I've been attending writing conferences and events for a few years now, and I learned how important the sentence is in writing children's fiction. Every word has to earn its place.
Children's books have limited real estate with their low word counts for readers with shortened attention spans. Descriptions can't paint a solitary portrait to decorate the story, but must use economical paint strokes throughout to bring color to the pages.
Not because young readers are less capable than adults. The opposite. Middle-grade readers have finely tuned nonsense detectors. They know when a sentence is padding, when an author is stalling, when the prose is treating them as if they need things explained rather than felt. Avoid the "tighten your prose" feedback by doing just that. Have trust in a child's ability to read between the lines.
I think about this constantly when I'm writing. In SWTWB, Giselle is thirteen and new to her magical school, and there are a hundred places where I could over-explain her discomfort, her awe, her suspicion of the people around her. Instead, I try to let the sentence do the heavy lifting. When she's overwhelmed, the sentences get longer and harder to navigate. When she's scared, they get clipped. The rhythm is the subtext.
I use the Read Aloud feature in Word as my first editing pass. Not to catch typos. But to feel where I've gone slack. A sentence that looks fine on the page reveals itself the moment you hear it. A redundant phrase, a modifier that undercuts the verb it's meant to strengthen, a rhythm that stumbles right where the emotion should land. The ear catches what the eye misses.
The other thing that stuck: middle-grade prose has to trust its verbs. Not just favor active voice in the general sense, but actually choose verbs that do the sensory and emotional work so adjectives don't have to. Giselle doesn't "walk nervously through the corridor." She cuts close to the wall. The verb knows what nervous looks like. The adjective just names it.
None of this is exclusive to middle-grade writing. But something about the form makes it non-negotiable. There's no room in a middle-grade novel to coast on beautiful paragraphs that move nothing forward. Every sentence is either building momentum or bleeding it.
I'm still figuring out the sentence. I suspect I always will be. But I'm asking better questions now when I revise, and a lot of those questions came from standing in a conference room in Michigan, listening to someone's first page and hearing agents provide criticism.
Things to watch for when writing or editing
- 01 Cut the observer When a character watches, studies, or notices their surroundings — she saw, she noticed, he watched — you don't need it. Cut it to keep readers in the action and the prose flowing.
- 02 Add beats You don't need to say a character said every time. Give them a beat that shows emotion or reaction instead.
- 03 Be frugal with adverbs Only use them if they add actual weight and the sentence doesn't read right without them. Consider whether a stronger action verb would do the job instead.