Coaching KidLit Episode 33: Nonfiction Chapter Books with Guest Lori Alexander
In this episode of Coaching KidLit, host Sharon Skinner talks with special guest Lori Alexander about writing and publishing nonfiction chapter books for middle-grade readers.
Lori shares her journey from writing picture books to nonfiction, highlighting her award-winning works on historical figures in science and medicine. She discusses her process of finding ideas, conducting deep research, and using narrative techniques to engage young readers. The episode provides actionable advice for aspiring nonfiction KidLit writers and touches on current trends and recommendations for science writing resources.
Key Topics Covered:
Books and Resources Mentioned:
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- All In A Drop: How Antony van Leeuwenhoek Discovered an Invisible Worldwritten by Lori Alexander, Illustrated by Vivien Mildenberger
- A Sporting Chance: How Ludwig Guttmann Created the Paralympic Games written by Lori Alexander, Illustrated by Allan Drummond
- What’s a Germ? Joseph Lister, The Medical Mystery That Forever Changed the Way We Healwritten by Lori Alexander, Illustrated by Daniel Duncan
- Cactus Queen, Minerva Hoyt Establishes Joshua Tree National Parkwritten by Lori Alexander, Illustrated by Jenn Ely
Listen:
Where to Find Lori Online:
- Website: lorialexanderbooks.com
- Instagram: @lorialexanderbooks
- Twitter: @lorijalexander
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Sharon Skinner: Welcome to Coaching KidLit, a podcast about writing and publishing good KidLit.
[00:00:07] Christy Yaros: We dig into various aspects of writing craft through a KidLit lens and provide inspiration and clear actionable items to help writers like you move forward on their KidLit writing journeys.
[00:00:19] Sharon Skinner: I’m Sharon Skinner, author accelerator, certified book coach, and author of speculative fiction and KidLit, including picture books, middle grade, and young adult.
[00:00:31] Christy Yaros: And I’m Christy Yaros, author accelerator certified book coach and story editor, focusing on KidLit, including middle grade and young adult.
[00:00:41] Sharon Skinner: Welcome listeners to another episode of Coaching KidLit. Unfortunately, Christy, can’t be with us. this month but we have a really special guest, Lori Alexander. In addition to board books and picture books, Lori Alexander writes non fiction chapter books about the fascinating history of science and medicine.
She won a Seibert honor award for All In A Drop: How Antony van Leeuwenhoek discovered an invisible world. And A Sporting Chance: How Ludwig Goodman Created the Paralympic Games was named a Kirkus reviews. Best book.
That’s pretty cool stuff. Her recent release, What’s a Germ? Joseph Lister, The Medical Mystery That Forever Changed the Way We Heal, is a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. And her brand new picture book biography, Cactus Queen, Minerva Hoyt Establishes Joshua Tree National Park, received a starred review from School Library Journal.
Lori grew up in San Diego, California and now resides in Tucson, Arizona with her scientist husband. I think she’s got a little leg up. And two book loving teens. She’s repped by Kathleen Rushall at Andrea Brown Literary Agency.
Welcome, Lori.
[00:01:52] Lori Alexander: Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m excited to be here.
[00:01:55] Sharon Skinner: I’m super excited to talk to you about what you do and all of the fabulous books that you’ve put out. You write picture books as well as non fiction and I’d love it if you could tell us a little bit about your writing and publishing journey and how you came to write non fiction.
[00:02:11] Lori Alexander: Yes, I started writing picture books. When my kids were little, we had been going to the library so much and loved story time. And I kind of wondered if I could do it myself, if I could write a book. And it wasn’t until I found out you don’t have to be the illustrator. Once I did a little bit of digging that you don’t have to know an illustrator or Hire an illustrator.
If you just write a strong story, you can try to sell that to be made into a book. So that’s when I started and I had some luck there. I sold a couple of picture books and I went a little younger and did some board books. But I was talking to my agent one afternoon and she asked if I had any ideas for non fiction books because STEM topics were selling really well.
And I like just went blank on the telephone. I’m like, I, I can’t think of anything right now, but I’ll keep it in the back of my mind, and I never thought that I would ever write nonfiction. I don’t know if I had the best memories of reading nonfiction as a kid that seemed so, dry and boring and relating to school and I, I just didn’t remember, loving nonfiction.
But I poked around, at the library and found that today’s nonfiction is glorious and the stories and topics are so fascinating and I am married to a scientist, so one night at dinner, he mentioned something about. The field of pathology, how much better it got once the microscope was invented. And I, little light bulb went on knowing my agent was wanting a non fiction manuscript.
I was wondering who invented the microscope? When did that happen? So that was like the first seed that kind of got me going into the path of non fiction.
[00:03:54] Sharon Skinner: Wow, that’s great. So you’re having great success in the non fiction KidLit arena and that includes garnering some great reviews and winning a Seibert honor award. That’s a big, big deal among others. So I’d like to spend some time talking about your process.
[00:04:12] Lori Alexander: Sure.
[00:04:12] Sharon Skinner: We all know that not every idea or concept is going to be great fodder for a book, especially a kid’s book.
We get all these concepts, we get these ideas all the time, but they don’t always pan out. So I’m just wondering, how often do you get, a nonfiction idea versus the number of those ideas that become books.
[00:04:32] Lori Alexander: Yeah. So when I was poking around as an example for that very first one I wrote about the microscope and this Antony Van Leeuwenhoek name kept popping up and I like read a little bit about him. And he wasn’t the first one to invent the microscope, but he was the first one to use it so extensively, and that what really caught my interest was that he was not a trained scientist.
He worked in a fabric shop, and he never took a science class. So right there, that little nugget. is speaking to me and I know that kids will be interested. Like how did this person, he made these great discoveries. He made a microscope of his whole own design. It looks like nothing we have seen before or have seen since.
And he was the first one to discover microscopic life, bacteria, all in his own little workshop. So these are the little things that I’m thinking, okay, kids would think that’s fascinating. That’s so interesting. How do you make such a big discovery and have never taken a science class? So as I’m, learning about this topic that I might want to do.
I’m thinking about what will hook a kid reader? And would this be interesting to more than just me? So, I sold that first one. I wrote it as a picture book and it did not sell. I got a little bit of interest and asked for some revisions, but the editor that liked it the most recommended expanding it to chapter book length because of the topic was a little bit for older kids.
She just thought that it would be better and still fully illustrated. So I didn’t have to lose that part that I love so much about a picture book, the artwork. So I actually expanded it to a longer format and then she’s the one that ended up buying it. And that’s the one that won that Siebert award. My very first book won awards.
So after that, it got I’ll say a little easier once I got my foot in the door because I didn’t write full nonfiction manuscripts. Once I had the relationship with the editor, I was able to send her pitches. So I didn’t have to write the entire book. I would offer her maybe three separate pitches for ideas that I thought could be good for a next book.
But I will say that not all of those she was excited about. So I don’t know, for every maybe Five or six things I pitched, maybe one would catch her eye. So it’s definitely not like a hundred percent. I do think I’ve had a little bit more success on the nonfiction side than with all my fiction picture books and board books, where I probably have 20 or 30 drafts or things I’ve started, or maybe it gets to my critique partners and they are not in love with it, or I will never even send it to my agent.
So, I would think for picture books, it’s at least, I probably have 10 to 1 that I will share with my agent. And then, that 1, if she likes it, that might not sell. It might be 2 or 3 things that she subs for me, and 1 will sell. So, I’d say like the ratio for picture books could be like 20 or 30 to 1. So, it does take a lot Of writing, and I tell that to kids at school visits, that writing, even for grown ups, it’s not easy, and it’s like any sport or music instrument where you have to practice at it.
So I tell them that I have all those stories on my computer, and most of them will probably never be turned into books, but they’re good practice. So every time I, do one, I learn a little bit about writing, a little bit about how to tell a story.
[00:07:47] Sharon Skinner: That’s always good advice. I tell my clients all the time that no written word is ever wasted. That it is all practice for the next really great word, or great sentence, or great paragraph, or great book that you’re going to So I love hearing say that. So you don’t necessarily know pretty quickly if an idea will work as non fiction. What is it that keys you into when you think an idea really is going to work?
[00:08:15] Lori Alexander: Yeah, I like to have that little lightbulb moment of something I think that kids would really like. So is it A topic that will like intersect with a kid’s life somehow? Is it something that they’re going to learn about in school coming up? Is it about animals or like a cool invention or something that you’ll know, that they would be interested in?
Or maybe if it’s about a little known historical figure and it’s more of a social justice type story, do kids like understand that? And they do. They know what is fair and what is not fair. And so those are that need to be told as well. But yeah, I’m looking for. That little factor, sometimes it is for the older kids, sometimes it’s like a gross out factor or like an eww kind of thing with my Joseph Lister book, What’s a Germ?
Joseph Lister, The Medical Mystery That Forever Changed the Way We Heal. It’s about surgery in the 1800s and how Most surgeries led to death and they couldn’t figure out why. They didn’t know about bacteria or infection. So there are some kind of like gory bits, kids in fourth, fifth and sixth grade love those kinds of things.
So little pictures of body parts and like a spread in the book where all these townspeople are crowded around watching a surgery because surgeries were open to the public back then. Those are the kinds of things I’m looking for, that’s going to grab a kid’s attention.
And then still, I might send a few pitches, and They’ll pass up a couple, but one will catch your eye. And I’m fine with that. I throw out and see what they think. Cause they also know what it’s going to connect with schools and libraries and they have their, Thoughts on marketing and things.
So yeah, that’s the first step.
[00:09:51] Sharon Skinner: I knew they had operating theaters for watching surgery, but I always thought it was for other medical students. I didn’t realize that at some point it was open to the public.
[00:10:00] Lori Alexander: . And like the med students got to be the closest, but everyone else got to fill in and they were crowded and there was no mask. they’d drag in the dirt off the street, off the muddy roads that the horses, do their business on and it all comes into the hospital and they’re leaning over the patient and watching.
And it started before anesthesia. So. Telling kids, you used to have to be, held down and do a really quick surgery because you were awake, and they just, they’re, like, in awe. And I think one of the trickier things with non fiction is grounding them in the time period.
When you I show a scene from the book. I’m like, does this look like your house or does this look like your neighborhood? What’s different? Oh, there was horse drawn carriages. People are dumping their waste out the window. There’s no indoor plumbing, like trying to set the time.
But really, when you say this was only 200 years ago, which. It’s a long time, but it’s not that long to see, like, how far science has come in such a short time. So those are the fun things to think about, I think.
[00:10:55] Sharon Skinner: One of the things that I noticed about, and this goes to what you were just talking about is catching or hooking a kid. And one of the things I’ve seen in your various books is that you tend to start with character, even if it’s not the character you’re talking about.
With Ludwig Gutmann and the Paralympic Games, you actually start with a different individual, but you’re still starting with character. And I love that because to me, character drives fiction and my work starts with character.
But I hadn’t really considered starting with character so much for non fiction until I started really paying attention. And I love how you do that. And sometimes you do it as an intro and sometimes you do it as the first chapter. Do you want to talk about how you came to do it that way?
[00:11:40] Lori Alexander: sure. Yeah, so I have sold five non fiction manuscripts. Four of them are the longer chapter books. Like for fifth and sixth grade that are still fully illustrated and one has been a picture book, but they all start with either, yeah, a very short chapter or a little intro on the first spread. And I feel like this is my time that I have to catch this reader and I have to really make them intrigued by what I’m about to tell them.
So that’s always the fun challenge. But yeah, each book is a little different. The first one I did, All in a Drop, how Antony Van Leeuwenhoek Discovered in an Invisible World. It’s a scene of Antony as a grown man sitting at his desk with this weird contraption up against his eye in the sunlight.
And he’s never taken a science class, but he’s about to make a discovery that will change the world. And then you say, what is he holding? How is he going to make a discovery? That’s going to change the world if he’s never taken a science class. So they’re thinking about What’s going to happen next?
Cause we want them to turn the page. And yeah, with the Paralympics story, it’s about the surgeon that created the Paralympic games to help his patients get up and out of bed and kind of reconnecting with their peers and with life by bringing sports into their recovery. I start with a soldier who has, a spinal injury and that they think that’s it for him.
So kind of, again, set that time period. Kids think about, what life is like now, and so you have to try to connect with them what it was like to live back then. So, the soldier gets carted away, he goes to the hospital, he gets a cast and that’s it for him. He would probably die in a matter of weeks.
So that used to be the treatment for a spinal injury. And then I talk about like how far we come and we see that soldier farther down in the story, up and out of his cast under Ludwig’s care and doing physical therapy and playing sports. So it comes back later. And with Joseph Lister, I started that book with a kid.
This is a true story. A boy that was just like any of these kid readers was out and crossing the street and didn’t pay attention and got run over by a horse and cart and it broke his leg and the bone was sticking out and that wasn’t the worst news of all. The worst news is that he needed to go to the hospital.
And then I tell how dirty and a little bit scary hospitals were back then. So that hooked it. And we see that kid later in the story, because that was the first person Joseph treated with his new antiseptic procedure. And so where you would typically not survive, a break to a bone that comes through the skin because you would get some sort of infection or gangrene.
This child survived. And it was Almost like a never, never happens that they used to not make it. They’d have to get an amputation or something. So we see that little hook of a story, that little nugget that gets them invested later down the line.
[00:14:25] Sharon Skinner: Yeah, I love that you’re thinking about, hooking the reader from the first page, which we always have to do, right? And especially with non fiction because we all grew up with the dry, boring non fiction. It just didn’t, it wasn’t entertaining. It didn’t seem entertaining to me.
If I read about bats, I was reading encyclopedias and I was reading science books about bats and things like that in the fifth grade. I loved bats, so I was going to study that, but it wasn’t a story about bats.
[00:14:52] Lori Alexander: Yeah, I guess I should say that of the five that I’ve sold, they’re all narrative nonfiction. So the kind that I write they read like a story. There is a plot and a character that’s the historical figure and there’s, Dialogue, but it’s not made up. It’s found in letters and quotes and things that they actually said, but it reads like a story.
So I explain that to kids too when I go to school visits. And there’s other kinds of nonfiction. There’s expository that’s more, facts about something, but mine are narrative nonfiction. So I guess that kind of makes sense when you talked about character, how you start with character because it is about a person’s life.
It’s almost like a prologue. You’re getting into the meat of the story and then you can maybe step back and say, what was this person like as a kid? Cause we want to show what they were like as kids for the kid readers. And then you can build back into the story.
So they don’t have to wait the whole time to see where is this going? You drop them in to the story at the beginning and then get them interested and then you can step back just a little bit, even My newest one about the woman that protected Joshua Tree, it starts with her waiting for a train with a bunch of boxes of cacti and taxidermied animals from the desert that she’s about to take on a train trip across the country.
So it starts like that. And kids are like, what’s why what’s happening? And then, I flip and we see how she was as a kid. And then we get back to that moment. And then they understand why she’s taking the desert to try to. Win supporters and find people who are gonna care about the desert as much as her, but you start them in the middle of the action.
Instead of just here’s a girl, she liked nature, and talking to her friends, or whatever, you don’t have to drag them along, and have them wonder what’s about to happen. You can get them into the story right away, and then they have a little more patience for you to see where you’re going with it.
[00:16:36] Sharon Skinner: So I love that because technically you’re starting in media res, like we say for most fiction as well, so it’s a craft technique, but then you’re able to step back and give us more of the, biographical details and more information about the character and what led them to that point in their life. So you’re starting at a place that will hook us into the story.
I love that. That’s a really great tip, by the way, of how to get folks or get kids into the story.
[00:17:07] Lori Alexander: And I don’t even load them up with dates. I don’t start with in July of 1872, like kids don’t really know when they see a date, at least the younger readers, they’re like, they don’t know what life was like back then. So some of those details, I don’t even lay on them at the beginning.
It’s like, give me the action, like what’s the cool thing. And then we’ll get into the time and the place a little bit later.
[00:17:29] Sharon Skinner: I think that’s important because, and I’ve had this discussion with folks who are more in the adult fiction or adult non fiction realm, that they don’t understand that for kids, especially kids of chapter book reading age, anything more than 10 years ago is history.
[00:17:45] Lori Alexander: know. It makes us feel old, but yes.
[00:17:48] Sharon Skinner: But it’s true.
[00:17:49] Lori Alexander: Yeah.
[00:17:49] Sharon Skinner: Okay, so let’s step back a little bit now that we’ve gotten to know a little bit more about your books and you, and walk us through the process that you go through. How deep does your research typically go? What sources do you search out and all of that to develop a story once you’ve got an idea that catches you and you’re ready to go.
What? Is next for you?
[00:18:13] Lori Alexander: Yeah. So even when I’m about to pitch something to either an editor I have a relationship with or my agent, I want to make sure that whatever this little thing I heard about, or I maybe want to dig into, that there’s enough sources. You need enough material, not just Wikipedia, but scholarly sources. So yeah, my research, it goes deep. I look for as much as I can find about the figure that I want to write about. One of the first things I’ll do is make sure that story hasn’t been written already. So if I have someone in mind, I’ll go look maybe on Amazon or Barnes and Noble to see, has anything else been written about them for kids?
And if so, is my take like a new spin on it. So you want to make sure it’s not already done exactly what you were thinking. so I, I get that out of the way, make sure there’s enough sources. And I write about doctors and scientists most of the time. So there’s usually. Journal articles, different research papers that they themselves wrote.
So those are some primary sources I look for. Books, newspaper articles. You can still scour the internet. I’ve seen YouTube videos that have been helpful. I’ve found audio recordings of interviews. Letters, different websites. I’ve visited museums, watched documentaries. So once you have the thing you want to write about, and I’ll say even before this, It has to be something that really excites you as the author because it is going to take a lot of work to research this, to write it, to revise it, going through copy editing, there’s fact checking, there’s photo research that I didn’t know that is part of the author’s job, so finding archival photographs.
And so it has to be a topic that you’re excited about and you’re going to stay excited about through all these phases till the book comes out, till you’re doing marketing and publicity, till you’re seeing kids in schools and talking about it. So it could be years you’re at this and it has to be something that you’re willing to, Stick with all that time and still be excited to share with kids and schools years down the road.
So make sure that is a check mark and then look for all your sources. And then the writing process begins. And someone told me, I don’t remember where I heard this, the difference between fiction and nonfiction. And I thought it was very apt. And I tell this to kids too at school visits that writing fiction is kind of like Painting a picture.
You start with this blank canvas and slowly you add all these colors, you add characters and plot twists and things, and your painting grows. But writing nonfiction is more like sculpting. You start with this mound of notes, kind of like a big piece of marble. And now you have to chip away at the things that are not going to go into the book because everything can’t fit in the book, especially if you’re writing for kids.
So you have to figure out What is the through line you want to have and what are the things you’re going to add to the book and kind of cut away the extra stuff either for the back matter or for fun facts you can tell kids at school visits, but not everything is going to make it in there. So you got to chip away to make your beautiful sculpture.
Have you heard that before? I thought that was a kind of cool comparison.
[00:21:19] Sharon Skinner: No, but I love it because I, talk a lot about using sculpture as a metaphor for writing because I usually say that that first draft is your lump of clay and that you can then manipulate that when you’re writing fiction. But I love the idea that you can also equate that to non fiction and that the clay is already out there.
You’ve just got to put it on your table and figure out What parts of it use and sculpt it Yeah, I love that. So what are your best recommendations for writers who want to try their hand at nonfiction KidLit? You’ve given us a checklist of be passionate, so what else?
[00:21:58] Lori Alexander: I would say go for it for sure. I feel like I’ve had an easier time selling nonfiction. There’s still a demand for nonfiction out there, good quality nonfiction. So I’d say go for it. If you want to do it, if you’re interested in a topic. I won’t say that the old adage of write what you know, but I would definitely say, pick a topic that you really want to become like a mini expert in because you’re going to be doing a ton of research, so if it’s a topic you don’t know that much about right now, make sure it’s work that you want to do . Occasionally I’ll hear like maybe a story on NPR or something about someone I’m like, Oh, that would be a cool book for kids.
It’s about an artist or an architect or something. And for me, I don’t know anything about the art world or I think it would be a cool book, but sometimes I just have to say, okay, that is for someone else to write. That, that’s not your wheelhouse, so if it’s not your wheelhouse, make sure you’re, ready to do the work to, learn all about that topic.
Let’s see, what else would I recommend? I guess just reading nonfiction, maybe, you know, you want it to be picture book length or chapter book, I would say go read what’s out there, like we usually tell anyone that wants to write for KidLit, go find things that have been published in the last few years and read them for enjoyment and then go back and read them to see how did this author
put this together. I do that all the time with comp titles. You can use a good comp title in so many ways. So if I find a book that I really liked, I’m like, okay, how did they start it? How many chapters does it have? How long is it? You can really dive in and get a lot of information that way.
Look at who’s publishing nonfiction. If you have a pile of stories that you like, who are the publishers for those? Those could be good leads down the road. And there’s also nonfiction and graphic novel format. So there is a lot you can do with it. So if you’re interested, I definitely recommend going for it. And reach out to me if you have any questions. We’ll give you my website and my email if you want to chat more. I love talking about this kind of stuff.
[00:23:50] Sharon Skinner: Excellent. So I want to step back onto something that you mentioned. You said, be ready to become a mini expert. And I noticed some acknowledgements that you have in your books that refer to, People you spoke to about the topic, people who are more experts in that topic, and how do you reach out to those people, how do you find them, and how do you reach out to those people in order to have that kind of interview opportunity or question asking opportunity as part of your research?
[00:24:22] Lori Alexander: Yeah, So, it might not happen with every single book, but I try to find an expert. And sometimes, you’ll start, maybe you’re reading books by a certain person who wrote about it. Yeah. The historical figure for adults and maybe you’re using that book as one of your sources. like the Joshua Tree one, I reached out to Joshua Tree National Park just through their info email, told them what I was up to, asked if they would be willing to take a look at a draft and they rerouted me to their education department and were happy to look at it.
I would say you’re wanting to present, to the expert your best work. You wouldn’t be asking them up front to look at a draft of an early manuscript. I wait till the very end that it’s really polished and ready to go to get their feedback. But usually when you reach out, they are more than willing to read.
They love that someone else is interested in this tiny topic that they have like maybe spent their life researching. I’ve had experts offer to look at the sketches and illustrations and have given us some good little feedback there. If that first one you try does not or doesn’t have the time I always ask, do you know someone else that might be?
Is there anyone else? So I’m always trying to find it and then yeah, it’s nice to acknowledge them and the front or back a book however your format works out. I always make sure that it’s okay with them if I Put their name in and make sure I have their correct title and everything or I’ll just share the blurb with them.
This is what I want to put. Are you okay with that? And send them a copy of the book at the end. Usually the topics that I have chosen, at least so far, have lived so far back in time. I’m not dealing with living relatives or doing tons of interviews.
I interviewed some Paralympic athletes for the Paralympics story. And that was fun just to hear what is it like to be at the Paralympics? What’s the opening ceremony like? How cool is it? What is your event like? Some of that is sort of tangential, but you’re still learning more about your topic.
So if there are the chances to do that, and really as a writer, it’s helped me to grow. It’s nothing I ever thought I would be doing. I am your classical introvert, happy to be at home typing away on my laptop, but to go out and meet people and chat about these things, it kind of pushes you as an author.
It definitely helps make your manuscript as best as it can be. Your editor will appreciate that it has had an expert review. So yeah, that’s like when you’re looking for the sources at the beginning, making sure there’s enough material for you to use, you can start thinking about, is there an expert out there that I could maybe reach out to?
[00:26:51] Sharon Skinner: That’s really good information to have. Okay, so you’re out there, you’re doing this work, you have your Fingers on the pulse of the non fiction KidLit arena right now, I assume, because I know you, you do your homework, you’re paying attention. So, are there trends in non fiction that our listeners should know about right now?
[00:27:10] Lori Alexander: Trends are tricky. I hear that the picture book biography market is a bit saturated, but I still see sales. So it’s hard to know. I know that STEM topics are still in demand. So if you’re writing about science, technology, engineering, or math topics, or people that work in those fields, those are still in demand.
Books about the environment, books about social justice, those are the types of things that I’ve been hearing that publishers are looking for. Sometimes it’s hard, like we always say, don’t follow the trend. By the time what you think is out, And you’re done writing your manuscript. It could be a topic that’s back in again.
If you’re like super passionate about it, that passion will come through your manuscript. And if you do have a chance to submit nonfiction based on a proposal that’s just, a few pages long, that’s always better than working on a whole hundred page manuscript and not really knowing if it’s ever going to sell or not.
So, that helps too. But yeah, I wish I knew exactly what was selling and I would take that topic next, but yeah, it’s always a little bit of a guess and a risk, but if you’re passionate about the topic, I do think that comes through in your writing and kids will like reading about what you wrote.
[00:28:22] Sharon Skinner: You write non fiction chapter books for the most part right now. Give us an idea of what the approximate word count or length is currently being published.
[00:28:33] Lori Alexander: So the first one I wrote that won that award was probably my shortest one. I almost thought that they thought it was too short, but it was about 7, 000 words. And then backmatter. So not super long. And I think the longest one was maybe only 12, 000 words. So when they say middle grade, it’s not like a middle grade novel.
It’s more like fourth, fifth, sixth grade. So middle school is more like seventh and eighth graders. So the ones I’ve written are a little bit Easier reading than that. So maybe 12, 000 words. And then back matter is usually a timeline, sometimes a glossary of terms, usually with the science y ones, there’s a lot of terms.
Sometimes an author’s note. I had one editor, she’s like, the kids don’t read author’s notes, but I think the teachers like them. And then all the sources. And source notes. So I mentioned a little bit earlier, I tell the kids it reads like fiction, this narrative non fiction, and it can have dialogue, but it’s not made up.
Anything that looks like dialogue is something that the historical figure actually said or wrote in a letter or I heard in a recorded interview, and so that’s what gets quotes around it, and it can, appear like dialogue in the book. And so all of those that you use have to be sourced as well in the back matter.
So you have to say where you got all of those quotes and my first time, my first book, I had a lot of quotes and they were all legit, but I didn’t write down where I got them. So when the editor asked me, okay, give me all those source notes. I had to scurry through all of my notes and figure out where did I get this from?
So now I’m much more organized and when I find something I know I want to use, I make a note of where it came from, what page it was on, because all that needs to be in your back
matter.
[00:30:12] Sharon Skinner: And I assume that Backmatter, when you are ready to submit a project, it’s better to have more Backmatter than might be needed then to have less based on the fact that you don’t want to have to scurry and go find that stuff if they do want it
[00:30:25] Lori Alexander: Yeah, sometimes, I propose, some things, or I propose, a sidebar about this topic, or a sidebar about this topic, but typically I do write it all out. Yeah, maybe one or two times I proposed something that could go in the back matter, and, I think for the Cactus Queen, I had started a timeline and she’s like, you know what, it’s not really a birth to death type of a book.
She didn’t want a timeline, but we did some information about national parks and more about Minerva and Joshua Tree, and I did an author’s note for that one. So it kind of depends on the editor and the layout and how much space you have left, but I would write it as much as you can.
And if there’s some other ideas that you’re not sure if they would fit for BackMatter, maybe you could propose. I guess some people have recipes and things in the back that tie in, so you could just make a note of that at least,
[00:31:13] Sharon Skinner: Okay. So is there anything we haven’t covered that you’d like to share with our listeners?
[00:31:19] Lori Alexander: I would say if you’re going to try this, just to be patient with yourself as a writer. I know a lot of times I get this idea that I think is so fabulous and I’m amazed that no one has written about it yet and someone’s going to scoop me and I should hurry, hurry, and that is almost never the case. You should take your time, be patient with your critique partners who are giving you feedback, take your time to revise to make it the best it can be and then be patient with the agents and the editors out there that are definitely Overworked, they’re excited to read your work, but it takes a long time.
My agent said this business is glacial, it’s slow, but they’re working on books that are coming out sooner than yours. So you just got to take a breath, maybe check in once or twice, and then just start working on your next project and take your mind off of the thing that might be out on submission and hopefully you’ll hear good news.
[00:32:12] Sharon Skinner: That’s great advice. Well, we’re coming to the end of our time together. So we always at the end of our podcast, give our listeners some kind of an actionable item. So for me, the actionable item that I would offer to our listeners who want to try their hand at nonfiction is to
find a topic that you’re passionate about and dive into it. Think about the ways you could potentially share that information with a younger audience. And then try writing the opening a couple of different ways from different starting points to see what feels right for the topic that you’re writing about and the book you want to create. So what do you have for our listeners?
[00:32:52] Lori Alexander: Okay, I brought a website that I have found helpful if you want to write science y nonfiction. It applies to kindergarten through 12th grade, so that’s pretty much the whole spectrum here for writing KidLit. It’s a website called the Next Generation Science Standards, and the website is nextgenscience.org and it’s this cool thing that I didn’t know about at first, but it tells when kids are going to learn about which science topics in which grades and what exactly they’re about to learn. So maybe if you want to write about, earthquakes or I’m doing one about genetics. So you can put your topic into this little searchable website and it will tell you what kids are going to learn about earthquakes.
If they’re going to learn anything, it’ll say like in kindergarten and first grade, they’re going to learn about forces and interactions and exactly what they’re going to learn. And then in second and third, they’re going to learn about earth systems and you can drill down and see Like, for my very first book that I wrote as a picture book and it didn’t sell, I think if I had used this to learn more about what kids learn when, like when they learn about cells or bacteria I think I would have made more sense to write it as a chapter book to start with.
It helps you level set your topic and might give you some more information. I’m doing this one about a female geneticist and I saw kids learn a little bit about inheriting traits and heredity, in third to fifth grade. So I know it’s not going to be for kindergartners. It’ll be for older kids. So nextgenscience.org.
[00:34:26] Sharon Skinner: And we’ll put that in our notes so that our listeners have that link. And while we’re at it, let’s tell our listeners where they can find you, Lori.
[00:34:35] Lori Alexander: Oh, sure. I am at lorialexanderbooks. com and I’m on Instagram at lorialexanderbooks and occasionally on Twitter at lorijalexander.
[00:34:50] Sharon Skinner: Awesome. This has been so great. You’ve offered a wealth of information for our listeners about non fiction. I’m so excited to be able to share this episode. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me about your process, your journey, and giving us so much wonderful information about non fiction writing for kids.
[00:35:09] Lori Alexander: Absolutely. Yes, that was fun. Thank you for having me.
[00:35:12] Sharon Skinner: Bye for now.
[00:35:13] Christy Yaros: We hope you enjoyed this episode of Coaching KidLit, a writing and book coaching podcast for writers who want to level up their KidLit writing game.
[00:35:21] Sharon Skinner: For more about us and to discover what a book coach can do for you, check out coachingkidlit. com and follow us on social media.
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For more information about Sharon Skinner, visit bookcoachingbysharon.com or follow her on Instagram @sharon_skinner_author_bookcoach and Twitter @SharonSkinner56.
For more information about Christy Yaros, visit christyyaros.com or follow her on Instagram and Twitter @ChristyYaros.
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