Season 2, Episode 53: When Your Heart Lies Somewhere In the Middle
Abby's spent years writing this book, and through various drafts the one thing she never wavered on was the age and grade of the readers she was writing for. But in this episode, she finally realizes and accepts that it's elementary kids, not middle school kids, that she wants to write for.
Sometimes at the end of a book, you feel a whole wide range of emotions - one of those is definitely "what happens next?"
After each of her submissions, Abby always knew what to do next - write the next chapter, edit the next chapter!
And now?
Now what?
Kemlo says this is totally normal, and Abby agrees that the next step is another Manuscript Audit to figure out where the dropped threads are. She needs to pick those up, carry those through the rest of the novel, and cut some chapters because her word count is a little high.
“I feel like my whole first draft was figuring out what the story was - and then I went back and made it whole. Now, I have to figure out what pieces are unnecessary.”
Kemlo's advice for dropped threads is to recognize when you're barking up the wrong tree. If you can't make the thread work, if you really don't like it for some reason, if you really feel like you're shoving it where it doesn't fit - maybe that's a sign it doesn't belong at all. Sometimes the best solution is to remove it and see what the book looks like without it.
Abby also mentioned some of the "nonverbal feedback" she got while reading her book to a group of third-graders is making her second guess the threads in her "problem child" chapter four. Kemlo asks her if it would be worthwhile to read to an older group (more towards the MG readers she was initially writing for).
Here's where it gets tricky - Abby's taken the "romance" out of her book, and her character is still 13 - where, in fact, does her book fall in regards to the age of her readers? Is she changing her mind about writing for upper middle grades?
Kemlo agrees that many aspects of her book, especially the humor, would play really well with the younger middle-grade readers, specifically the 4th and 5th grades. She thinks Abby could make her protagonist a little younger and have the whole thing work perfectly. This won't require a huge amount of re-writing.
“It’s not necessarily changing so much as discovering what has been true all along, and seeing it for the first time now...which is cool.”
