
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: than a story conversation.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that because I think I have one child who can listen to a book being read
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: to her and understand so much more than I would give her credit for.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: The themes, the depth, this character did this because of this.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then I have another daughter who's just like,
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: whatever, like this thing happened and it was cool.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the comprehension is on different levels, but they can both enjoy something.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know if that's fair to adult fiction.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: I like how this is kind of all turned around into like how much understanding,
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: where are the levels and the layers that they can peel back if they want to,
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: but what's the baseline comprehension that you want to get across to your reader
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: and how do you make sure that that is what they're enjoying or that's what's driving
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: the story so that they can enjoy your story and be interested in reading
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: and continue to become better and better readers or more involved readers or read
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: for more complexity.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think too,
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: like you just pointed out with adult readers,
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: that we can also see like a wide range in comprehension.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think too,
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: sometimes genre is like a big indicator,
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: almost as much as target audience,
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: especially when it comes to that teen-adult division,
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: which is obviously like a smaller gap than with middle grade or young kids
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: as they're reading.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because going into literary fiction,
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: you are making assumptions about the level of writing you are going to get.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we've talked about this a little bit, Alita,
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think with you writing in genre, but having more elevated language, I think is...
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like is something that as we look at adult literacy rates in the United States,
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: we can see that actually there are a lot of adults who don't access literature in
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: the same way.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think they're going to be drawn to specific, a lot of them don't read, right?
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: And why their comprehension might be a little bit low.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I think honestly,
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: with audiobooks gaining so much popularity and And things like BookTok pulling
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: in audiences that maybe haven't always been readers.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think that we can see...
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like specific genres, you need to really be aware of that.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you write for adults,
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: like making sure that you are thinking about different levels of comprehension.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: And again,
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: if you have that good story,
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: like you said, that somebody can access on like maybe a more superficial level.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: I know I read for escape all the time and I don't want to be I'm thinking about all
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: of these different levels.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to escape and have a good time for some hours with these new friends and new worlds.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think there are some genres like historical fiction,
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: like literary fiction,
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: where you're going to be presuming that you have some elevated writing there
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: that will attract different kinds of readers.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it goes to engagement as well as comprehension.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: like there are certain books I could listen to on audio because they're going
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: to be more,
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: how to say this,
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_02: like I can engage with the story at the surface level and be satisfied
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: so I can consume it.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: By listening and get what I want out of it.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: But then there are other books where I could not do that because it's too easy
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: for other things to intrude in that space.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to engage with the story.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: I want to immerse.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: I want to contemplate.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: I want to experience it vicariously.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so we've got the personalities of the readers factoring in.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: Comprehension.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: We've got development.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: If you're looking at these different age groups and just basic brain development
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: and education,
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: there's so many things that go into the experience that we're creating
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: for our readers.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I think some of the best stories do offer the layers that you can peel back so
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_02: that someone...
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, who doesn't want to sit in a still, quiet room and immerse can still enjoy the story.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: And at what point, you said that a lot of this comes in revision for you.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: At what point do you go from, I'm telling the story that I need to tell, right?
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is what the story needs to be,
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: to now let's analyze the language and the comprehension and the layers and make sure
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: that it's working for the audience that I'm targeting.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think, I mean,
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that there's like a specific round of revision that I do that's like,
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to read this as a teenager.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard, even having experience with teaching and with grading.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think anyone who's like graded analysis,
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: like literary analysis,
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: of course that brings in writing as well,
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: but, and has like sat with students and like chatted with them about books.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: Even with that experience, I can't be a teenager.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: I just can't pull back,
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: especially since I taught before COVID, before some of the developments with AI.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about that a little bit last time,
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: that teaching is just so different now, and young readers are so different now.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that...
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: Having feedback is always important,
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: of course, to make sure that you identify those places where there might be gaps.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: Or places where you can take things out.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: I've provided too much scaffolding.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's a little bit of a... Because, again, you don't want to...
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: If it's an inference that readers can and should make,
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: you don't want to spoon-feed it to them every time.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so finding that balance...
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I will admit,
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: I often,
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: they always say kill your darlings with the revision process,
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: but I sometimes will sacrifice if I'm like, oh,
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: I really like this paragraph,
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: like I'll sacrifice reading comprehension or some of that because I'm like,
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: oh, I like this element of complexity.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: I like the way that this is phrased, even if it's maybe not the clearest way to say it.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: I also think that writing style plays a factor into it.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of it does come into revision, but I do think my writing style...
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: The best compliment I think I ever got on my writing was like,
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: it's really beautiful, but it's also really readable.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not prone to having sentences that are convoluted and confusing.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's one of the reasons why I think YA is a good place for me, right?
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think that that's naturally suited to how I write.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think that within various rounds of revision...
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: As I'm reading and thinking about my readers and their responses,
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: as I'm hearing from beta readers or critique partners,
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: that's a good time to kind of consider some of those places where I'm like,
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: oh, I think this might be too confusing.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think that, or this might be too abstract.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: I maybe need to give a specific example.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like a tell versus show here.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm showing too much in this instance versus just like having clarity
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: when it comes to whether it's themes, characters, plot.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: So if somebody wanted to write YA,
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: but they don't have a background in education or any such background, Experience.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: What would you want them to know?
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you had two or three things like,
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: okay, now you're going to write for this particular audience.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_02: Keep this in mind.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: What would you tell them?
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: Great question.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the first one, rather than something to know, I'd say something to do.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: Read YA.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think like that's of course what everyone will tell you,
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: but like you should be reading widely in the genre that you are writing in.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so like you will get a feel for the voice,
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: of young adult literature of writing for teens if you read a lot of books for teens.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you'll see because that has professional editors going through and identifying the
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: Those places where things might feel convoluted
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: where they might not be straightforward, the voice is going to be helpful to learn.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to specific things to know, when it comes to writing for teens...
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: And this is particularly for teens, again, not necessarily for middle grade.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: I would say the first one is don't shy away from adding in complexity,
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: from adding in like teenagers development wise are usually well able
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: to handle figurative language,
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: to handle multiple layers of meaning, to handle complex storylines.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: But As you are writing,
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: as you're revising,
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: keep in mind, like,
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: and I would say the big categories are going to be vocabulary,
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: context,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: like content knowledge,
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: if there are areas where,
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: you know, you need some background, like we talked about with horses.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: Vocabulary, content knowledge, and then inferences.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: Pay attention to those places where you're asking your readers to make inferences
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: about characters, about characters, What will happen next?
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: I've written a lot of mysteries,
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: so thinking about those places where I'm asking readers to make guesses,
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: that's a really hard one when it comes to mysteries.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thinking about those places where, have I put enough clues, have I not put enough clues?
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to do that in any genre that you're writing for teenagers.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: Am I giving enough clues to who this person is,
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: to how they're feeling, without telling you he is really upset right now?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, those are the two things I would say.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: Don't shy away from complexity, but add scaffolding when needed.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_02: So with reading widely in the genre,
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_02: you mentioned because editors have checked this,
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: so then I'm wondering if there should be the caveat that you want to read more.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: YA books that are published by major traditional publishers so that you can read
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: with confidence that they have hired professional,
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_02: they have in-house professional editors who are trained to understand
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_02: the cognitive development of readers of a certain age group.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_02: Because you might have a beautiful novel marketed to YA readers and Written by
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_02: an indie, edited by an indie who may or may not be on top of some of those things.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, as an indie author, can I say that?
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like there are so many great indie books, but it is like a challenge.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you are looking for like, what books should I read to get an idea for The Voice?
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would say if you know any teachers,
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: if you go to the library and see,
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: because those are the people, or if you know any actual teenagers, right?
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the people who are engaging every day with like, what books are they actually reading?
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: And see kind of like the most popular books,
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: I would say, which are not always those indie books.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: I do think...
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: Reading a variety of different types of authors and stuff.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're specifically looking for voice and text complexity reading level
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: that you should be kind of aiming at as a young adult writer,
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: I would look at some of the more popular books.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because those are the books that teens are accessing, that they're reading, that they're loving.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can kind of see,
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: and of course there will be a variety within that,
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: but so I wouldn't necessarily say it has to be a traditionally published book
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: that has gone through an editor,
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: because kids,
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: ultimately those teenagers,
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: are going to be the ultimate deciders of, is this a good book for teens, right?
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is this a book that I can connect with, that the voice sounds...
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's at the right reading level and, of course, that it sounds authentic.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think popularity could be a great benchmark for that.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think there should be a caveat here because you mentioned like go to the library
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: or go to a teacher or go to a teenager.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like there are a lot of adults that read in YA spaces.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: So just going to popular YA books is not necessarily going to give you
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: a popular book for a teenager.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: So finding those people who actually know what teenagers are reading,
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: if that's the people that you're marketing toward rather than What might be popular
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: with adults who like to read in YA spaces because they like the age of
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: the protagonist or they like the thematic content or whatever it is
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: that they enjoy out of those stories, you know, it could be different.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: Such a good call out.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_02: Such a good call out.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: And what about...
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_02: A writer who might be thinking, well,
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: I want to write for YA,
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: so I will just throw my YA draft into one of these AI tools for writers,
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: and that tool is going to tell me if I've got the right number of words per sentence
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_02: and the right word count for the book,
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_02: and if I'm writing my vocabulary at an X-grade reader level,
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: and That's my ticket to publish because this AI algorithm developed
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_02: for writers told me so.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder,
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_02: with your expertise and experience on so many multiple levels,
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_02: what you think about that and some of these tools
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: that are perhaps guiding writers' decisions.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say I would not go by AI as a tool to determine reading.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you are worried about those quantitative measures of reading comprehension,
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: so looking at how many words are there per sentence,
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: do we have repeated words,
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_01: all of those kinds of things, the length of the text, there are...
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: Academic measures of that, right?
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: Lexile and some of these other measures.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: And there are things that will calculate those things for you.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: There are places that you can go online.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's not necessarily AI, like they're just doing the math.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: But it's so important to remember that whether a text is appropriate or well-suited to
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: Rely on those quantitative matters.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think the example that you hear a lot is the giver.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_01: When you look at the lexile level of the giver, it's actually pretty low.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why you sometimes see it being taught in elementary schools,
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: but you also see it being taught in junior highs.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because as you look at the complexity of the themes, as you look at some of the ideas and the
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, the age of the protagonists is always going to be an issue.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that,
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: like, many people would agree that that's probably better suited for junior high.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like,
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: some readers can independently access that as,
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: you know, younger readers and understand all of those different elements.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: But...
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: As we look at what makes a text complex,
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: and what makes a text difficult for kids,
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: it's not just a matter of how long are the sentences,
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: how many big vocab words are there, or challenging vocab words are there.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's also a matter of...
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: Some of these other types of complexity.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then,
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: the third level of that,
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: that I think is very different based on region,
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: based on family,
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: based on the individual kid,
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: is going to be like the types of topics that they're ready to handle.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: There may be things that are simple and easy to access,
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: but the content and the things that are being grappled
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: with are not developmentally appropriate for that age group.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, absolutely.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think it is a good tool to assess,
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: like, to determine, okay, what's the lexile level of this thing that I just wrote?
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: To kind of see and kind of, again,
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: get that idea for Like,
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: what does that feel like,
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: a text that's written for a 7th grader versus a 10th grader?
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there are measures of that,
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: but it is definitely not the only thing that you should be looking at when writing
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: a book for teenagers.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that was something actually with Disciple of Wrath that I was like,
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: okay, my characters are 18—
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: 18, 19, my storyline, though,
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, should I age up these characters and market this as adult fiction?
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like the storyline would still mostly make sense.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was a decision I really had to look at.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't necessarily just based on The text complexity or what teenagers could comprehend.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I ultimately was like,
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_01: this is not a book that I would give to my 13-year-old neighbor.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: This is probably something that we're looking at like high school-aged kids
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: because there are elements of murder and the characters are older and are dealing
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: with struggles that...
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: And again, this will depend on family and what different people are comfortable with.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: But we are seeing the infusion into YA of more explicit material.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's something to be aware of, too, when you're looking at these young readers.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where are those lines for you and your family as you're thinking about that?
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as writers,
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: we need to also be conscious if you have things like that,
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: like maybe some trigger warnings or...
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a lot of language, like thinking about those aspects of age as well.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_02: The word inference has come up a lot.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_02: So is that because of cognitive development that that keeps coming up?
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so, yeah, I think that the...
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_01: You have little kids who are making inferences in stories, right?
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: That they'll see a character throw something on the ground and stomp away.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't tell them that they're mad, but the kid has to determine that.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as we get older,
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: some of those inferences become much more complex as we're reading some
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_01: of those texts that are...
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: And this could be at like a sentence level.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I had one to like pull out of my story right now,
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_01: But it could also be like broader inferences, right?
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: So like,
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: I maybe don't tell you in this dystopian fiction that there's something very wrong
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: with the way that the government is doing.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: Interacting with its citizens.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe they are presenting it as like, we are such benevolent, such a benevolent government.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're providing structure for you in your life.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the young adult reader is making inferences about like, oh,
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: these are actually bad people who are doing bad things and
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: that are controlling their citizens.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes those things are told to them directly through a viewpoint character.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes they have to make I think with adult literature,
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: we want to push as much as possible to the readers drawing those conclusions.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you don't want to be spelling everything out for your readers and saying, like, Oh, wow.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think that this government is controlling us in a way that's not okay.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something that when I think about in my stories, I was thinking about themes-wise.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because I don't usually set out to talk about specific themes in my stories.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: But as they come up, I'm like, I almost always have my character...
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: If not say kind of like a statement that could be considered a theme in the story
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_01: during kind of their big moments of realization and kind of the arc,
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_01: the highest,
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_01: the zenith of their character arcs,
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_01: they often express pretty directly to another character or
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_01: in their internal monologue like, oh, this is the lesson that I am learning.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that you're less likely to see that with an adult character.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: In adult literature,
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_01: that they're like, oh, wow, this is the thing that we are learning about anger.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, you don't want to write it in that way.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: You want it to feel natural,
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: that it's like that conclusion of some of these things that have been bubbling in
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: the story.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think with teens,
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: sometimes you can be a little bit more direct in saying the thing out loud.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and, and same with character development.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like when we're describing characters with adult literature,
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: you would never want to say this was a bad man.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: You want to show that it's a bad guy.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in, in young adult literature,
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: you don't want to say the sentence,
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_01: he was a bad guy,
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_01: but you can be a little bit more direct about like the characters like,
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: oh, wow, he's a bad guy.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, especially with middle grade, um, Like,
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_01: they're sometimes guiding the reader a little bit more on, like,
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_01: this is what you're supposed to think about,
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_01: this person or this place or this situation,
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: to help them to kind of give them those guideposts throughout the story.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas, again,
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think with adult literature—and you're starting to make these decisions
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_01: with YA— Mm-hmm.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_02: And other than reading in your genre and,
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_02: reading a lot of YA fiction and kind of trying to get a sense watching
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_02: for those things and developing your sense of how much and when they occur,
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_02: are there any sort of tips or markers you can suggest for writers or When to apply,
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_02: more is better, don't be subtle, be direct, kind of, I don't know.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: Good question.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that is going to be, first of all, like the writer style.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think some writers are more prone to do that and some writers are less prone to do that.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think certain genres are going to...
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: To have that a little bit more,
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: like mysteries,
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think you may be going to provide a little bit less of that,
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_01: like I'm guiding you through,
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_01: because they're expecting that to not feel like they totally have a read
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_01: on what's going on at every moment.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_01: But some things that might be a little bit more challenging for them,
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: like a historical fiction, if they're grappling with
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, complex text,
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_01: complex vocabulary,
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: and a world that they're not as familiar with,
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: social norms that they're not as familiar with.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_01: Those might be places where you can provide a little bit more,
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: where you're like,
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: they're already, like,
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_01: their mental load is already heavy as they're working through some of these stories.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: If you tend to be a writer of a genre like romance, or, like,
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_01: I tend to write a lot of fantasy books, Again,
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: they're encountering new worlds,
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_01: but the readers are expecting more of a genre fiction feel,
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_01: if that's a way that I can say it.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like even with adult romance,
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_01: I see a lot more just explicitly, like,
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so in love with this man,
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: you know, like being very direct about how those readers are feeling.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so I don't know that there's like a specific standard for like
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_01: in these situations you should always, always provide that scaffolding
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_02: or not.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think you gave us a really great guidepost though when you mentioned cognitive load.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_02: if I'm writing a scene where the setting is well established
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_02: and they're already familiar with the characters and I'm not adding anything to New
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_02: to the world building or any new layer of complexity to whatever aspect of
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_02: the story,
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_02: then that's probably a good place where I can add in some of that subtlety,
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_02: create an opportunity for the inference.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_02: But then if I'm in a scene or a place in the arc where other things are going on
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_02: and I need their attention...
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_02: To go to these elements of the story,
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_02: then it makes more sense to be a little more direct with,
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_02: you know, those other aspects.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you mentioned engagement earlier.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the key, right, is to keep the reader reading.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_01: And this is hard to know, but that's kind of the...
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_01: The division, right?
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_01: If leaving clues makes them more engaged, right?
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're drawing conclusions.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, ooh, he's such a bad guy.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_01: Or like, oh, I don't know if he's a bad guy or not.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, Snape, I don't know.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm seeing different clues and the inferences that I'm trying to make.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_01: If that's increasing the engagement, if that's keeping them reading...
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Then you want to provide those opportunities for them to be involved actively in
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: the reading process.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a place where they're like, ooh,
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_01: this is too hard, I'm confused, then that's where they're going to stop reading.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's where they're going to disengage from the reading.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the same with vocabulary, right?
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you have really difficult vocabulary in a place where it could disengage them,
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_01: it could also...
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, activate that part of their brain, right?
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's pulling in those context clues and saying, like, oh, yeah, this is what this means.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so, but that's obviously really difficult when you're writing and not reading.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I think having people read your stories,
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: and I think that this is true whether you're writing a young adult or not.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm guessing with that readers group that you were talking about earlier,
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_01: sometimes they say things that you're like, what?
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I was not expecting you to draw that conclusion.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Or like, you interpreted that so differently than I thought you were going to.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that is just like the nature of writing, right?
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_01: That readers are going to take it and go in a direction that you weren't anticipating.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's not necessarily a bad thing.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_01: But if there is something that you're like, oh, I really wanted to get this across, and you...
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Pulled something else completely out of it.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's a place where you want to add in additional or more direct, like, oh, this was a bad guy.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because you were interpreting him as this,
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_01: like, really dreamboat brooding guy, and he was supposed to just be a bad guy.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like,
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_01: adding in some of those indicators,
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_01: however you choose to do that as an author,
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_01: is going to help increase the engagement and have them going in the direction
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_01: that you want them to go, for sure.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_02: We've been going at this, I think, for an hour.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_02: I could keep going, but we have to be mindful of time as well.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_02: So before we start to wrap this up, Kathryn, anything you want to bring us back to?
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's been great.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I forgot.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_02: How about you, Kathryn?
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_02: There's just like...
• 1:12:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, either one.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_02: Either of us.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I think that this was great.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_01: As before,
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_01: this was so fun to chat with you guys and to hear the insightful questions
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_01: that you have, too, in ways that I wasn't thinking about this topic.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I love this.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_02: I love all your expertise and sharing with our listeners.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_02: And where can they find Disciple of Wrath and you?
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so Disciple of Wrath is on sale at Amazon right now.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's also on Kindle Unlimited.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_01: So if they have that subscription, they can read it for free.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I also have a website, kathrynlionbooks.com.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's Catherine because we have multiple Catherines on the call.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's C-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And on my website,
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_01: you can sign up for my newsletter, which is where you can get great information.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Access to like bonus scenes,
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_01: songs related to the books, trailers, sneak peeks for future things as they come.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And also get like a quarterly newsletter where I'll tell you all the news,
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_01: all of the exciting things happening.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so much for coming back to the Story Works Round Table.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, this was so fun.
• 1:13:44
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• 1:14:00
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• 1:14:25
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