Video Transcript (computer generated - may contain errors)

Sara Gentry: Hey, writers, I've got a real treat for you today. I am joined with Mona Zarka. Welcome, Mona!

Mona: Hi! Thanks for having me.

Sara Gentry: Absolutely. I would love to introduce our writers to you. So Mona is an Author Accelerator certified book coach, who coaches fantasy, science, fiction, adventure, and slice of life. She loves stories that feature resilient characters and healthy relationships are a plus when she's not reading. She appreciates linguistics, visual design, and bookstores. And in an alternative universe she's actually a recording chocolate, loving tea, drinking dragon fantastic. But I feel like we get a huge sense of your personality, and reading preferences from that last sentence.

Mona: Yes, dragons and chocolate and tea. Yes.

Sara Gentry: Well, I am just so happy to be talking with Mona today, because Mona and I share something in common, in that we both really appreciate uplifting stories. And I suppose uplifting could be a somewhat broad term and maybe mean different things to different people. But maybe, do you wanna tell us how you see an uplifting story?

Mona: So, yeah, I thought about this a lot in preparation for this conversation. But I think the top thing for me for an uplifting story is going to be the tone and the ending and seeing characters either grow or overcome. Something in the story.

Mona: That's how I would define it, I think.

Sara Gentry: Yep. And I think you can have something still be uplifting as long as I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be a perfect, you know, bow on the top, happy ending for everybody, but we can still come away with a sense of hope and maybe encouragement, even.

Mona: Yes, definitely. The hope, like hope for the character, hope for the society at large. Those are. That's the kind of like it doesn't have to be like, oh, here's yeah, like you said, like a need to tie everything up with a neat bow. Cause then that can backfire on you. Because if you try to tie everything up too neatly, then people I'm often left with a sense of like. Oh, that was too convenient.

Sara Gentry: Yes.

Mona: Which I feel like is not what we want from an uplifting story.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, if it's if it's too simplistic, if it's too idealistic, it kind of feels like you've been betrayed.

Mona: Yes, it's like, why did that happen like that? Doesn't that negate all of the hardship that they just overcame in this story? And then you're like, Oh, it's not really. It's a letdown.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, I also think it can make people feel like it's less attainable because you, you can identify that type of ending is so unrealistic that it reminds you that this is just fiction. This is just a story. This can't ever happen. This wouldn't happen for me. I can never have a happy ending like that. But if it ends in a more realistic way, that's perhaps not so tidy, then it makes you feel more like, maybe it's in the realm of possibility for you.

Mona: I think that's a big thing that we want from uplifting stories actually, is to be able to see ourselves in that position and to see that we can have hope for ourselves in our situation. We see ourselves reflected in the character. We see our situation reflected in their situation, and then we see how they overcome it, or make it better or grow from it. And we're like, Oh, I can do that, too. Yeah, I think that's a cornerstone.

Sara Gentry: Agreed. So I would argue that uplifting, hopeful stories are good for any age reader, but why specifically for kids and teens do you think that these kinds of stories are valuable?

Mona: These are foundational for our view of life, you know, and that is the period where we're growing. And we're coming to terms with what life is, what our world is, who's around us? So I think that these are exactly the kind of story we want our kids to have so that they can then look to accomplishing that same kind of growth. And what's the word I'm looking for? Like achieve the same kind of… betterment is not the word, but.

Sara Gentry: Okay, that's alright. I know what you're talking about, though, because you certainly don't want to have a whole bunch of children going around feeling hopeless about life, based on some kind of depressing story that they've just read.

Mona: You definitely don't want that cause. Then they feel like there's nothing they can do in the world. And you will very easily go off the cliff of depression and hopelessness, and like, you know. And so I think when we raise our kids with uplifting stories, they have that optimism in life that enables them to accomplish things later.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, yeah, I love that. Okay. So one thing that I feel like we should probably distinguish for our writers here, because, just because we're talking about uplifting and and wanting to impart a sense of hope for people. We're not necessarily talking about teaching morals through our stories. So maybe, could you help us distinguish between I don't know, towing that line between not wanting to get too moralistic with what you're writing?

Mona: I think the issue with, I mean, I think where we get too close to moralistic stories is when we have a very specific message that we're trying to tell, and we're not approaching it from like a 360 kind of perspective in the story itself. So like, if you go into a story, and you're like, I really wanna say cars are bad, random, very random, like, you really want to say that. And your whole story is like all about cars being bad. And you're not acknowledging the ways in which that statement may not be true in some circumstances or some situations, or whatever, people will see that they will see it very clearly, and kids more than most. They will see that you are pushing a message and there's nothing that turns them away faster. Like, I gave my son some some books, I don't know a few weeks ago, a month ago, and he was like, these are so simple and like he was totally turned off by them. And it was. It was this kind of idea that they're flat when you don't have the openness to discuss different perspectives, or to maybe just acknowledge different perspectives in it. I think that's where we go wrong with the morals. Yeah, it's not that we can't have morals, but we all have our different experiences and perspectives, and we bring that to each book that we're reading. So approaching it, very one sidedly is basically negating the perspective of your reader.

Sara Gentry: Yeah. And it can be a very positive aspect of a book, even if we can see the character grappling these different perspectives, as they are perhaps encountering them for the 1st time.

Mona: Yeah, for sure. And then you have that open endedness from from that struggle with that

concept and the idea.

Sara Gentry: Yeah. So I, I know that this can be a very difficult thing for kidlit writers in particular, because we are approaching the story as adults writing for young people, and sometimes it can be difficult for us to remember, perhaps, what it was like to be 8, 10, 15. You know, and at the same time I know very well-meaning adults want to pass on what they have learned, so that younger generations don't have to make the same mistakes, perhaps, that they have made so it's a very natural thing for us to want to write. The cars are bad kind of story, if that's the, you know perspective that we've taken on later in life. But this is a road that generally we don't want to travel down, so I don't know if you have any tips for the writers who might want to check, you know, keep their stories and check to make sure that their primary purpose isn't for the fact that they're trying to teach kids a lesson. 

Mona: I would say that considering other perspectives is key here, and in order to do that, getting other people's opinion on what you've written so that you can tell how things are coming across to them is really key because sometimes we, like you said, we go into it with this idea that we want to convey. And we don't see that we're you know, sticking so hard to a single line. So definitely getting feedback from other people is key. Also, you can just like, if you know that you have an idea that you're trying to convey. Oh, it's not the same world, but just an idea. You can try approaching it yourself through a brainstorming session or writing about it, and see what other kind of like. The idea of a literary foil like, just think, put that idea on one side of the paper and think, okay, what are the opposites? What are parallels? What are not quite opposites. But I'm thinking of the color wheel and how you have like, sure. You'll have opposite colors and then you can have also, like the A color scheme with 3 colors. You know where you split it in 3. So something like, if you keep that idea in mind and then approach it like there's ideas at an angle to it. You can try to see what you're missing from your story.

Sara Gentry: It probably, I mean, it's going to depend what age group we're writing for.

Mona: For sure.

Sara Gentry: You know, the complexities can perhaps be explored in greater depth when we're writing for YA then when we are writing picture books. It is going to be a bit more simple, but not simplistic, perhaps, it is the way to distinguish that and we just want to avoid these saccharine endings, and everybody went home happy. And every, you know, sometimes those just are so frustrating to encounter when you've reached the end.

Mona: Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking of. A great picture book that for me accomplishes this happy, hopeful ending, but doesn't come off as saccharine, which is, I know you've read this The Most Magnificent Thing.

Sara Gentry: Oh, I love it!

Mona: And it's great because you have this progression of the character growing through the story. And you have a lesson technically, which is like, try lots of different things. And there's another lesson in there which, if you haven't read it, like, this is a great little picture book. But it doesn't. It's not simplistic, because I think the main character goes through so many different things in the process of the book. It doesn't come off so simplistic.

Sara Gentry: Yeah. Her ending comes across as being earned because she worked towards it. Well, since you've mentioned a picture book, would you care to mention maybe any middle grade or YA books that you've particularly enjoyed, that that you found to be more uplifting.

Mona: Yeah. My favorite, Howl’s Moving Castle by Diane Jones. That is definitely like the top of my list when it comes to uplifting, and not simple or saccharine, or anything like that. It has a lot of depth to the story and to the characters, and you see it over the course of the narrative. I love it. Have you read it, Sara?

Sara Gentry: I have not.

Mona: Oh, my gosh! Why?

Sara Gentry: I don't know. I don't know, so now I will have to read it. I now have homework, and that's fine. It's good homework.

Mona: That one is middle grade maybe bordering on YA has a little bit of like a romantic subplot. Well, some people may say it has more. It's more than a subplot, but I consider it a subplot.

Sara Gentry: Sure. In middle grade, you know I love The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise, and I feel like that is a story that does a great job of being uplifting while also approaching something that's incredibly sad.

Mona: Oh, it's kind of tragic. Yeah.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, but I think it kind of highlights some of the best in humanity as well. So I love that story and for a graphic novel I love Roller Girl. Roller Girl is one of my favorites. 

Mona: I haven't even heard of that. Let me write that one down.

Sara Gentry: It's why I fell in love with graphic novels. Actually, I I love that book. And what about some YA? Do we have YA that we especially love?

Mona: Let's see, does any of this count is why I have a list. I guess Dealing with Dragons is YA and the Blue Sword. These are older. Let me think the Goblin Emperor and Green Glass House. No green glass house is more middle grade but those are all books that I would say are uplifting. Yeah. Oh, you know which one is 13th child. That one is fantastic. Well, it's growth through the story. It's just  you will like. We were just talking about perspectives and taking into different perspectives into account like this. This story is like perfect for that. It's all about that. Sara Gentry: I guess, in the YA space, I really love a lot of Nicola Yoon's work. I especially love. The Sun is Also a Star which you know does not end with a tidy ending, but it does end with a hopeful ending. And so I love that one. Well, writers. I just wanna make sure that you can figure out here how to connect with Mona. Mona also works as a book coach and an editor who specializes in revision, particularly of speculative fiction, like in the fantasy adventure, sci-fi type space. So if you have a finished manuscript, and you are looking for a developmental edit. Mona is your girl here.

Mona: Effective. Yes.

Sara Gentry: Yes, and she's so, Mona, you are one of the most well read people I know. I know I might have mentioned a couple of books here today that you happen to not have read. But you are so well read, and that's certainly a benefit for all the writers who work with you. So do you want to talk a bit about where people can connect with you?

Mona: So you can check out my website, which is skysongeditorial.com and it's a straightforward website. I have a contact form there. I also have a worksheet that is about getting into revisions. So if you wanna check out my coaching style, you could check that out. It's downloadable on my website.

Sara Gentry: Awesome. And we will have links to all of this in the show notes, and all of that. So, Mona, thank you so much for this conversation.

Mona: Thanks, Sara. We need more of those stories. I know.

Sara Gentry: More of those stories, especially right now. You know, the last few years have been hard for a lot of people and I think children have probably born the brunt of this more than any other demographic, because when adults are stressed, children are stressed and the kids have had to deal with a lot of really hard things in the last 5 years. So we need more uplifting books for these young readers. Well, thank you so much, Mona, and thank you, writers. We will see you next time. Bye.