In today’s episode on the Middle Grade Made Easy(er) podcast, I want to share a story about a new coaching client of mine called Steve who is writing a middle-grade verse novel. The reason I’m doing this episode today is because it follows on logically from the last episode on this podcast called Use Story Type to Unlock Your Middle-Grade Novel, in which I share how important it is to build solid structure into your story.
Today’s episode is going to show you why it’s important to build that structure before you submit to agents and publishers.
Steve’s Story
Over the three years that Steve had been writing his verse novel, he worked on his poems with a mentor who is a published poet, he had it critiqued by his critique group partners, and then he revised it and sent his query with the first ten pages to an agent. Within a record two days, the agent contacted Steve saying that they loved the first ten pages, and wanted to see the full manuscript.
For those of you who’ve been through this process before, you know how exciting it is to get a request from an agent for your full manuscript. It’s hard not to get your hopes up at this point, right?
But after reading the full story, the agent rejected Steve’s manuscript because, while his writing was beautiful, they felt that the novel wasn’t ready to be submitted. The agent sent Steve feedback with a list of issues that needed to be revised. Some of those issues were:
- the protagonist’s internal story arc wasn’t clear
- there was no external story arc with events forcing the protagonist to grow
- the story’s theme didn’t match the protagonist’s emotional journey
Obviously, Steve was frustrated. I’m sure you can imagine how hard it must have been for him to come so close to the finish line, only to be pushed back to the start. He also realized that his mentor and critique partners wouldn’t be able to help him fix the issues in his novel because they hadn’t previously spotted them, and so Steve began looking for an editor to help him, and that’s how we met.
The #1 reason why agents reject your work
You’re probably wondering why the agent was so enthusiastic about Steve’s first ten pages that they almost immediately asked to see the full manuscript, right?
After I read through his manuscript, it was clear to me that Steve is an accomplished poet who writes beautiful verse which is what had motivated the agent to request his full manuscript. But the further I read, the more I could see that Steve’s manuscript didn’t have a strong story arc, and the scenes in his novel didn’t lead from one to the other in a logical cause-and-effect way.
Basically, Steve wrote beautifully, but there wasn’t a compelling story with an underlying deeper meaning and a clear path for readers to follow from the beginning of the book through to the end.
Steve’s manuscript was suffering from a case of pretty prose (or in this case, pretty verse) taking over from the plot!
This is one of the main reasons why agents and publishers often reject novels because, unfortunately, pretty prose isn’t enough to carry readers through a full-length middle-grade novel. While we all know this fact on some level, it’s easy to lose sight of it when you’re working closely on a manuscript over a long period of time.
Why do writers make this mistake?
The reason I’ve told you this story today is because, while what happened to Steve isn’t uncommon, it’s sometimes frustrating enough to make a writer stop writing. That’s always a pity.
I don’t want that for you or for your middle-grade novel.
I believe that if we take a look at the reason behind why so many of us make the mistake of spending too much time on writing beautifully and not enough time on the foundational elements of our novels, we’ll stop making that mistake and, if you realize you have made it in your novel, you’ll know how to fix it.
The reason so many writers believe that beautiful writing is enough to sustain a full-length novel, or simply don’t realize that a novel needs solid structure to work, is because writers have a tendency to compare their unfinished works-in-progress with the polished published books they love.
It’s human nature to look to those we admire for direction. What this means for writers is that they aspire to write as well as the published authors they enjoy reading.
Why is that a bad thing?
While it’s great to be inspired by successful authors, if we don’t understand how to structure a novel, we only notice what we can see on a superficial level which is that these polished books have great prose which leads us to think that pretty prose is the key to writing a good story.
Theodore Roosevelt said,
Comparison is the thief of joy.
This couldn’t be more true for a writer who is putting an unfair amount of pressure on themselves by comparing their rough first draft to a polished published book.
It doesn’t make sense to compare a finished book to a work-in-progress, does it? Yet, so many of us do it.
Unfortunately, not only is this unfair, but it also leads us to make bad decisions about how we lay down the foundations of our stories.
Pretty prose is like the leaves on a tree. Without the branches of the tree, there’s nowhere for the leaves to go. And just like the leaves on the tree, pretty prose is not something we should be worrying about until the foundations of our story have been planted.
What’s the solution?
The solution to this problem is to use your first few drafts to learn how to write a story with solid structure.
Once you have done that, you can hang the pretty prose on that structure in a later draft. Practically speaking, this means that you need to figure out what the story is that you want to tell. Then, you need to apply structure to your novel, so the story grabs readers and pulls them through the pages from the beginning right through to the end.
But how do you do this?
There are a number of foundational elements that we need to lay down in the writing process before we ever put pen to paper. I’m going to be looking at them over the next few episodes of this podcast, but the foundational element I want you to think about right now is story type.
As I mentioned earlier, in episode #16 of this podcast, I go into detail about what story type is and how it can help you structure your novel, as well as give readers the emotional experience they’re expecting when they read your book. By readers, I don’t only mean the kids reading your published book, but also the agents and acquisitions editors reading it during the submission process.
Story type is going to help you show:
- what your protagonist wants and needs
- the events that are going to get in the way of your protagonist getting what they want
- how these events affect them and change them
- how both these external and internal story arcs link up to the deeper underlying theme which gives your novel meaning
Everyone loves to read a story that shows how a main character handles challenges, and how those challenges change them, right? That’s quite simply what a story is!
This is the structure of a novel that agents and publishers are looking for. When it’s missing, it’s also the reason they will reject your manuscript.
So, if you haven’t already listened to episode #16 called Use Story Type to Unlock Your Middle-Grade Novel, go and listen to it now.
To sum up
The main thing I want you to take away from today’s podcast episode is this: beautiful writing is not enough to sell a book to publishers and, by itself, it’s not a story.
When you’re writing your first draft, you need to lay down the foundations of a compelling story first. This means that your story must show how the external events of the plot affect your main character, and how those events make your main character change. Once you’ve done that, then you can worry about pretty prose.
Once you’ve listened to episode #16, if you want to find out more about how to use story type to shape your middle-grade novel, sign up to the workshop I’ll be giving on November 29th at loupiccolo.com/storytype.
If you’re listening to this after November 29th, you can find the replay at the same link.
Thank you
I now understand the mistake I did in my manuscript.Comparing the story with award winning story styles before giving structure to my own story.Get is assessed and critiquedand may be do a first round of edit and then compare(may be😊)
Yes, there’s no sense comparing a draft to a polished, published novel. It’s really unfair to yourself, and it puts so much pressure on you to create a perfect first draft when the book you’re comparing your work in progress with wasn’t that polished either at the same stage.