Why I Write Middle Grade

Why do you want to write middle-grade?

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

Welcome to issue # 1 of The Middle Grade Writer. Each week, the goal is to bring essays on writing for younger audiences written by myself and, on occasion, several different contributors. I don’t know everything, so I am excited about learning as well. 

The plan is to cover a wide range of topics, including middle-grade characters, plots, world-building, marketing, school visits, homeschool groups, and finding success, even if you are an indie. 

Today, I want to ask a simple question: Why do you want to write middle-grade? Seems like such an easy question but I think it’s important. This category is tough, and even though young readers are forgiving, keeping kids engaged in a story is more challenging today than ever before. So why? Let me start by telling you my story.

I never set out to write middle grade. It wasn’t something I expected to do. The way Iggy & Oz were born was totally by accident. I blame my kids if we’re being honest. 

You see, I love the imagination of a child. Listening to kids play with their action figures and toys and making up stories as they do is such an enjoyment. It always takes me back to my childhood when I did the same thing. However, I never expected one of the biggest lessons I would learn in storytelling would be while watching my kids play and do this very thing.

In July of 2018, I had a desire to write a middle-grade novel for my kids. A story about the size of the I Survive or a Goosebumps books. I was very down on my writing. I was ready to give up. Toss in the towel. Quit! It sounds melodramatic, but I wasn’t happy with the stories I was telling. I figured I would write something just for my kids, and that would break me out of my funk. But I didn’t know how to write a middle-grade story; worse, I had no ideas. 

So, I did what every writer does when trying to force a story into existence. I grabbed a yellow legal tab and started jotting down concepts. After forty-five frustrating minutes and a collection of wadded yellow legal sheets gathering at my feet, I took a break.

My two boys (Who I refer to as Hobbit One & Hobbit Two) were in the living room. They were three and five at the time, and I walked into a disaster. You see, one thing I need to explain about my kids is that, like most boys, they are obsessed with dinosaurs. We have hundreds. I wouldn’t be surprised if the count equaled a thousand plastic dinosaurs. We have the miniatures, the medium-size ones, the large ones, and even a giant two-foot-tall T-Rex that I’ve managed to trip over in the middle of the night. The point is, they were everywhere!

My kids were playing a game where they were giants, and they had to stop the dinosaurs from wrecking the living room. I looked at my oldest and said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if your dinosaurs came to life and escaped the house, and we had to find a way to stop them?” All at once, their imaginations took over along with mine. We pretended the dinos had escaped and were running down the street. One of the boys even said Plastic Dinos of Doom!

 Later, I sat down and wrote a sentence on my yellow legal tab.

When hundreds of plastic toy dinosaurs come to life, a twelve-year-old boy and his friends must stop them before they wreck the neighborhood for good.

Just like that, I had the foundation for my new middle-grade series. Book one, Iggy & Oz: The Plastic Dinos of Doom, launched in September 2019, way above my expectations. In a matter of months, I had passed 1,000 units, won the Realm Award award for best Middle-Grade novel, and had been contacted by schools for visits, Zoom calls, and a number of emails, all from kiddos wanting to know what happened next for Iggy & Oz. 

It all started because I took the time to be a dad. I let loose and crawled into the mind of a couple of kids. 

Kids have wild imaginations: Monsters under their beds, ghosts, the boogeyman, and everything in between. Sometimes, it takes suspending disbelief and creating time to make an adventure with your kids in order to eliminate the stress of the day and find the story you need to tell.

I wanted to write a story for my children. Instead, I created one with them, along with a memory.

So why do I write middle-grade stories? Because the journey made me not give up on writing. Because I realized by accident, I had found my voice by giving parents a story they could give to their kids who hated reading.

So I think today, as we start on this journey, you should ask yourself the following question: Why do I want to write for middle-grade audiences? 

This audience is like no other audience. This market is vast. Which leads us to the second question we’ll discuss next week: What part of the audience do you want to write for?

I write stories for reluctant readers. When a parent wants their kid to set Dog Man down and read a book with some actual words and no pictures and graphics, I’m your guy. That’s why I write middle-grade. Nothing gives me more joy than to get a message from a parent saying: “My son hates to read. But he won’t put Iggy & Oz down.” So that’s why I write, and it gives me my audience: Who I write for.

So think about this before next week. Which audience are you wanting to target? The FFA kids? The suburban kids? What about the kids into sports? The boys scout and girl scouts? The rural kids? The kids who like scary stories? The kids who like dogs? What about the kids into video games or superheroes? 

As I said, the audience here is vastly different and very wide. 

Substack has a comment section (and I highly recommend every author download the Substack app and get on Substack- I think it’s the future of social media and newsletters for authors- But I digress.) Anyway, comment below and let me know the answer to your question. 

Thanks for joining us! 

*Know others wanting to write middle-grade? Please share this publication and invite them to join us.