Middle Grade Tips & Tricks with Alyssa Colman - The Gilded Girl

Marissa chats with Alyssa Colman about her Gilded Magic middle grade fantasy duology and her upcoming WHERE ONLY STORMS GROW in this jam-packed middle grade focused episode. Also discussed: the hallmarks of middle grade (themes, tone, voice), word counts, heavy and difficult themes in middle grade books, voice, humor, creating sympathetic characters, how middle grade characters defeat their villains, magic systems, standing out in a crowded market, and so much more!

Jennifer Laughran’s post about word counts: https://literaticat.blogspot.com/2011/05/wordcount-dracula.html

Lisa Cron’s Story Genius: https://bookshop.org/a/11756/9781607748892

Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: https://bookshop.org/a/11756/9780399579745

Dan Wells on Story Structure: https://youtu.be/KcmiqQ9NpPE?si=jVamtqLH3YPFYBub

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Transcript

[00:10] Marissa: Hello and welcome to the Happy Writer. This is a podcast that aims to bring readers more books to enjoy and to help authors find more joy in their writing. I am your host, Marissa Meyer. Thank you so much for joining me. One thing that's making me happy this week is the Calm app, Soundscapes. Now, I think maybe I've talked about the Calm app before. If you're not familiar, it's this app that has, like, guided meditations, and my family has been using it for years to listen to sleep stories. We go to bed with a sleep story almost every night. It knocks my kids out like that, and we just love it. But very recently, I have discovered another feature. I don't know how long this feature has been around. I just found it and it's called Soundscapes. And so you can put it on and there's all. There's so many choices. You can listen to a rainstorm, you can listen to a bustling cafe or ocean waves. But then some of them are like, really atmospheric. Like there's a haunted graveyard and there's one that's inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's library. And they're like gothic and kind of creepy, but also soothing. And they are just perfectly putting me in the mood for my current revisions, for my Bluebeard retelling, which is supposed to be creepy and atmospheric. And so I don't often listen to music when I write, but I love having some background noise. And so this has been just the ticket. I love it. The calm app soundscapes. And I am so happy to be talking to today's guest. She's the author of the Tarnished Garden and the Gilded Girl, which won the 2021 Northern Lights book Award for Middle grade fantasy and was a Bank Street Best book of the year. Her upcoming novel, Where Only Storms Grow will be out in 2025 and is currently available for pre order. Please welcome Alyssa Coleman.

[02:19] Alyssa: Hi, Marissa. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

[02:23] Marissa: I am so excited to have you. I'm just going to give everyone a little bit of quick background. Alyssa and I met for the first time on a writing retreat back in. We decided late 2019, we had to do some math to figure out when exactly this was. And so right before the world shut down and we had a group of. Gosh, that was a big group, maybe like 10 of us.

[02:47] Alyssa: You're just a big group. Yeah, yeah.

[02:49] Marissa: And we did an Airbnb in Wine Country, Oregon, the Willamette Valley, Oregon, in this, like, old Victorian house that Was like over a hundred years old and.

[03:03] Alyssa: Totally 100% haunted, full of gems and spooky dolls. It was wonderful.

[03:09] Marissa: It was so wonderful. At one, I think it was Lish McBride may have found, I think it was her who found this, like, diary sitting on one of the bookshelves that was like, had all sorts of creep be stuff written in it.

[03:20] Alyssa: Yes. And I just remember that there was that one doll and we all kept putting each on each other's beds and scared.

[03:25] Marissa: There was the one totally, totally creepy porcelain doll that we were convinced was going to come to life and murder us in our sleep. It was great. It was straight out of a Stephen King book. And like, it's funny, of all of my books, like, that was the writing retreat that I was writing. Instant Karma, which is like my least dark, least creepy, least haunted esque book. How that came out of that writing retreat, I have no idea.

[03:52] Alyssa: You took everything that came in, turned it around upside down and put it out, Right?

[03:57] Marissa: I know, I know. At least you were writing fantasy.

[04:00] Alyssa: Yes. Set in a Victorian Gothic mansion. So it worked out perfectly.

[04:05] Marissa: No, totally. I can see how that was very, very inspirational.

[04:09] Alyssa: I think there are some parts of that house that made it into the second book, in fact, which is. I was working on the Tarnished Garden when we were there.

[04:16] Marissa: Oh, I love that. I love that. Still reading the Gilded Girl. But I'm really excited to read the Tarnished Garden as well. I love the atmosphere, I love the magic. It's just a really fun world that you've created.

[04:30] Alyssa: Thank you so much. I love a good retelling like you.

[04:34] Marissa: Oh, totally. I know. Okay, so before we talk about the books, I do want to know about you as an author. Could you tell listeners what is your origin story?

[04:46] Alyssa: Sure. So I, I, I wasn't one of those people who always wanted to be an author. You hear so many authors who talk about, you know, they, even as a little kid, they wrote books and they knew they wanted to be an author. I didn't. I wanted to work at SeaWorld. That was my life ambition. And not even the dolphin or the orca show. Not, not one of the good ones. I wanted to work at the Sea lion and Otter show. And for many years that was my goal in life until I discovered that I did not like holding dead fish. A job requirement for that show. So change gears. And I very small thing.

[05:25] Marissa: This seems like it could have been easy to overcome, but you were just like, no, not for me.

[05:30] Alyssa: You know, I found other things. So I, Yeah. So I wound up getting involved in theater. And I was a theater major in college. And after college, I went to New York and started working in nonprofit theater. And I worked for off Broadway theaters and some agencies for a little while. And at one of the. At the agency I was working at, they put me on the literary desk, where I was reading plays all the time, and I was taking them home. And so my mind was just absorbed with words and characters, and I thought, you know, this looks really cool. I. I want to try this. And so I wrote a short play. I did what they do in the movies, and I took it to my boss and told her that my friend wrote it and asked for feedback from my friend. She gave me very good feedback. We had a great conversation. I think she 100% saw through and knew that I had written it, but she was very kind and kept up the ruse. And so that kind of kickstarted my writing. And then I took classes. But writing plays is such a group effort that when I left New York and when I was moving to la, my husband said, well, why don't you write a book? That's what you read. You read. I was always reading. I always had a book in my bag. I never stopped reading. And so I took classes at UCLA and decided I was going to start writing books. And I did. And I wrote a terrible book. From that, I learned how to write a better book. And then I did that, and from that, I learned how to write an even better book. And that turned into the Gilded Girl.

[07:01] Marissa: I love it. So did I count three. Three attempts before you got published?

[07:06] Alyssa: The Gilded Girl was my third. Third attempt, yeah.

[07:09] Marissa: Okay. Did you try querying those early manuscripts?

[07:14] Alyssa: I did not query the first one. I. I did enter the first one in a contest that used to be around called Pitch Wars.

[07:20] Marissa: Yes.

[07:21] Alyssa: I came down between myself and one other person to a mentor, and he wrote to tell me that I had been his second pick and gave me some feedback. And I actually wrote back and thanked him and said, thank you for not picking me. I don't think I would have had the time to do all this in the timeframe that Pitch wars allows. And so he and I struck up a friendship, and he was super helpful and editorial. So, yeah, the first one was. The first one did not go anywhere. I will never show it to anyone. The second one, you know, maybe I'll revisit it at some point. But, yeah, very proud of the third one, which was the Gilded Girl.

[07:59] Marissa: And then once you wrote the Gilded Girl and obviously queried it, what happened. Did it receive a lot of rejections? Was it picked up really fast?

[08:10] Alyssa: I always feel a little odd talking about this because it's one of those unicorn stories where I queried it and I had a request for a call within a week.

[08:20] Marissa: Wow.

[08:21] Alyssa: I wound up with four offers within three weeks. So it was. Yeah, it was very fast. I learned a lot during that quick period.

[08:32] Marissa: Yeah, no, that's incredible. I also have one of those unicorn stories where it went pretty quick and easy once I got to the querying stage. I think it's great for aspiring writers to hear the struggle stories and the loads of rejection and perseverance and all that, but honestly, it's kind of refreshing to hear that, like sometimes you write a book and it hits the right chord at the right time and it gets picked up. And that can also happen.

[09:01] Alyssa: It's true. It's not all pain and strife every time.

[09:04] Marissa: Yeah. Okay, so today we're going to do things a little bit differently, I hear. A couple of months ago had a reader come to one of my book events and they she knew that I had let it Glow. My first middle grade co written with Joanne Levy, coming out soon and she requested an episode all about the craft of writing middle grade. And so we're going to make this a fairly craft focused episode for the writers who love this age group. Want to break into middle grade writing or maybe you've been working on young adult, but want to go down to middle grade or whatever it is. I'm super excited to talk about it on a craft level. But before we do that, I do of course want people to know why I chose Alyssa Coleman to be my middle grade partner today. Alyssa, would you please tell them a little bit about your duology. The Gilded Girl and the Tarnished Garden.

[10:09] Alyssa: The Gilded Girl is a retelling of a little princess set in a Gilded Age boarding school for magic. In the world of the story, every child is born with the ability to spark magic. But only the rich can afford the expensive education required to kindle that magic into something lasting. Everyone else sees their magic snuff out forever before they turn 13. So in the story, after the rich sheltered Emma loses her father and her fortune. She becomes a servant at the fancy Miss Posterity School for Practical Magic alongside Izzy, who's a feisty servant girl who refuses to let her magic snuff out no matter what society says. Together, they form a pact. Izzy will help Emma survive as a servant, and in return, Emma will help her with her knowledge of magic to secretly kindle oh, and yes, there is a talking cat to help them on their journey that is secretly a house dragon. But as they work towards kindling together, the journey becomes so much more, and it expands beyond what they ever imagined. And they may just set off a revolution or lose their magic forever.

[11:19] Marissa: Jeffrey R. I love it. I love it. And then the Tarnished Garden. Is. Is it a sequel or a companion or a.

[11:27] Alyssa: It's funny. My publisher initially asked for a sequel and then turned around and pitched it as a companion novel, so.

[11:34] Marissa: Okay, there's some gray areas.

[11:36] Alyssa: Gray area, yes. So it is a companion sequel. It follows a minor character from the first book who finds a magical, invisible garden in the Manhattan's Lower east side neighborhood known as the Tarnish. In this inside, she finds three house dragon kittens that need her help. They're looking for their missing mother. It's hard to summarize the plot too, too much without giving away the end of the Gilded Girl, but there's someone else who is looking for the kittens, someone who doesn't care how much magic they have to destroy in order to obtain their power. So will this character, Maeve, be able to find the kitten's mother, or will magic burn?

[12:23] Marissa: Oh, my gosh. So fun. And is it because I haven't read Tarnished Garden yet, obviously, with book one being a retelling of the Little Princess. Is this one related to the Secret Garden at all or kind of totally different?

[12:36] Alyssa: Yeah, so it is. It's a retelling of the Secret Garden.

[12:38] Marissa: Okay.

[12:39] Alyssa: The Little Princess and the Secret Garden were both written by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

[12:45] Marissa: I didn't know that she wrote the Little Princess.

[12:48] Alyssa: He wrote both. Yep. So it was a retell. They're. They're both retellings by the same author, which I thought was fun.

[12:54] Marissa: I love that. I just finished reading the Secret Garden to my kids, and we adored it. I'd never read it, actually. I saw the movie as a kid, but had never read the book. But we really enjoyed it, and the Little Princess is on my list. But I never made that connection that. That was the same author.

[13:12] Alyssa: Yep. She wrote that and a couple other books as well.

[13:15] Marissa: Awesome. Okay, so talking about middle grade, one of the first things that I want to talk about is what are some of the hallmarks of middle grade when you get an idea And I don't know, I'd be curious also if you've, like, played around, considered writing for other age groups or if middle grade has just, like, felt your sweet spot from the beginning. But if you get an Idea. How do you know that? It's a middle grade story.

[13:47] Alyssa: Sure. So I actually, the first. Those first two books that I mentioned writing were ya.

[13:52] Marissa: Okay.

[13:53] Alyssa: I went to the. Oh my goodness, why am I blanking on the name of it? It's the writing retreat that the Andrea Brown literary agent runs every year up in Big Sur. Big Sur Writers retreat, I think they call it. But anyway, I went to that and I got some amazing feedback from an agent there who said after hearing my pages, she said, you're writing what you call a YA novel, but your voice is very middle grade. And I hadn't really read much middle grade at that point, so I had to really study the genre before I could start writing in it. Because a lot of times when you ask people about middle grades, they'll tell you, oh, Bridge to Terabithia, where the Redfern Grows. Those were such influential books to me. Yes. But the style now is very different. So, you know, if you think about the books that we read when we were kids, it's changed so much. I think the first things you have to think about are the age of the protagonist, which tends to be, I would say, 11 to 13. There's this weird gap that 13 can kind of be upper middle grade, lower ya. Also kind of a gray area when no one really writes it, which is sad. It's true.

[15:12] Marissa: Not many 13 and 14 year olds in our fiction.

[15:14] Alyssa: Yeah, there's this sad kind of publishing gap there. Yeah, but so you're. You have to think about the age of the protagonist, the subject matter, which there's not a lot that's off the table in middle grade, but it does tend to be a little lighter, a little less bloody than you can get in a ya. Themes and themes, tone and voice, I would say, are the big hallmarks that are different than writing a ya. Length is a fairly obvious one. When you pick up a YA book, it's going to be a lot longer than a middle grade book generally.

[15:51] Marissa: Yeah. What are the word count limits in middle grade? Because this doesn't feel like another thing that a lot of people stress over, you know, trying to like not make it long enough that it's a full story, but not so long that agents will just reject it outright. Like, what do you feel is some of the sweet spots when it comes to.

[16:12] Alyssa: You were going to ask me this, so I looked it up.

[16:14] Marissa: Oh, did you read.

[16:17] Alyssa: You're so prepared. Jennifer Lawren has a great blog post about the lengths of different works of fiction. So she says that in general Middle grade word counts should be for realistic fiction, between 25 to 60,000 words. Your sweet spot's really going to be for realistic. Between 30,000 and 50,000. 50, kind of pushing it towards the end. For fantasy, it's between 35 and 75,000. Your sweet spot's really 45 to 65,000. The Gilded Girl was, I believe, 62, and I think Tarnished Garden was 65. So I was right there at that end of that limit.

[17:00] Marissa: Okay. I wish I could remember. I think Let It Glow came in around 65, maybe even pushing 70. And I. I do recall having a conversation with Joanne, my co author, and she had written lots of middle grade before and tended to have much shorter books. And so I remember a conversation where she was like, I think it's too long. And we were like, well, we can't cut anything. And so it was.

[17:25] Alyssa: But it's hard to have dual. Dual point of view. I think there's some leeway in that because you're really telling two stories.

[17:31] Marissa: Yeah, yeah, there's always leeway. This is one of those things, like word count. It is important to pay attention to. It's important to know the market and know what's selling and what publishers are wanting, what readers are wanting. But for every rule, there's somebody who broke it. So it's one of those things that I always say, you know, take it with a grain of salt. You still want to write the best book that you can, and that's more important than sticking to a word count. I feel, personally, yes.

[18:02] Alyssa: If you look at Jessica Townsend's Morgan Crow series, those are absolutely delightful bricks of books. And so she broke the rules. But at the same time, I feel like when you're querying going in, expecting to be the exception is maybe not the best approach.

[18:20] Marissa: Mm, I. Yeah, sure. You mentioned subject matter and how middle grade tends to be lighter, not as dark, not as bloody as what you're gonna see in some young adult or adult fiction. I'm curious. So ya, the last three, four, five years has really been pushing a lot of boundaries. We're seeing lots of crossover into this new adult category. And so a lot of YAs are getting darker, getting bloodier, getting, you know, just pushing these. These boundaries of what the genre could be. Do you see that happening in middle grade at all?

[19:00] Alyssa: I'd say yes and no. I think that when there are darker themes in middle grade, there's often a lesson to be learned from them, and there's some reflection about it. I just read Impossible Creatures, which has Been on the bestseller list for a little while now, and I was actually surprised by how dark that one goes for a book that's so popular right now. So I would say, yes, there is more room to go darker in middle grade, I think, than there was even five, ten years ago. But I do think also your YA readers have had a lot more time to develop their emotional toolbox as humans, and so there are fewer taboos as you move up into YA in middle grade, you don't see a lot of, like, profanity or romance outside of a crush. Occasionally there's like a first kiss or generally it ends with, like, somebody blushing or thinking someone's cute, but. Yeah. And you don't see a lot of graphic violence, even. You know, I'm thinking of Alan Grant's Refugee, which is a middle grade book that has historical elements as well as current elements. It's different refugee characters following different refugees throughout history. And that is. It is a hard book to read because not everybody makes it, but it is rarely, you know, there's not a lot of swords swinging, limbs falling off for, you know, it's. If it's violence, it's, it's, it's kind of cut and dry YA where you can get a little bit more into the poetry of it.

[20:33] Marissa: Mm. Yeah, I. That's funny. I also had the word poetry kind of pop into my head. There's a. A way of handling the prose that's. Oh, gosh, what would I say? Less. Hold on. I blanked on the word. I had a word and then it disappeared on me.

[20:51] Alyssa: Not graphic, not so artistic, I'd say. Whereas if it happens in middle grade, it's because it's necessary, right?

[21:01] Marissa: Yeah, no, it is. It's a, It's a strange question, the figuring out what the limits are and the boundaries, and one of those things that I think people think about a lot, but it almost feels relatively instinctual to know, like, okay, here's the line. And do you think a lot of that comes from just immersing yourself and reading across the genre? Or, like, do you think about your younger self? Do you think about your readership and what they would be prepared for? Like, where. Do you know where that line is?

[21:39] Alyssa: I think perhaps what I think it's all of it. And it's also getting gut. Getting. Getting people you trust to give you a gut check?

[21:50] Marissa: Yeah.

[21:52] Alyssa: In my next book, for example, it's set during the Dust bowl, which is a very bleak and hard period of American history. And I didn't know when I started when I fell in love with this time period. I didn't, I knew it was hard, but I didn't realize it was a man made ecological disaster. That was really challenging to write because I have some characters who get very sick and hurt and I wanted to do it in a way that wasn't blaming the people who lived there for causing this disaster because I thought that was too heavy to put onto a kid saying like this happened and it's their own fault, which some books about the Dust bowl for adults do, kind of blame the farmers themselves. I wanted to keep it more of a these terrible things did happen and they do discuss the causes of and the fixes of the Dust bowl. And it's not easy, but I think that there was a there's reasons that things are happening and it feels necessary that not everyone was safe during the Dust Bowl.

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Marissa: Okay, earlier you mentioned voice and that you had been writing young adult and then an agent, I believe it was an agent told you, hey, this actually sounds middle grade. Your voice lends itself toward middle grade. What's the difference? How do agents know this?

[24:53] Alyssa: I feel like voice. I I still think back to high school English when my English teacher would always say what? Describe the voice in this story or poem. And we would all just stare at the ceiling because it's so hard to.

[25:05] Marissa: Find you describe the voice.

[25:06] Alyssa: Yeah, yeah. So I feel like voice really boils down to your unique way of looking at the world as an authority. And that comes across both from the characters and the narration. You have to think about your character's point of view. There's so many times I go to write something and I'm like, no, a middle schooler would not say that or not be aware. That's not. You know, I started to write something the other day where I said a character felt like a hard shell on ice cream, then someone had just whacked it with a spoon, and then I realized she wouldn't have had that product, so. Whereas you and I get that.

[25:45] Marissa: It's a great metaphor too.

[25:47] Alyssa: Yeah. Oh, thank you. And I think that voice is thinking about your characters as they exist and having to think about not only the age range, but the reading levels that your readers are coming in at and their frames of reference as well as your characters. Yeah.

[26:08] Marissa: What about.

[26:09] Alyssa: I think middle grade voice also tends to have a hint of adult reassurance in it that's also laced with humor and hope in a way that YA doesn't necessarily have.

[26:21] Marissa: I really love the hope that we see, and I do see it in young adult, but you're right that it is more at the surface of middle grade. And you see that across the genre. You know, it's not just the contemporaries or just the fantasies or just the historicals. And I'd be interested even writing for such a bleak period as the Dust Bowl. I assume that there's still that lightness to some degree.

[26:49] Alyssa: Yeah. There's still helpers, there's still some humor, you know, and I've got some comedy in there. You know, there's a chicken who's constantly trying to sneak into the house because she wants to be an indoor chicken. She's not magical. She just likes it inside. So, yeah. So there's fun moments, like even during a really hard conversation, the chicken has gotten inside and is under the kitchen table. So they're eavesdropping on their parents, talking about should they leave to go to California. But their main focus is, we can't let mom and dad catch the chicken inside the house. So there's ways that you can do hard things while still keeping them a little light.

[27:27] Marissa: Yeah. Is humor necessary in a middle grade?

[27:32] Alyssa: No, I don't think so. Again, that refugee comes to mind, which does have lighter spots, but, I mean, that's been at the top of the bestseller list for two years now. And it is not a funny book. Not at all.

[27:45] Marissa: Yeah. My brain went to the Book Thief. Yes.

[27:50] Alyssa: Yeah.

[27:50] Marissa: Which is, of course, one of the great modern classics of middle grade. And it's been a long time since I read it, but my memory says it was. Didn't have much humor, but sure is.

[28:01] Alyssa: A great story because the, the. The father figure is kind of a funny guy. And then they, they keep joking, jokingly calling each other pigs, like that's the joke. I. There's humor in the friendship, but I definitely remember the harder moments of that book too.

[28:18] Marissa: Yeah. Okay, let's talk characters.

[28:22] Alyssa: Okay.

[28:23] Marissa: How do you go about creating a protagonist that young readers are going to love and relate to and be rooting for?

[28:34] Alyssa: So back when I first started writing middle grade, I have a really good friend who's a child psychologist and he worked specifically with middle school age kids. So he and I were chatting one day and I said, what. How would you distill the experience of being in middle school into one sentence? And he thought about it for a few minutes and then he said simultaneously feeling ahead of and behind your peers.

[29:03] Marissa: Interesting.

[29:05] Alyssa: And so that's always something I keep in mind is where are my characters ahead of their peers and where do they feel behind? And I think that, that, that standing in the, you know, straddling the middle of that divide is really what helps them feel middle school. Because everybody's on uneven footing in middle school every. You know, I still remember coming back freshman year of high school and it's like, whoa, the boys grew a foot over the summer because is changing so much. So I think that I, you know, I. When I'm building a character, I really love Lisa Krohn's story Genius. That's my favorite craft book. Whenever I'm starting new characters, I go back and I do her little worksheet to find my character's misbelief about the world that's going. The story's going to change and the third rail, that's what powers them to get through the story. She. Her book is fabulous. I love story genius. I had.

[30:01] Marissa: I was second that. It's a great craft book.

[30:04] Alyssa: Yes. So I still use it and so I really focus on that. I am weird in that when I outline my stories and I develop my characters, I like to start at the dark night of the soul moment, where the all hope is lost moment if you're using save the cat. And so I tend to build my characters out of what they lost in their worst case scenario. And then I figure out where they need to start the story and where they get to at the end.

[30:32] Marissa: I love that.

[30:34] Alyssa: Yeah. I've never met someone else who starts with the dark knight of the Soul.

[30:37] Marissa: No, no, it is. It kind of reminds me of. So let me think. Dan Wells has a great YouTube series about plotting, and he talks about starting at the end of the character arc, not with the Dark Knight of the Soul moment. I think that's really interesting. But he does say, like, where do you want your character to end up? And then flip that to the total opposite, and that's where they start. And I think that's also an interesting way to do it, to kind of start at the end and then work your way backwards.

[31:07] Alyssa: Yeah. I tend to figure out what my character has lost and what's important to them, and that helps me define who they are.

[31:13] Marissa: Yeah, I love that. That's so smart. What about villains and antagonists?

[31:20] Alyssa: They're fun. Um, they're fun.

[31:22] Marissa: They're the best. Are they different in middle grade?

[31:25] Alyssa: I mean, if we're getting into it, like, you really span the gamut, that some of them are terrifying, I would say.

[31:35] Marissa: Hmm.

[31:36] Alyssa: You're really. I'm having to think outside the box for this one. I would say they're not too terrible. I think it tends, you know, I think in ya, you tend to see like a. A direct confrontation with the villain in kind of a different way than you do in middle grade. Like, maybe there's more talking when you meet the villain in middle grade. Yeah, that's actually.

[31:59] Marissa: That's an interesting point. And I. I've given this zero thought leading up to this conversation, but you saying that, you know, I feel like in young adult, you're right, you're gonna have more of a. I mean, if we're talking like a fantasy or a sci fi scenario where it's like a villain like the Evil Queen or the, you know, Empire emperor or whatever, then a lot of times we will have these big violent clashes.

[32:25] Alyssa: Yeah.

[32:25] Marissa: Middle grade, there's almost more a sense of it, of the protagonist outsmarting the villain, like conquering them because they're better than them in some way, but not necessarily physically strong. Yeah.

[32:41] Alyssa: It is usually like their heart or their kindness or their. Some. Some inner part of them. Yeah, I'm. I'm just thinking this out loud. I'm like, oh, yeah. There's often this. This conversation that happens with the villain or a confrontation. That is it. You know, it can still be very dramatic, but it tends to not be a sword fight.

[33:02] Marissa: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's. That's an interesting point. My kids and I read Matilda fairly recently. Yes. And like, that is a horrible villain. She is the worst. But there we have Matilda Outsmarting her and humiliating her in front of the other students, which is so satisfying. Zero violence, but like clearly the right outcome.

[33:33] Alyssa: Yes, exactly. Because I mean the Trench bowl is all about violence. So defeating her without it is poetry again.

[33:40] Marissa: It is, yeah. Now Roald Dahl, he really, he really knew how to make a good deal.

[33:45] Alyssa: That's a good story.

[33:48] Marissa: What else do we want to talk about? What about magic systems?

[33:53] Alyssa: I think, I think the world's. I think it doesn't have to be any less complex than ya. I think it has to be easy enough for a fourth or fifth grader to follow. So it tend, you know, I think they, perhaps they tend to be pared down, but I, I don't think that's necessary in terms of. Yeah, I don't, I wouldn't say anything's off limits. Maybe no dark vampire blood magic, but other than that, go for it.

[34:21] Marissa: Now that you've said that, someone listening.

[34:23] Alyssa: Is going to do it.

[34:24] Marissa: Challenge accepted.

[34:25] Alyssa: Let's go to write the next bestseller, Vampire Blood Magic in middle grade.

[34:29] Marissa: And I love it. Someone could do it. I. One of the things I love about middle grade fantasy in particular is that I do feel like a lot of times the magic has a humor behind it. And I totally see this in the Gilded Girl, but you see it in so many middle grade fantasies where it's. The magic can just be a little silly sometimes. And for me as a reader, I love that. I love the creativity, I love the imagination. And I think for a writer to like think of, okay, what would have like just been so cool when I was a kid to have this magic power or to live in a house that did this wacky thing or whatever. That's one of the things that I really love about magic.

[35:17] Alyssa: I love, I love magical houses and books as evidenced by the Gilded Girls move according to their, you know, how they're feeling that day and the like. I love, I'm just thinking of like Kyn Josephson's Ravenfall series and she has a magical inn that is so much fun. So I love. There's a whimsy in middle grade.

[35:41] Marissa: A whimsy. That's the right word, a whimsy. Yeah. I want to switch to talking a little bit about the kind of the larger market for middle grade right now. Before I do that, Alyssa, was there anything craft related that we didn't touch on that you were really wanted to mention?

[35:58] Alyssa: I, you know, the one thing that's standing out to me is I did want to bring up theme in middle grade versus Ya. That often with middle grade, your characters and your readers are both emerging from childhood and they're beginning their adolescence. So those novels are often about a character finding their place in their family or their community. It's about finding where they fit in. And I feel like you do that really well in your middle grade. And I don't even know if you were consciously doing that, because in ya, characters are often adult, encountering their adult challenges for the first time and discovering more of their individuality. So I feel like those novels are more about people breaking out of their family or their community or breaking out of the role they've been placed in and finding a place in a larger world. So it's kind of funny. Like middle grade feels like fitting in and YA feels like breaking out. To me.

[36:51] Marissa: Oh my gosh, that's so interesting. And I 100% see what you mean. I definitely don't think consciously about my themes ever. But a lot of times it's after the book is written and I'm like, reading through it or like, I'll be at an event and someone will ask, like, what did you mean by xyz? And then the wheels start turning and it's like, oh, yeah, I totally meant this. I didn't think about it consciously, but, like, the themes are there, the messages are there. But no, that's really interesting. And it is so imperative at that age to find your people beyond just your family. Right. I mean, that's, that's so such a big moment. Finding your group circle, fitting in, not being the outcast. Not. And it's, it's so having just completed like a million school visits last week for Let It Glow, we present to sixth graders and then you present to eighth graders. And there's such a big difference just in the, The. The atmosphere and the energy in the crowd. And I do think that a lot of that has to do with as you're getting older and entering those older grades, wanting to fit in and not wanting to stand out. Exactly. Like you've talked about.

[38:14] Alyssa: Yeah. So, yeah, it's. I think that there's a switch. You can definitely do both in the. You can do. You can flip it. But I think that as it's. It's good to keep an eye out as people are reading more middle grade and studying the genre.

[38:29] Marissa: Yeah, no, that's really interesting. Interesting to think about. Okay. Just. I just wanted to touch fairly quickly. We don't have to go into a whole lot of depth, but let's talk about the, the state of the middle grade. Market because a lot of people are worried. Honestly, we hear all the time that as kids reach 11, 12, 13 years old, reading simply falls off. They, they stop considering themselves readers, book lovers, they're inundated with required reading for school, and then kind of forget about pleasure reading. There's kind of a lot of fear with like Barnes and Noble not taking on as much. Middle grade is kind of a hot topic in publishing right now. So just your general thoughts. Where are we with middle grade? Where is it happening or where is it heading as far as you can tell? And more importantly, if someone's listening to this and they really want to write middle grade or they're working on a middle grade right now, what would you say to encourage them?

[39:33] Alyssa: I would say that yes, I am hearing middle grade is really hard right now. I, I, you know, I haven't had a ton of personal experience with this, so I don't want to. I don't know if I can speak too much about the market because my third book's still with my same publisher, but I think that from what I'm hearing, I feel like I watched the book world go through this with YA a few years ago where suddenly it was, oh no, too much ya. Ya's not selling, we don't want ya. And then it leveled out. And I'm hoping that whatever is going on with middle grade is just going through some growing pains because there have always been books for this age group. It's not like we're suddenly going to say no more books for kids. Well, we're done. They don't want them, we shall stop publishing them. I don't think that's going to happen. And so there's always going to be room for good stories. Yeah, keep writing it. Don't let anything you're hearing about the market scare you off.

[40:36] Marissa: How would you advise someone to help them stand out in this market? That is just kind of challenging right now?

[40:44] Alyssa: I think the best things you can do are read widely in middle grade so that you really nail the genre. If you're getting ready to query and find a community, find other middle grade writers. There are great groups. I've seen people congregating on threads on Blue Sky Instagram. There's a great hashtag mglit community that boosts each other and you see a bunch of middle grade groups forming. Find other people who are writing in your genre who can read your work and give you feedback. Because it is a tough market, you want to make your book as polished as possible before you send it to professionals, because you really only get one shot with that book. Query in small batches. If you're querying and you know, same thing if you're working with an agent and going on sub, they will advise you to do waves in small batches. You don't send it to everyone at once. You send it to a few people. You get feedback. You tweak it if you need to. So I would say just keep going, keep writing, but seek out help. You don't have to do it entirely on your own. And it's going to be better if you find your community.

[41:55] Marissa: All right. That was excellent, excellent advice.

[41:58] Alyssa: Thank you.

[42:00] Marissa: My last question before our bonus round, what do you love about writing middle grade?

[42:06] Alyssa: I. We touched on it briefly, but I love the hope. I love the hope and the humor and the whimsy that you can get into. You know, there's always a rather silly animal in my books. The talking cat, house dragon in the first in the Gilded Girl, it's named Figgy Pudding. And he's this rye cat character who helps the girls and also, you know, speaks mysteriously and won't tell them things. So he's so much fun to write. The house dragon kittens in the next book. So I love the animals, too, because I think you could have some great, really fun animals in middle grade because kids love animals.

[42:44] Marissa: I also love the animals, and you're right, we don't get to see that as much. And young adult, I love playing around with magical creatures.

[42:53] Alyssa: Let's play more animals. Right?

[42:55] Marissa: And like, weirdly brilliant, genius animals. Yes. All right, Alyssa, are you ready for the bonus round? I'm ready. What book makes you happy right now? Now or at any point in your life?

[43:09] Alyssa: Well, my husband always claims that my favorite book is the last one I read because I can't stop talking about it right now. I'm reading an advanced reader copy of Megan E. Freeman's Away, which is this upcoming sequel to her novel in verse alone. This one comes out in early 2025, I think. I don't remember which month. Maybe March. Sorry, Megan. I don't know. But it is so fun because she really plays with format. It has prose, it has screenplays, it has poetry, and it's all told from different points of view, and each character tells their story in a different format. And I've never seen it done before. And it's so much fun to read.

[43:58] Marissa: What are you working on next?

[44:00] Alyssa: I am. Well, I am. I just turned in my final edits for Where Only Storms Grow, which comes out next August And I'm dabbling with an adult novel. Interesting. Fun. Yeah, I'm having fun doing that just because I just need a little break and a refresher and it's fun to play with form.

[44:21] Marissa: Yeah, I love switching around genres, obviously. As people who follow me know, I'm always writing something new.

[44:28] Alyssa: I have noticed this about you. Yes.

[44:31] Marissa: Lastly, where can people find you?

[44:34] Alyssa: I am mostly active on Instagram @lyssabcoleman. Coleman has no E in it, so C O L M A N. I'm also. My website is alyssacoleman.com awesome.

[44:49] Marissa: Alyssa, thank you so much for joining me today.

[44:52] Alyssa: Thank you for having me. I was so honored when you reached out and I am delighted to talk middle grade with you because I loved your middle grade and I hope you'll keep writing in the genre.

[45:01] Marissa: Oh, thank you. I hope to. I would like to as well. And I hope that our paths will cross at another retreat one of these days.

[45:07] Alyssa: Yes.

[45:07] Marissa: That was amazing. Good memories.

[45:10] Alyssa: Yes, for sure. I still make Kendall's vegetable soup all the time.

[45:14] Marissa: Oh, I love that. Oh, awesome. All right, readers definitely check out the Gilded Girl, the Tarnished Garden, and Where Only Storms Grow, which is currently available for pre order. That's true, right, Alyssa?

[45:30] Alyssa: I think so. If not, it was.

[45:31] Marissa: I looked it up on Amazon and it was there, so I'm like, sure, why couldn't you pre order it?

[45:35] Alyssa: I think the cover's coming out next week. I think we'll get to.

[45:38] Marissa: Oh, that's exciting. Okay, so maybe. Maybe by the time this is up, it might be available.

[45:44] Alyssa: Yes, of course.

[45:46] Marissa: We encourage you to support your local indie bookstore, but if you don't have a local indie, you can check out our affiliate store@bookshop.org shop Marissa Meyer, who am I going to be talking to next week? I honestly don't know. There's been a lot of shuffling around of the schedule lately, so I guess we'll find out. I'm sure whoever it is, we're going to have a great time. Please leave us a review and follow us on Instagram @happywriterpodcast. And don't forget to check out our merchandise on Etsy. Until next time, stay inspired, keep writing, and whatever life throws at you today. I hope that now you're feeling a little bit happier.