Highlights from RMC SCBWI Letters and Lines 2023
The theme for our annual conference is determined by the grand prize winner of our chapter’s calendar contest for illustrators during the previous year. Gwendolyn Beachy won the contest with this beautiful image, and this year’s theme was “Letting Our Lights Shine.”
This week’s blog post is a little unusual since we wanted to share a few of the key takeaways from the writing conference that we both attended this past weekend. The two of us belong to the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, an organization that usually just goes by its initials, SCBWI. (The jury remains perpetually out on whether this is pronounced one letter at a time or as one word like “Squibby.”) Whenever I meet someone who is interested in writing kid lit—picture books, early readers, chapter books, middle grade, or YA—I always recommend that they look into SCBWI. I’ve been a member for several years now, and I credit a tremendous amount of my growth as a writer and a writing industry professional to the experiences facilitated by the organization. I’m very proud to be a member of my chapter, and our annual Letters and Lines conference is an event I look forward to every year.
The conference spans a weekend, so I obviously don’t have the space in a blog to recount everything that I learned and heard, but I thought I’d share a few of the ideas that resonated with me during the breakout sessions.
Insights on the murky middle
If you’re having trouble with the middle of your novel, you might be missing a focus on the main character.
YA author Olivia Chadha (her first book, Rise of the Red Hand, has a sequel coming out early next year) presented a breakout on “the murky middle,” the part of a novel that can lose tension and reader interest if it isn’t approached with the same care and attention as openings and conclusions. She presented a lot of great strategies in the form of plot structures to help writers think about what needs to take place in this section of a book, but the part that I thought was simply brilliant was pointing out that a murky middle often means that you are not digging deeply into your main character.
According to Chadha, the middle should be all about character. The midpoint is the point of no return for your main character (MC). The MC picks a direction from which they cannot turn back, and nothing will be the same. This moment can be thought of as a “mirror moment” when the MC has a good look at themselves, and it is this moment of self-reflection that causes a big change. The two important questions to consider are
What emotions are at the center of this moment?
What does the MC decide to do after this moment?
The middle is also the place where subplots are in full swing, and, ideally, the complications and fallout of those subplots are working against your MC and the path they’re on. Each of these subplots can tie back to the central plot and connect to important themes in the story as well. Some questions to think about with subplots are
How does this subplot link to the MC’s storyline?
How can I use this to complicate the MC’s storyline and move the goal posts?
As a writer, I’m really big on themes and character-driven stories, so this advice to ground the middle action with the MC resonated strongly with me. The middle shouldn’t just be the story spinning its wheels until enough time has passed for the climax to happen. There are a lot of important character beats that are essential to a satisfying story that need to take place in the middle as well as complications that make the MC’s goals much harder to reach. And don’t forget that some of those complications should arise from the MC themselves, in the form of misbeliefs, misunderstandings, and their own baggage from the past.
Use self-knowledge for revisions
I also attended a breakout on tackling revisions by middle grade author Malia Maunakea (her book Lei and the Fire Goddess was just published this past summer), which began with the simple but absolutely brilliant approach of asking each attendee to evaluate themselves as writers and what they needed. It is all well and good to know that you need to do revisions on your story, but taking the time to determine what kind of writer you are and what you need to work on will save you monumental amounts of time and frustration.
Start by thinking about yourself:
Are you a plot-focused writer or a character-focused writer?
Do you typically focus on action and moving the plot forward, or do you focus on emotional beats and character arcs?
Are you a plotter, a pantser (you make it up as you go), or a plantser (somewhere in between?)
Are you an over- or an underdrafter?
When you finish a draft, do you need to add words or edit down the length?
These questions help you determine where you weak points might be. For instance, if you are a plot-focused writer, you may find that your character arcs need more development. If you are a character-focused writer, you may find that your pacing is too slow or the tension drops because characters spend too much time thinking or talking about feelings. In the same way, if you know that you’re a pantser, you may find that your plotting needs to be tighter. If you know that you’re a plotter, you may find that your story is too rushed as characters go from objective to objective.
Consider what kind of editing you need
The second part of self-knowledge is considering what kind of editing you need. Do you need to make big-picture changes or line-level adjustments? Do you need a fresh set of eyes to look at the story as a whole, or do you need to get into the nitty gritty polishing of the words? I’ve already written about the differences between the types of editing, which you can read here, as well as about the function of beta readers, which you can read here. Knowing what level of revisions you’re going for (as well as knowing what order you’ll tackle your revisions in) will also help you save time and considerable angst. If you’re getting feedback from critique partners, beta readers, or editors, it will also help you immensely to be able to describe what kind of support you’re looking for as you make your revisions. You’ll know you’re getting what you need to support your unique writing process and address the specific areas that you are not as strong in as a writer.
If you want to improve your writing voice, read
I also attended agent Saba Sulaiman’s breakout session on voice, and I found her presentation to be a very thoughtful, lovely approach to getting a handle on the elusive and difficult to define concept of voice. While there were many great takeaways from this session, I wanted to share one of her top tips for developing your writing voice: read. Lately, I’ve been having discussions with writers who tell me they no longer read books. Whether it’s due to a fear of plagiarizing, wanting to avoid what’s already been done, or similar concerns, the avoidance of reading seems to be becoming more common among writers. I’ve noticed a similar trend among artists who proudly state that they didn’t use any references to create their work. However, art is never created in a vacuum, and just as we wouldn’t expect an illustrator to draw a perfect rose if they’d never seen one before, we shouldn’t expect that a writer to create a thrilling and tightly-paced mystery if they’ve never read one.
Of course we prize imagination very highly, but our creativity and imaginations are fueled by taking in the creativity and imagination of others. Writers shouldn’t fear the influence of others when they read. That influence is a gift and a teacher. Hearing the voices of others helps you fashion your own as you decide what you like and what you don’t like and discover techniques that you would like to avoid or emulate. A great portion of writing is intuitive—feeling your way through a story—and that intuition is honed by soaking up other stories. Don’t cut yourself off from one of the easiest and most enjoyable methods of development that writers have at their disposal. The more you read, the more you will be able to hear your own voice in contrast.
Whenever I come back after the conference, I feel like I’ve been standing under a waterfall of information. The few tidbits I’ve shared here are just a few drops compared to everything I heard and learned in the space of two days. Even though I am certainly not a newcomer to the industry or to writing conferences, I always learn so much and acquire new perspectives on lessons I’ve learned before. I’m grateful to all the faculty and conference staff who worked so hard to make it a great weekend for the attendees. It’s always a great time. Maybe I’ll see you there next year?
