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Middle Grade Word Count by Peggy Thomas

9/24/2019

1 Comment

 
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Lately the Ninjas have been discussing middle grade nonfiction, specifically word count. How long is the typical book? It depends on what you call typical. Is it trade nonfiction, or a title in an educational series? To start with, the middle grade reader is considered 8 – 12 years old, or in 3-6 grade.

One useful tool that I’ve used in the past to find the word count on a mentor text is the website Accelerated Reader Bookfinder (ARB).  Its primary purpose is to connect readers with books, but ARB can be helpful for writers as well. 

When you go into the site it will ask if you are a parent, teacher, student or librarian. Choose any one, it doesn’t seem to matter. In the advanced search you can look for a specific title, author, grade level, publisher, and limit the search to nonfiction. When a title comes up, click on it to see all the information including ATOS reading level, recommended grade range, number of pages, and word count. Search enough titles and you’ll see that word count varies.  I randomly searched mid-grade NF published by Clarion and found:

            Anita Silvey (2008) I’ll Pass for Your Comrade – 115 pages, 13,379 words.
            Emily Arnold McCully (2014) Ida M. Tarbell – 279 pages 57,116 words.
            Marc Aronson (2011) Trapped – 134 pages, 22,439 words.
(You’ll notice that ARB is not all-encompassing. It does not have every title and lags behind by a couple of years. But it still is a useful tool.)

Then I randomly looked at several educational publishers and the word counts ranged from 2000 to 5000.  My books  for Lucent that I consider mid-grade and average 15,000 to 20,000 words are, on this website, considered YA.  And my 48-page picture books that have 2500-3000 words that I consider mid-grade are listed here for K-3. 
​
So, what is a mid-grade word count? 
My quick answer would be 20,000.
But really…it depends.

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To Blog or Not to Blog by Nancy Churnin

9/17/2019

6 Comments

 
​To blog or not to blog, that is the question.

For many of us, our time to write is so limited or constricted, it seems crazy to take on one more writing obligation. And yet, in addition to the Nonfiction Ninjas blog, where I share a nugget of hard-earned writerly wisdom once every three months, I started a blog, THE KIDS ARE ALL WRITE, on my website nancychurnin.com.

And I made it weekly.

My motivation at the start was to give back to the writing community. When my books came out, writers, educators, book-loving folks with blogs hosted me – reviewing my books or doing interviews that gave me an opportunity to talk about my writing journey – what inspires me, what challenges me, what my hopes for my books are.

This would be my chance to do the same for other writers.

That’s a good enough reason to host a blog. But in doing it, I found an unexpected reward. I got to ask other writers all the things I wanted to know about what inspired them, what challenged them, what their hopes for their books are.

We talk about craft, about what we include and leave out of the narrative, about the surprises and the discoveries. In short, not only have I made marvelous friends through these interviews, they’ve become weekly dives into craft and motivation sessions that remind me why I love living in a world of words.

So yes, since time is finite, the hours I spend on the blog take away the time I have to write and promote my books. But there are wrinkles in time and tesseracts and the time I spend shining a light on others and learning from them deepens my work, makes it better and makes me better.
​
So, do you have the time to start a blog? Maybe the better question is whether you can come up with a better way of learning, growing and giving back.

6 Comments

What's the Question? by Christine Liu-Perkins

9/10/2019

3 Comments

 
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​My favorite book on writing nonfiction is Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction—and Get It Published by Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato. One key concept they discuss in Chapter 2 is the importance of having a question that drives the book: "Every work of serious nonfiction begins with a question the author has about the topic and ends with an answer the author wants to provide." (p. 77) That question determines how interested editors and readers will be in the book.
 
I find that asking an overall question also focuses my writing. Knowing what question I'm trying to answer helps me decide how to structure the book and helps in making those many decisions about what to keep and what to leave out. For At Home in Her Tomb, my question was, What do the tombs and their artifacts tell us about life in ancient China?
 
Sometimes authors reveal in interviews, Author's Notes, or blogposts what question(s) inspired them to create their books. Here are a few examples:
 
  • In Presenting Buffalo Bill: The Man Who Invented the Wild West, Candace Fleming explored: "Who was Buffalo Bill? Was he a hero or was he a charlatan? Was he an honest man or a liar? Was he a real frontiersman or was he a showman?"
 
  • In working on Feathers: Not Just for Flying Melissa Stewart wondered, "How else do birds use their feathers in unexpected ways?"
 
  • In her Author's Note for The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus, Jen Bryant said she wanted to know, "Who was this man Roget? . . . And what compelled him to undertake this immensely difficult task?"
 
  • "Every day, creatures lose their lives on our highways. What, I wondered, can we learn from them?" This question led Heather Montgomery to write Something Rotten: A Fresh Look at Roadkill.
 
  • At the end of her prologue for Bonnie and Clyde: The Making of a Legend, Karen Blumenthal wrote of the two outlaws, "They are romanticized, celebrated, and remembered as the stuff of legend. But why?"
 
To identify the question driving your own project, Rabiner and Fortunato recommend recalling what originally captured your interest in the subject "and why you find it compelling enough to write a book to answer it . . ." (p. 78).
 
What's the question driving your work-in-progress? Defining that question will help you research, write, and market your book.
 
Happy questioning!
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The Three-Step Self-Edit by Lisa Amstutz

9/3/2019

3 Comments

 
As writers, we spend so much time agonizing over our words that we tend to get attached to them. It’s hard to look at them critically when it comes time to revise. Here are some tips to help you edit your own fiction or nonfiction picture book in three simple—though not necessarily easy!—steps.
 
Step 1: The Big Picture
 
Before you worry about the nitty-gritty, make sure your story works at the “big picture” level. Ask yourself the following questions about your story.
 
  • Is your story arc strong? Does it flow smoothly and in a logical manner from beginning to end?
  • Does the beginning of your story clearly establish the main character’s problem (if applicable)?
  • Does your main character solve that problem after several failed attempts that build toward the solution?
  • Does the main character’s personality/experience play into the solution somehow?
  • Does your story have a satisfying ending?
  • Does your story have “heart”—an emotional story arc or connection?
 
Step 2: Scene by Scene
 
Now let’s zoom in a little closer. Start by breaking your story into spreads. You can do this by making a dummy or by simply leaving an extra space between spreads in your manuscript. You’ll need 12–14 spreads for a traditional 32-page manuscript.
 
  • Does each spread contain a complete scene, with a character, a setting, and an action or change of some kind?
  • Think about what the art might show on each spread. Is there enough variety to make the book visually interesting?
  • Does the tension build from scene to scene?
  • Finally, look at your transitions. How can you tempt the reader to turn the page?
 
Step 3: Polish Your Prose
 
Now that you’ve looked at the big picture and the scene by scene view, it’s time to zoom in even closer and scrutinize each sentence.
 
  • Scan for adverbs and adjectives. Try to replace them with stronger nouns and verbs if possible (e.g., instead of saying someone walked quickly, say they trotted or jogged).
  • Do you have a lot of "he saids" and "she saids" in your text? Replace some of them with actions instead.
  • Look carefully at each sentence. Are you telling the reader something that will be shown in the art? If so, take it out.
  • Sprinkle in some alliteration, internal rhyme, onomatopoeia, or other literary devices. Try reading the story aloud to see if it sounds satisfying.
 
Happy revising!
 
Lisa Amstutz is the author of more than 100 books for kids and many magazine articles. She also offers critique and mentoring services for writers. See www.LisaAmstutz.com for more information.
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