Writing for the Middle Grade and Young Adult market is a challenging and rewarding experience, but there’s much more to writing for this audience than meets the eye. It’s not as simple as matching the age of your protagonist with the age of the intended reader. There are many other issues to take into consideration when writing for this market.
Our 6-week course is designed to give writers of completed Middle Grade and Young Adult manuscripts a road map to publication and success in this exciting and thriving segment of the marketplace. During the course of the workshop, we will examine the over-arching elements of your manuscript with special attention given to character development, dialogue, plot structure/narrative, pacing, themes, tone, and audience. Along with peer reactions from other writers in your group, our expert team will provide you with guidance and editorial recommendations that will help you take the work to the next level—a polished final copy, and hopefully, an agent and/or a publisher for your book.
The workshop is broken up into six separate 3-hour classes, one day a week (typically a Saturday). In each class, an experienced team of professionals will address an aspect of story development as it pertains to the manuscript of each individual group member. To ensure each writer’s work receives individual and personalized attention, there will be no more than 4 writers per group. Each member will also be expected to read the manuscript of the other members, and come prepared to have in depth discussions and provide encouragement and feedback at each session. We feel providing feedback from multiple perspectives is a key part of the process, so thoughtful comments are encouraged.
We will be operating under the assumption that each writer will be taking our suggestions and applying them to their manuscripts during the course of the workshop. At the end of the six weeks, each writer will have the opportunity to have their developed manuscript re-evaluated and a final editorial assessment made by our team.
Confidentiality of manuscripts is respected and affirmed with a confidentiality agreement.
Week One: Introductions, Audience, and Initial Reactions
During the first hour, we will introduce everybody and ascertain everybody’s hopes and expectations for the workshop. We will follow introductions with an explanation of RainTown’s approach to evaluating submissions and explain the objectives of the workshop.
We will begin our workshop with an overview of the Middle Grade and Young Adult markets, covering both the current state of the industry and potential trends in the marketplace, then begin our discussion about AUDIENCE. When writing for Middle Grade and Young Adult readers, you’re not always just writing for the kids. Although they are your primary audience, often times, there are other gatekeepers (parents, librarians, teachers etc.) who potentially have a huge impact on the marketability and saleability of your work. Our aim is to help guide you through the landmines and pitfalls that may affect whether or not libraries will stock your book, teachers recommend it, or parents purchase it. And, of course, none of that matters if you haven’t taken into consideration the needs and wants of young readers. We will discuss these issues as well.
After the main discussion, we will open the floor and begin discussing each member’s work, giving specific regard to AUDIENCE, the topic for the day.
We will close the discussion with an action plan for each member, and words of encouragement to help keep everybody motivated to go home and begin making revisions.
Descriptions forthcoming for weeks 2-6. Check back soon.
Week Two: Character Development
Week Three: Dialogue
Week Four: Plot, Structure, Narrative
Week Five: Pacing
Week Six: Themes & Tone
COST: