Video Transcript (digitally generated - may contain errors)

Sara Gentry: Hello, writers. I am so happy to be having a conversation today with Sharon Skinner. Welcome, Sharon.

Sharon Skinner: Thanks for having me.

Sara Gentry: So. I would like to introduce our writers here to Sharon. Sharon holds a BA. In English and ma in creative writing, and is a certified book, coach and freelance editor, and she helps writers weave their words into stories that shine. She mainly writes fantasy, science fiction, paranormal, and the occasional steam punk for audiences of all ages. Sharon is an active member of the SCBWI. And she serves as the regional advisor in Arizona. She also served aboard the USS Jason, the first Us. Navy vessel to take women to see, which makes Sharon totally awesome in many ways. And we will talk more here about where we can find Sharon, but you can find her@sharonskinner.com to find more of of her books and bookcoachingbysharon.com, which is where she does all of her book coaching and editing stuff. So welcome again, Sharon and writers we're gonna talk a bit about making our words shine. As you heard, Sharon helps writers weave their words into stories that shine, and Sharon just has a lot of great experience with line level writing, which is why I asked her to come and have this conversation with me, so shall we hop right into it?

Sharon Skinner: I? Yeah, let's do it. I'm excited to talk about this. This is one of my favorite things.

Sara Gentry: Yes, yes, absolutely. So. Sharon does write for young children all the way up through adult. But today we're gonna focus the conversation on writing in the kidlit space and and so we're gonna maybe start with the youngest readers. Well, maybe not. The super youngest readers cause that would be board books. But we're gonna start with picture books. And Sharon herself has written a picture book, and she is picture book author. But you know that picture book space language is just such an important component of those books. Can you tell us why exactly it's so important to make sure that the language is just top notch at the picture book level?

Sharon Skinner: Yeah. So there are a couple of reasons. One is that you want, as always, to engage the reader right? You really want to engage the reader, have them interested and excited to hear the story, but also because parents end up doing a lot of the reading and picture books, and that becomes very repetitive. So you want the language to be something that they enjoy. The story should be something that they can enjoy reading over and over and over as well. So those are the couple of reasons why it's so important.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, it would be terrible if I had to read to my kids. Jane went to the store. Jane picked up bananas. Jane walked from the store. Like that's kind of more the language we might expect in some early readers or things that are teaching children how to read. But in a picture book as you mentioned, we really wanna draw the audience in. And can you speak maybe a little bit to the read aloud, factor of picture books?

Sharon Skinner: Well again. Parents are reading these books off often aloud to kids, and so you want the […] you don't want them to stumble. You want them to make it so it's a smooth read. It's an enjoyable read. There's rhythm to it. There's movement in the words. And that's not just because of the parents reading it aloud, but because the way the story needs to flow again, that rhythm and that movement and the sounds that you use in a picture book. Your word choices are really critical. Word choices are what drive the the way that the story feels. It's the voice of the story. So you'll see with most bedtime books like lullaby books, you'll see softer word choices and sibilance and smoother sounding rhythm, and it's a slower pace. You want the pace to be consistent with a book that will help lull a child to sleep. You don't really want a book that gets them climbing the walls, bouncing all over, jumping up and down because they're so excited. What's happening to the story at bedtime? So again, the type of picture book matters. In what kinds of word choices that you're using, and the pacing and the rhythm and the sound of it.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, that's really well, said and I mean, I suppose we could even talk about the length of a picture book when you only have a few hundred words to work with. Every one carries that much more weight right for the entire story. You can't just throw away extra words like you might be able to in something that's longer.

Sharon Skinner: Yeah, it's true. So now, at 500 words or less, 400.

Sara Gentry: Yeah.

Sharon Skinner: Or less. Yeah, lots, lots and lots of practically or completely wordless picture books are out there now. It's which is fascinating to me. I love some of those. Some of those are fabulous because but usually those are very illustrator. Heavy illustration heavy. But yeah, if you're looking for a resource for the auditory experience or the voice and and word choices. Darcy Paterson used to do a blog called voice, Friday. I don't know it. You could still pull it up. If you go look at it, and word sounds is one of those voice Friday posts that she did. She also did one a long time ago that I wasn't able to to pull up and find very quickly that was specific to getting deeper into what types of words and where to use them with your, you know, and again, with the lullaby being the softer, and with your when you're trying to excite someone, you're using more hard consonants, and you know, and shorter, snappier words and getting that pacing up. And you know, getting that excitement in there because you, the pacing matters, everything matters. Everything matters in all your writing. Don't don't get me wrong, but a picture book, because it's so concise and so contained. It matters more in. It's like taking something and squishing it down to the point where there's that extra pressure on it.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that visualization on that. So let's let's maybe move up a little bit now. So we move on. We're gonna we're gonna skip over the early reader and chapter book markets, just because those do tend to be more for developing a child's reading skills. And those are important, and language is important in an entirely different way than what we're talking about. But let's let's bump up here to middle grade, and in middle grade. I know that at least, according to the agents and editors who seem to be talking about it a lot that. That middle grade voice can really be a challenge, and that is one of the things that is most frequently discussed as a barrier to writing middle grade is that adult writers kind of have trouble tapping into that into that voice, without sounding like too young or too old so I don't know. Can can you speak to us a bit about how how writers can work within that middle grade space at a language level?

Sharon Skinner: Well, it's not yeah. It like you said, it's it's a hard thing to do if you're if you're not able to get inside your character. But if you can get inside your character and like sort of revisit who you were at that age, makes a lot easier, or if you never grew up like me. It makes it super easy, right so to to to fall back into that space and to really get that character in your brain. But I I want to. One of the things I always want to be cognizant of when I talk about this is don't talk down to your readers, at whatever age, whatever age. You don't want to talk down to your readers. Now, that doesn't mean that you can put every large word in your vocabulary in a middle grade book. You can put some in there, but it's important in the language of the book to make sure that you're using it in a context that makes it clear what you mean. If you're using a word that may not be grade level specific to that grade. Now, you can go out on the web, and you can look up words for that that they're studying in certain grade levels, and that can be very helpful. You can go do your course, standards and things like that. But if you know, a word : may not be familiar to your readership, you want to use it in a way that explains it, even if you just have dialogue where a reader goes. Well. that means blah blah blah, I mean, that's fine. But you don't want to do that over and over and over, right.

Sara Gentry: Right.

Sharon Skinner: Because readers will start to realize. Oh, you're telling me that you don't think I know that word and some of some of your readers will know those words right? So you wanna be careful about the word choices that you use and how you use them in middle grade, and the language that you use should be specific to what you're talking about. And again, for me, it's it's a little hard for me to think of another way to do it except for to get inside that character. Get that character in your brain, get to know them. I have a course that I I am working on. That's all about knowing your characters. Anything that you really need to know, your characters, to know how they talk and how they think, because voice in middle grade is super important. Yeah, it's it's important in anything. But in middle greed, especially because kids want to hear kids their age hanging out. They want to hang out with characters who are, you know, their age are a little older and that they could relate to you want it to be relatable.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, and there's nothing worse. If I think there's nothing worse than reading a book written for children that you can tell an adult thought children needed to hear this book or to read this.

Sharon Skinner: Oh, yeah, especially the didactic.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, yeah.

Sharon Skinner: This is a lesson book. But I'm gonna I'm gonna tell a story around it. So you think it's not a lesson book, you know there was a time and a place when children's books were all about things like mismanners, and you know etiquette, and how to behave, and things like that those days are long gone.

Sara Gentry: Okay.

Sharon Skinner: The kids want to read and see themselves reflected in books. They wanna they want characters they can hang out with. It, goes back to my whole analogy about if you're going on a road trip. Who do you want to get in the car with and hang out with.

Sara Gentry: Yeah.

Sharon Skinner: And so if you are not familiar with kids, voices, find a way to volunteer or get around kids that age, you know. Not. Just don't go and hang out in the park. That's creepy. Maybe volunteer at a school and kind of start to hear what the kids are saying or an after school program is a great place to hang out with kids. And, in fact, if you're a writer, you can probably find a local place to volunteer to either teach writing and or reading to kids, and that is a great opportunity to interact and to hear them interact with one another and get that voice in your head if you don't have the ability to just drop into that character. But again, knowing your characters is primary.

Sara Gentry: Alright. So then we go from our our tweens, and then we start shifting into YA. And now our stories are getting more complex, and certainly the vocabulary and comprehension of the reader has grown so we can be more complex and perhaps more creative even in how well, it's a different kind of creativity. I think it's almost more creative sometimes to boil things down simply, but we can add more complexity to our stories within YA, though YA has its own distinct voice. So we got a very distinct middle grade voice, and then we have a very distinct YA voice, and I would say, if you're not sure of what those are. Just read a few of them, and it will become clear. But how? How might a writer improve their writing once they are, you know, going into this older teenage market?

Sharon Skinner: Well again, you're looking for a very specific voice through a specific character lens, and that's key. But also to what you said, adding that complexity and layering in additional things. So when you're in a picture book, you usually have one thematic topic that you're talking about when you're in a middle grade. You can add a couple of other nuances. To that you can add maybe, a subplot to compare or contrast with. When you get into your ya, you can add multiple layers, and your readers. Brain can follow all of those various tracks. You can have more than one main character. There are a lot of ways that you can. You know that you get to change up the game right.

Sara Gentry: Yeah.

Sharon Skinner: To engage your young adult readers, for me again, it's about channeling the voice of the character and using the kind of language that they would use. Now, caveat to that is that you don't wanna use slang that is current in a book that may not be published for 3 to 5 years, because that slang is gonna change. What is skivty toilet? I don't even know I had to look it up. But you know that's a middle grade thing. Not a YA thing, but it's something that right. Go look at.

Sara Gentry: Right? It's weird.

Sharon Skinner: And but the thing is is that that's a big thing right now. And you hear that from kids. But that's that's the thing that's gonna go away. That's a trendy thing. So language has trends, and that it follows, and you want to be careful that you don't make your voice or your characters speak too much in current slang, because 5 years from now, 10 years from now, hopefully, your book is still out there. Young people are still reading it. They're gonna be like what […]

Sara Gentry: Well to counter that. Since most of us writing in this space now would would be adults, and and some of us may have been a teenager decades ago at this point. You also want to be careful not to use the slang that you would have used as a teenager unless you were writing historical fiction, which is a sad reality. Most of us now, if we are writing about our teenage years would be considered historical fiction. But you know, I don't wanna say well, gee, she's groovy, because it's like I've dated in another way.

Sharon Skinner: Unless you have a character whose parents are, you know those people, and never came out of that era, and they grew up in that. Then maybe you have a character who talks like that. But you need to point it out, and what that means, and your other characters need to be like. Oh, that's right, you know. Frank, is there flower? Maybe if we called the character Flower talks funny? Right? So, yeah. But yeah, you want to be careful of how you apply those sorts of things that change, and even the word cool, or the word sick.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, I know they all get different connotations to them now.

Sharon Skinner: And and it becomes it so. You want to be careful how you use your language but you don't have to do all that you could just use basic language but give your characters a different voice. So one character may speak in full sentences, and another character may speak in single word sentences like Be very non communicative, or you might have a character who only speaks in partial phrases, and you know, and things like that, or even thinks that way. Give them their. And that's another thing. The interiority is very different for ya, you're giving us a lot more access usually into the interiority of the character. Because they are. I'm just not that middle graders aren't thinking about where they fit in the world. But I think when you're a teenager. You start to get Super inside yourself and super concerned about what's going on. How do I fit in this new world? How do I become who I need to be. And they're worried about so many things these days, and not that we all weren't, because that's when the brain rewires. So when you become a teenager is when your brain is doing all sorts of really interesting rewiring and stuff, and it's very, very active, and your synapses are firing in very odd and different ways and they get very involved in themselves, a lot of teenagers. So they're very, you know, thinking in. So you can give them a lot more interiority and a lot more of those kinds of concerns.

Sara Gentry: Yeah. So I think that a lot of writers when we think about beautiful writing, whether, no matter what age group we're talking about here. I think a lot of writers probably have this perception of, well, we would call it the purple prose, but but you know I I have to have these gushing sentences about the sun sets and about the cuisine I'm eating, and, like, you know, really over the top, in terms of descriptions and and all of this and I'm not sure that that flies in the kit. Let market. But do you have any advice for some writers who, you know, maybe want to add a little, I'll call it pretty prose to their writing without going over the top, because I think we can both agree that if I have paragraph upon paragraph of description, a young leader is just checking out. So yeah, might you offer some suggestions here, for writers want to add a little, but not too much.

Sharon Skinner: Yeah, so be specific about what the tonality and the mood and the feel of the words that you use. So you don't have to have 3 sentences to mix, to beautify the setting or the scene. One sentence will do, and one adjective will do. If it's the right adjective and the right sentence, you could still be fairly concise and still have beautiful writing, and I mean you, and I know that my background is in poetry. And so: it comes from a poetic background that to be very concise and yet use imagery that really resonates and sets the scene, and is gives you a certain mood and tonality. You could do the same thing in your pros. It's all about finding just the right nuanced word. So I say, when you're drafting. He can walk into a room, he can look out the window, he can see the bright sun he can. You know your character can do all the things, but when you're revising your character should stride into the room, or slouch into the room, or creep into the room, or you know there are so many choices for even your your verbs, your action, words that you just the there's so much glorious stuff out there in the language that you can use. And really, by that one word, change the whole mood or tone, or set the whole mood or tone. I talk about this a lot when we talk about character lens with with my clients, I talk about seeing the world through the lens of your character, through the eyes of your character. Focus on one or 2 things that they would see in the setting, and then filter that through their emotion at the moment, what are they feeling? Is the sunshine mocking them? Or is it making them super happy because they're already in a happy mood like, are they in a bad mood? And oh, you know so bright outside out there. It's too bright, you know, like, what is their emotional feeling right at that time? So what are the one or 2 things that they would be looking at that they might notice in their environment, and then pick the most perfect nuanced word for that. That's all done in revision, though I don't think you should focus on that when I mean, if once you start learning it, and once you start doing it in revision. A lot of that will become organic as you draft. So the next book you write your draft will be, have more of that in it already, and the next book after that, and the next book after that. But don't worry about it. When you're first drafting, just you can use your basic placeholder words, but remember that words like walk or walked are all placeholder words, cliches. You can put all the cliches you want in your first draft, but once you go in to revise, find those cliches, and then rewrite them through your character lens. Give them some, give it something new, you know. Instead of they tied a bow around it. You know they they put sequence and glitter on it, you know, if that's who your character is right. It's all done through character lens and that nuance of word. The English language is huge. It's got so much glorious stuff in it.

Sara Gentry: Yeah. Well, and to your point with comments about how it's being filtered through the character. We don't have to mention everything. I don't have to describe everything. I only need to describe what's important to reflect in my character in the story at that time.

Sharon Skinner: Yeah, and the pacing matters too. So if you're if you're in a slow, I go back to my car analogy all the time I go back to the road trip. Analogy, if you're speeding by in a car, what one or 2 things are you gonna see out the window? Right? So when the pacing is up, what things are you gonna see? Right? If you're cruising slowly down the road, you might see more things. You might actually give us 3 things instead of one. Yeah, because you're slowing the pacing down. The character is moving more slowly through through the world, so that will help us also with pacing I mean language, and at the line level. I love line level stuff. I love doing revision at the line level. Because especially because I work with speculative fiction writers. And the world building is just offers so much glorious opportunity for making fresh cliches and fresh ways of saying thing. And I it's just so much fun to me to be able and making up like, you know, when I wrote when I wrote my middle grade lost and found I had so much fun making up curses that the characters use like rusty cogs. And you know things like that, because, you know, Broken Springs, you know. I just had fun with it because it was part of the world, and it was part of who they were. It's how they spoke in that world. So for those of you who are writing fantasy, speculative fiction, Science Fiction use your words and use them based on the world that you're in and it will go so much farther in building your world without you having to describe the whole setting all the time to us, just giving them language that's specific to their world is gonna help build that world.

Sara Gentry: Yeah. Well, you've talked about how writers can build this muscle just by the sheer fact of writing more practice, whether it's through a vision or drafting you and I are both big fans of reading, reading for the sake of learning from books as mentor text. How how might people use their reading to help develop their line level writing skills?

Sharon Skinner: That's a really great question. I I believe that 2 things about mentor texts one, every book is a mentor text even if it's a mentor text of what not to do.

Sara Gentry: Okay. Fair enough.

Sharon Skinner: And 2. Don't be afraid to read broadly and read widely, and read outside of your genre, and get the flavors of all the things, and how people do that. Read a mystery and find out how they're using their word choices in their to and the nuanced for choices that they make it for the mood and tonality of that. Read a humorous book to see how they pull off a joke inside a book by using language and the setup, and all of that. Read across genres, read broadly, read across ages, and find out how other writers are doing it. This is this goes back to the analogy that I like to use about. If you were learning to paint, you would study the masters, and you would study their brushstrokes and their use of color and their use of light, and the way they set things up on the canvas, you know the which, what they choose to to illustrate and what they don't. That's what you want to do when you're using a mentor text. So if you are reading a book and you're like, Oh, this is terrible, that is, don't do that. If you don't like the way a writer wrote something. Then that's a mentor text for you for how not to write.

Sara Gentry: Right.

Sharon Skinner: Don't do that. But if you're reading a book, and even if you're reading for pleasure, and you find yourself just sinking into it, and all of a sudden you're in backstory and you go. How did they do that? I didn't realize. We jumped, and I was right there, and it was smooth, and I and it didn't bother me right. How did they do that? Go back and reread those passages? Same thing with word choices? Look at the word choices that they're using to set the tone, the setting, the mood, the emotion. What dialog words are they using for the language? And yes, always read in your age level if you're reading, if you're writing middle grade. Yes, you should read many more middle grade books than you are other things. But don't be afraid to go out and use what's out there where people have written all these glorious books and learn from them and apply, take and apply what they're doing into your book, even though it might be for a different age group.

Sara Gentry: Yeah. And I also like to if I come across something that's particularly well written, just like a sentence or 2. I don't do this at like a chapter level. But if there's something particularly well written, I'll like to write it in a in a notebook or something, just to kind of keep it. I collect thosefFor later and kind of come back.

Sharon Skinner: I collect those too, and as a matter of fact, I have a for my certain of my clients. I have a weekly news update that goes out to specific clients to keep them writing and to keep them encouraged. And every single one of those has one of those quotes that I have recently found that I can apply to what I'm talking about that week to them. They might cheer letters, you know, and and then, how did you apply this in your world? Or did you find anything that did this in your world based on the quote that I'm pulling? I love Poll quotes for for all sorts of things like that I put them in sometimes I'll use that as a jumping off place to write a blog because something hits me as so glorious. I just I just wrote a blog post about. If I were a dog, what kind of dog would I be? Because Seth Godin had that question in his newsletter, and I was like, Huh! That it really made me think about it right. So you never know where you're gonna find the inspiration and the the quotes that you could keep around you to help you write beautiful language, and don't be afraid to read good poetry.

Sara Gentry: Right? Yeah, it doesn't. I think people get intimidated by the idea of reading poetry. But we need not be.

Sharon Skinner: There's so much glorious imagery in poetry.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, absolutely. So. I do want to make sure to let everyone know that you have a really great resource on sensory detail which obviously is very helpful for line level writing. Would you like to talk about that a little bit.

Sharon Skinner: Yes, so I this, I'm actually updating that resource right now, because that one doesn't have the. There are 2 things that have been something I felt, but didn't know how to articulate until I was doing my residency this last year, and that is pro preoception and interoception, and those are sensory components that are about where we are in space. That's proception, knowing where you are in space, like dancers, have to know exactly where their body is, where they are in space and interception is that those weird feelings that you get, and and all of the gurgling and all of the things that are happening inside you as well. And another concept that I want to incorporate into that is something I learned this last year, called umwelt. Umwelt is the specific environment of an organism, and every organism has a specific environment. And how we sense our environment is different than, say, a dog senses their environment or a jellyfish senses their environment or an electric eel senses their environment. I learned this from a book called[…] I can't think of the name of it. This immersive world. But the idea being that if you're an earthworm so this is why it comes back to sensory. If you're an earthworm, if you don't have a perception of how you affect the environment versus how the environment affects you, then you would never be able to dig a hole, because every time you pushed against the dirt you would feel like the dirt was pushing against you back up so that that perception of your environment and how you're affecting the environment and how it's affecting you is really important. And it. Just okay, I'm nerding out. I'm totally nerding out. I know it. But this whole idea of how we affect our environment and how the versus how the environment affects us, I think, is just fabulous, and I'm looking at ways to articulate that for writers to be able to add that to their toolbox.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, I love it, and I'm always happy to nerd out. I mean, you know that. You won't find a much more nerdy person than I am, so it's totally cool. But I do wanna thank you for your time and for digging into this stuff with me. The line level. I'm glad that you talked about it. Be more of a revision thing. I think sometimes writers get worried that their first draft sounds terrible, and that they're not a real writer because they can't write pretty sentences. But we know that a lot of that happens later in the process. So I hope that this conversation has helped to encourage people in that way.

Sharon Skinner: Well, that one right there.

Sara Gentry: Thank you.

Sharon Skinner: Yeah, last night I worked on my work in progress, and all, those words sounded pretty terrible, but it moved the story along, and I can go back and revise them later. So I'm good. I'm good with that.

Sara Gentry: She's like, I'm fine. I'm fine. It's all good. It's all good. So thank you so much, Sharon. And thank you, writers, and we will catch you next time.

Sharon Skinner (she/her): Write on.