Coaching KidLit Episode 49: Vivid Voice Techniques with Guest Heather Preuss

Sharon Skinner: [00:00:00] Welcome to coachingkidlit.com, a podcast about writing and publishing. Good KidLit. 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. I’m Sharon Skinner, author accelerator, certified book coach and author of Speculative Fiction and KidLit, including picture books, middle grade and young adult.

Hello listeners, and welcome back to another episode of Coachingkidlit.com. This is your host, Sharon Skinner, and i’m excited to welcome today, Heather Preusser. Growing up in Maine, Heather Pruser read all that. Nancy Drew Mysteries every single one. Now she writes her own mysteries featuring a hard-boiled hedgehog detective and his tireless rodent sidekick solving animal antics at City Zoo.

Heather earned a BA in English and art history from Williams College, an MA in education from the [00:01:00] University of Colorado and an MFA in creative writing from the Stone Coast program at the University of Southern Maine, now a resident of Colorado. She has 17 years of experience teaching both middle grade and high school English.

In addition to judging for the Colorado Book Awards, she mentors writers through R-M-C-S-C-B-W-I linked Voices and Julie Headlands 12 by 12 challenge, which for those who don’t know, is a picture book writing group and challenge. welcome, Heather. It’s great to have you here.

Heather Preusser: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This is a pleasure.

Sharon Skinner: I am excited to talk to you today because we agreed that the topic for today would be voice. And one of the things that you’ve done really well in your hedgehog whodunnit is capturing the voice of Hitch, the main character. talk a little bit about, because I know you have a background in English and in teaching, has that informed how you write your.

Books for kids.

Heather Preusser: yes, I think definitely. And I [00:02:00] think teaching voice is one of my all time favorite lessons that I do with my students. I teach ninth grade right now, and, we do two different voice lessons, one first semester and one second semester and, it’s my all time, Favorite lesson to do with students.

Sharon Skinner: Have you taught voice for adult writers at all, or is it strictly something that you’ve been focused on with, younger writers?

Heather Preusser: I have done some workshops. Here in Colorado through C-C-I-R-A and I did,, voicifying technique workshop. But C-C-I-R-A is more geared towards teachers, I would say, than it is geared towards, adult writers. So I tend to focus on, my students. And then of course when I’m doing critiques, whether it’s through Julie Headlands challenge or you know, just on my own with my critique partners, I think voice is definitely something that I’m drawn to.

Sharon Skinner: So when you are working on voice and you just mentioned, 12 by 12, and that’s more focused on picture book [00:03:00] and when you are focused on voice for, different age categories, how does that. Differ

Heather Preusser: Obviously I am working with ninth graders, so you know, they’re writing stories that have very teenage voice and an older voice may be slightly more snarky. but I think at the core, the techniques that we’re looking at are. Very similar. I think some of them lend themself more towards, formal writing and some of them lend themselves more towards creative writing.

But, in my classroom, I’m pulling out techniques specifically from a book that I was introduced to when I was in grad school as a teacher. It’s Katie Wood Ray’s book. wondrous words, reimagining writers and writing in the elementary classroom. And so it’s specific to the elementary classroom ’cause she’s drawing from picture books and she goes through all of these classic picture book texts and she pulls out all of these voicifying techniques and then talks about how she names them, with her own students and how these names don’t [00:04:00] exist really, outside of her classroom.

But whatever you call them, she has one technique that she calls commentary dashes, where, it’s just using the M dash or whispering parentheses versus just, inserting parentheses. So I think the techniques are still the same, just how you use them, and when you use them can differ.

Sharon Skinner: I’m curious if you find that younger writers have more of an ability to jump into voice at. At certain ages or not, is that something that we have naturally when we’re younger, do you think? Or is it something that we all have to work on as a skill?

Heather Preusser: I think it’s both. I think some students just, naturally have it. and I always tell my students, , by the end of the year after I’ve shown you exemplary models from your peers and you’ve peer revised with each other now for multiple times. We should be able to cover up a student’s name on their paper, and you should be able to tell who that student [00:05:00] is based on their voice.

Right. I remember when I was teaching seventh grade, I had a seventh grade student after we were talking about, so what is voice exactly? He said, oh, it’s, like the story’s fingerprint. It’s the writer’s fingerprint on the page. And I said, yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly what it is.

And so, I think some students, it’s easier for them to jump into that. and it just comes naturally to them. But I think it is something that. We can all learn and we can all, practice. editors and agents talk about voice all the time and how this is one of the first things that they look at.

But there seems to be this idea that like either you have it or you don’t. And it’s something that’s hard to teach. And of course as an English teacher, I disagree with that. I think, , it is something that you can get better at.

Sharon Skinner: I agree with you. I, do teach and I present on things like. Voice in some of my workshops, and it really has to do with how we put together the language, how we string together the words, [00:06:00] what kind of, rhythm and accent we’re giving to the work. I love that, idea that it’s the writer’s fingerprint on the page.

But I have to say to you that I don’t know if somebody could come to my middle grade work and hear my voice there and then get my voice in my young adult work necessarily. And I do think that voice, also for me, because I write speculative fiction and I write mostly fantasy and science fiction, I think voice also has to do with the story that I’m telling and the characters that are in that world.

For example, my voiciest book is a book that’s a mashup of Peter Pan, Oliver Twist and Steam Punk. And it’s because those characters had so much great voice and it was so much fun to write them. But I don’t know if necessarily someone would read my Ya fantasy book and then read my middle grade steam punk book and be able to say, well that’s, that’s Sharon’s voice, right.

Heather Preusser: They [00:07:00] both have voice but different types of voice.

Sharon Skinner: Exactly. So my point being that I think that, there’s a difference between authorial voice if you’re writing the same sort of genre, or the same type of work. Like you said, some are more,

Heather Preusser: formal versus creative.

Sharon Skinner: right. So my formal voice, you probably could recognize over and over and over from my blog posts and things like that, but my creative voice shifts depending on what I’m writing. So is that something that you work with as well when you’re teaching?

Heather Preusser: Yeah, definitely. Because when I’m, introducing these techniques, with our creative writing pieces, They do carry over into the more formal pieces, at least some of them do. One of the techniques that I love that we see a lot in picture books, Katie Wood Ray calls it the runaway sentence.

Right. Which is different from a run on sentence, but it’s like a very purposeful, long-winded sentence that a character, is saying, and it has to have a specific reason, obviously. And so that works really [00:08:00] well in a more creative piece, in a formal piece that’s probably gonna stand out and be pretty jarring.

I think in a more formal piece, maybe you could get away with another techniques that she refers to as an artful sentence fragment. which again, very different from. A sentence fragment. This is an artful one. This is one that’s very purposeful. I think you can get away with something like that in a more formal piece or maybe using whispering parentheses.

Definitely, I think you can use commentary dashes, but you’re probably not going to, use, another one. She calls the direct contact sentence, where the narrator essentially turns to the reader and then second person is addressing the reader. Well, if you do that in an essay, again, very jarring.

So there’s a, time and a place for all of these different techniques.

Sharon Skinner: I love that you talk about each of these different techniques and how they can be applied. so when you are teaching the separate semesters, for example, do you have enough techniques [00:09:00] to build on a single semester or do you cover them again in a separate semester and go over them again?

Heather Preusser: We’re doing about four each semester. and I bring in one of the reasons why this is my favorite lesson is I just bring in tons of picture books and have the students sit down and read out loud the picture books with a partner and they’re. Pausing and stopping to find these techniques and to talk about these techniques.

Specifically, why is the writer doing this technique, which is a higher level thinking than just identifying the technique?

 So I’ll do four first semester and four second semester. But what I’m telling the students is ideally you take a couple of these techniques and they become your own, right? These are techniques that you tend to fall back on and that you use regardless of whether I’m. Asking you to use them or not. And that’s what I tend to see students do throughout the course of the year. and I think that’s what we often do naturally, as writers as well. I think there are certain techniques that I gravitate towards, especially, you know, [00:10:00] within certain projects, right? within certain categories or genres.

 And so I am introducing new ones second semester, but we’re also building off the ones that we did first semester.

Sharon Skinner: Yeah. I talk all the time about filling the hopper and then having that come out organically as a writer. which is why I talk about. go to conferences, learn everything you can. Read, read, read, read, read broadly, eclectic, widely, and over time read like a writer, right?

But even just reading for pleasure fills that hopper with. All sorts of information and ideas, and that helps it come out much more organically. So the idea that you are laying a foundation and then working off of that foundation for the next level, I think it’s true for all of us as writers, right?

Heather Preusser: Mm-hmm.

Sharon Skinner: even when I teach.

One of the things that I find is that there are times when I’ll be teaching a lesson and I’ll say something ’cause I’m very organic about how I approach the specifics that I talk about when I’m teaching or the examples that I [00:11:00] use. And I will have this moment where, oh, that’s what I need to be doing in my own book, right?

Or that’s what I’m missing in this plot. Or that’s what, I should be focused on on this next revision round. So building that foundation and then finding ways to put theory into practice is really a great

approach. And I love that you have very specific techniques for this because, voice is all of that.

And you’ve done a great job in your hedgehog whodunnit, of using a lot of those techniques. And now that you’re talking about them, I’m thinking back to actually reading the first book and seeing a lot of those techniques put into practice.

You’ve got a lot of really fun word play in the book. It’s an illustrated chapter book, so it’s. Got that fun vibe to it where the characters take themselves very seriously, but a lot of it’s just really silly and there’s a lot of really good language play in there. It’s a [00:12:00] fun, read, so I’m looking forward to reading the next ones.

Heather Preusser: Yay. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. That means a lot.

Sharon Skinner: So you just had the second book come out correct?

Heather Preusser: Yep. it came out in the beginning of July, and the third one comes out in 2026.

Sharon Skinner: Yeah. And the third one is, right in your target audience because the title is The Protective Order of Peanuts. Or P do. Oh, do. Oh P. So I found that really amusing because kids love fart jokes and there was, uh. Poop joke in the, first one, so I, you’re right in there with your target audience.

Heather Preusser: I’ve noticed my sense of humor seems to be around an

8-year-old sense of humor.

Sharon Skinner: A lot of us who write for kids find that our sense of humor is kind of stuck at that age.

Tell us a little bit about your process in revision and how you ensured that the voices of your characters were distinct in this book.

Heather Preusser: Yeah. I will step back and just say I came to this [00:13:00] story through character, which I know you say often similar to how you write as well. Hitch came to me, his voice was very intact. When I go back and I look at the first couple lines of my first draft and then the first couple lines of the, published manuscript, his voice is.

 there, his voice hasn’t really changed much. And so, I came to the story through his character and he actually started out as a sloth. the idea that came to me, during one of Tara Lazars, it was way back when it was PiBoMo In 2012, I wrote down this idea of a sleuthing sloth. Because I love alliteration.

I love playing with words. As you mentioned, you can see that in the story, and I thought that just sounds like a fun story. I did eventually have to change him because another book came out with a sloth sleuth. And so the editor asked me if I’d be willing to change the main character and I said, of course.

So I changed him to a hedgehog, but his voice didn’t change, and so I [00:14:00] knew, okay, this main character. He is going to be, pretty slow footed. So I wanna make him quick witted. I wanna make him sharp. but he’s gonna be reluctant to take on these cases. All he wants to do is nap. and initially I was thinking of a sloth up in a tree and he’s just observing everything.

He’d make a great detective because no one really. Sees him up there and nobody expects him to be as observant as he is. So I knew, okay, so he is gonna be slow footed, but quick-witted. his like, hard boiled snark, like I said, came pretty naturally. So when I was coming up with his sidekick, Vinny, who is a rodent, I wanted him to be.

 The opposite. So he moves very quickly ’cause he’s a rat. He’s always running around. and that’s also echoed in the syntax with the voice a lot. He has a lot of very long runaway sentences, which mimic his thought process and mimic his movement. Whereas Hitch tends to have, shorter, simpler [00:15:00] sentences and, Vinny, unlike Hitch, isn’t the brightest, animal at the zoo. So, whereas he has free reign of the zoo and he can tell hitch what’s going on, hitch has to try and keep him out of trouble, and then the two of them combined are able to solve the cases. So once I had the characters in my head, Like I said, the voice came pretty naturally, but during revision, this was probably one of the hardest parts for me, was, trimming.

So even when I was working on this with my agent and her intern, one of their big comments was, it’s just a little too much, right? The voicing techniques that you’re doing, I’m getting a little weary of them. And so what I did is, I went through. I essentially did what, Darcy Patterson does, with shrunken manuscript that you talk about in another episode.

Before I knew of her shrunken manuscript, I just. Condensed the manuscript down. I single spaced it and I created a key for myself, right? And said, okay, [00:16:00] so these are all of the different techniques that my two characters are doing. And I gave each technique its own highlighter, and I just spread the manuscript out on the floor.

And I went through and physically highlighted everything that I could see, and then I just, stepped back, so I took inventory. And stepped back, got the big picture to one, make sure that the two characters, their voices were distinct and consistent, if Vinny is the one who has long winding sentences, I had to make sure that.

 Hitch didn’t just slip into, a runaway sentence. so, first I did this with, highlighters and then I actually went through and created a spreadsheet. I know Christy is a big fan of spreadsheets, she’s mentioned in previous episodes, I went through and, created a spreadsheet.

 Mostly because I knew that this was gonna be a series. And so, although I wanna repeat the devices, like Vinny is one who [00:17:00] uses a lot of puns. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t repeating the puns in subsequent, chapter books. And so in order to keep track of all of that, I had to create a spreadsheet for that.

Sharon Skinner: That makes sense.

Heather Preusser: Yeah, I think that the most helpful thing for me was that physically going through and taking inventory of all of the devices and stepping back, and then I could see like, oh, there’s, three literallys on this page, or there are two puns in this paragraph. You know, you can see the big chunks of color or where there’s color missing. And that was really helpful for me during that editing process.

Sharon Skinner: I think that’s a great way to focus on dialogue and character voice one of the things that I work on with clients on a regular basis is making sure that the various characters in a book sound different and helping them find ways to do that.

Heather Preusser: Yeah, when I went back and put everything back together, ’cause I also did that. I went through, I had another shrunken [00:18:00] manuscript. I went through and I highlighted all the different characters and my goal was, okay, so when I put this all back together, can I cover up the speaker tag and know exactly who’s talking because their voice is so distinct.

And if I can’t. Then I know that that’s an area that I need to work on.

Sharon Skinner: That’s a really great point. because it’s, really important that we know who’s speaking and yes, we can put dialogue tags and action tags into our writing, but if the reader brain can’t tell the difference between two characters and their voices. In some way without all of the attributions, then they can stumble on that dialogue and it can knock them right out of the narrative.

And the one thing that we don’t want is to kick our readers out of the story. We want to, as I like to, say, hook ’em, and book ’em, keep them in the narrative and keep them engaged with the story. And I think that having those distinct voices is really a huge part of that.

Heather Preusser: Yeah, and I think that’s one thing [00:19:00] that Young Readers have said about Book two in particular, is they loved the interactions that Hitch and Vinny have with all of these other characters. ’cause the peacocks are. so distinct and their voice is so separate from say, the cheetahs. And so once I heard that, I was like, yes.

 I did it. I did what I set out to do, which is really with a chapter book just to create a fun rollicking romp for readers,

Sharon Skinner: It’s great to hear that kind of feedback too, when you’ve accomplished what you set out to do. It’s always fun and exciting to hear that people get it. So you start from character much like I do, and you have the initial character’s voice in your head and you work very hard to make very distinct voices for all of your characters.

So do you hear all of them in your head? or does it take time to find some of them?

Heather Preusser: It might take time to find some of them, and that’s where I’m going to mentor texts.. I think a lot. But ultimately once I do start hearing them, then I know, okay, I am on the right track and now I just need to make sure that [00:20:00] it’s consistent and, coming out on the page.

Sharon Skinner: You just said that you wanna make sure because chapter book, that it’s a fun romp. do you have any specific techniques that you’d like to share about how you manage that in writing a chapter book of this nature?

Heather Preusser: That’s a great question and I don’t know, as if I have a great answer for it,

so I started writing this story. It actually started as a picture book. It took me three years to write the first draft of the picture book, which I wrote in 2015. And it didn’t work as a picture book. And my critique partners kept telling me, this doesn’t wanna be a picture book, Heather.

This wants to be a chapter book. And I kept ignoring them and thinking, no, no, no. I can do it. I can make it a picture book. ’cause I don’t know anything about chapter books. And it took me another three years to finally listen to them and to listen to what this story needed. And when I realized that I sat down and I just read as many chapter books as I could get my hands on. But honestly, when I was writing it, I was writing it to [00:21:00] entertain myself, to entertain my eight-year-old self. And you know, I always have a critique partner or two in mind as I’m writing, and I know, okay, if she is gonna laugh at this, other people are gonna laugh at this. So I don’t think I have. Really any good tricks in terms of how to write a rollicking romp.. But I’ve heard you say before, no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. And I think it works the same for humor,

Sharon Skinner: Absolutely.

Heather Preusser: if you’re not having fun when you’re writing the story, then your readers aren’t gonna be having fun when they’re reading it.

Sharon Skinner: I absolutely agree with that. I think that it works the same. No laughter in the writer, no laughter in the reader. When I was writing, a scene in my early, middle grade book, the Nelig Stones, there was a part that was really exciting and I actually had to get up from the computer and run around the room.

I was so excited in writing that, and that’s part of the joy of writing, but it’s also that that comes across on the page for the reader.

Heather Preusser: Right, and that was one of the [00:22:00] harder. Transitions for me, coming from picture books to chapter books and picture books we’re told over and over again, you need to leave room for the illustrator, right? To bring their own half of the story and to make this project even stronger. So when we submitted this manuscript to editors, it didn’t have any illustration notes, and that was one of the first things that the editor asked me to do was to add illustration notes.

And at first I was like, oh my goodness. I don’t know. I don’t think of myself as visual. In that sense. And so she helped me with that, first book to add about 50 illustration notes. But during the second book, I’m writing the, illustration notes as I’m drafting.

And then by the time I got to the third book, I was thinking visually and I was thinking, okay, what would Gal Weizman, who is just amazing illustrator and I think she’s the perfect fit for this project. What would she find entertaining? And I remember I was writing this scene about these animals and they were gonna compete in the world chomp-ionships and so who was gonna compete there?

And I was thinking, well, of course, a [00:23:00] synchronized, swim team made up of. A group of elephants like that would be hilarious to illustrate. And so, writing that scene, like, I’m sitting at the coffee shop and, I’m just laughing and chuckling and, that’s when it’s just so fun, you know, to, yes, take your readers on this rollicking romp, but as you’re writing to be involved in that as well.

Sharon Skinner: You’ve talked a little bit about how you read all these chapter books, to help you move your story from that picture book arena to chapter book. and I understand completely sometimes books just wanna be what they wanna be and you just have to kind of go with it. Were there any specific influences that helped you to write your book as a chapter book?

Heather Preusser: Yeah, I’ll call out two that were huge, influences. One was Doreen Cronin’s Chicken Squad books, which came out I think between 2015 and 2019. And remember, I’m drafting this in 2018. I loved these four mystery solving, crime fighting chicks on a mission, [00:24:00] and I appreciated how they each had their own distinct personality that you could see, not only in the illustrations, but also in their speech. And then she added this, rescue dog named JJ Tulley, who has this deadpan narrative voice. And, he wants to be left alone instead of having to tend to these chicks in the backyard, which is essentially what he has to do in every book. And I was just a huge fan. So I was reading those.

And then I was also, I took a class with Marcy. Colleen, through the writing barn. And she encouraged us. ’cause once I committed to, okay, this wants to be a chapter book, I have no idea what I’m doing. I need some guidance. So I read a bunch of mentor texts. I took her class and she also encouraged us to watch cartoons. And so I watched a lot of cartoons and because my story was set in a zoo, the one that I revisited the most was the Penguins of Madagascar, which. Again, I think came out in like 2008 [00:25:00] to 2014, so it was more recent when I was drafting this story. But again, I was drawn to these four. This time it was four penguins who each had their own distinct personality. Again, in the illustrations, but also in the way that they speak and you know that before the credits even finish in that very first episode, like, you know who is who? and so between those two I think those were the two that really helped me move from picture book into chapter book writing and wrap my hands around that.

Sharon Skinner: I like that you Used media from multiple sources and especially media that would be pertinent to your target audience because we can learn a lot of about voice from acting and from film and from cartoons and from animation as well as from all of the reading that we do in the mentor texts.

It probably helps a lot of people who don’t necessarily hear voices in their heads like I do, and you do. To actually watch a film or a cartoon [00:26:00] and hear that voice and see that character so that when they start to see their own characters, they can start to hear those

voices

Heather Preusser: right. And Marcy actually had us come up with character descriptions for our main characters. And in those descriptions, she wanted us to, be connecting to, other examples. So I was connecting to Penguins and, Madagascar and, and talking about what does this character look like physically, but then also what does their voice look like, on the page?

And I kept. Going? Yes. That helped me get started in terms of writing that first book. And, we wrote outlines as well as part of that workshop. So, I outlined the first book before I drafted it, but then also as part of the workshop, we were creating a synopsis for not only the whole series, but then for a couple of books. And boy was I grateful when I came back to that years later to write. Books two and three. You know, it really felt like it had been so many years since I had seen those outlines and the character descriptions and the [00:27:00]synopsis. It kind of felt like work for hire. Like I was looking at somebody else’s story idea and here I was taking it and, , just writing it out.

But it had been so long and I didn’t think of that. I didn’t think it would be helpful in that sense when I was doing it. You know, a record of, yeah. Who these characters are and, what this story is that I would come back to years later.

Sharon Skinner: that’s A great point because I use Pinterest when I’m writing, A lot of times I’ll use Pinterest for setting. I’ll find pictures of who I think the characters might look like and put them on a board, and I don’t display that board to the general public. It’s there for me as part of my process where I just need to be able to see the characters and see where they live and see where they’re hanging out and that sort of thing to just generate that feel of who they are.

Heather Preusser: Right. I did this once for a picture book that I was writing. I made, the equivalent of a mix tape for that particular story so that, once you start playing these [00:28:00] songs, you just instantly go back, to the world of these characters in that story.

Sharon Skinner: Yeah, that’s another technique that’s really valuable. I like to say that I put my characters on like a costume, I shimmy inside them, and then I write from who they are But that goes back to the fact that I have a theater background and I had to become other characters.

 And it may not work for everybody, but it works for me.

Heather Preusser: Mm-hmm.

Sharon Skinner: it’s taking method, acting and turning it into a form of writing in method.

Heather Preusser: Mm-hmm.

Sharon Skinner: I also appreciated that you talked about having to change your character from a sloth, which would’ve been just as fun, but. Also maybe kind of, standard. You know? We always expect the sloth to be slow, but what made you decide on a hedgehog?

Heather Preusser: two things. One, we were still looking for an animal that sleeps a lot that would be reluctant to take on these cases, and it turns out Hedgehogs sleep a lot. like. 18 hours a day. So that [00:29:00] was one criteria. So I was looking at hedgehogs for a while. Pandas were also in the mix for a while. And then I was also thinking about, cause again, the idea came to me largely with playing with words and alliteration. So I was thinking Panda Pi, but in the story, it’s the giant panda that goes missing. And I just loved that humor. Like How does a giant panda go missing? nobody knows where this panda is.

That’s silly. So I didn’t wanna change that. I wanted to keep that in the story. So that’s where, I decided to go with, the Hedgehog. ’cause again, I liked the sound of Hedgehog, who done it.

Sharon Skinner: I like it and I like that Hitch is a prickly character, and you’ve really captured that in the voice. It suits. and you say that the voice didn’t change much from when the character was a sloth, so I find that very fascinating.

Heather Preusser: Yeah, his, voice stayed the same.

Sharon Skinner: That’s cool. So we are at that point in our episode where we offer to our listeners an actionable item [00:30:00] that they can take away from this conversation that we’ve had, , on this topic. what would you like to offer up to our listeners today, Heather?

Heather Preusser: Yeah, I know I mentioned it earlier. Essentially I was gonna talk about the activity that I do with my students and how, they fill the hopper, as you say. I would encourage listeners to analyze their favorite books for narrative voice, reading them out loud, stopping to identify not only the technique, but also the purpose behind the technique. What is the author doing and why? What is the effect of that technique? And if you can’t answer that, as a writer, then it feels like there’s a piece missing. Right? And I know we could piggyback off of what Dianne White said in, her episode where, she was talking about an exercise that Anne Whitford Paul mentions in her writing book where, you could take it a step further and type these books up so that you really get that language and the cadence and the pacing in your bones. And then, [00:31:00] if you. Wanted to do what I did, you could take it another step and, pull out your highlighters and, go through and look at the different techniques, in your manuscripts. This is essentially the shrunken manuscript that Darcy Pattison mentions, but specifically focusing on voice.

Sharon Skinner: I like your twist on the. Shrunken manuscript.

I like the highlighting of the various types of voice. I think that makes perfect sense. and this is a great thing that people can do, is that take the tool that somebody’s given you for one thing, and you can find another use for it that works for something that you’re trying to accomplish, which is what you’ve done with Darcy’s shrunken manuscript, but turned it into more of a shrunken voice Approach. So I really like that. Well, I was going to say, for my action item, Our listeners should go and read out loud, especially dialogue, and I think that that still stands you, did just mention that in your [00:32:00] action item, but I think specifically the dialogue and in fact, we could combine two things at one time and go to your highlighted manuscript and then read the dialogue. All from one character, all the way through to see how it sounds and the rhythm of it, And making sure that it’s really, really working. And then go and read another character’s dialogue all the way through just the dialogue and listen to the tonality of it and how it. reads off the page and how you hear it and I think that that would be a good exercise. and it takes a little more work, of course, to take and pull that dialogue out and highlight it maybe. But especially in your own writing, it’s easy for our own authorial voice to get kind of tangled up in what we’re writing and to miss those nuances where our. Character’s voices may slip off the page.

 So that is going to be the action item, I offer up this episode. [00:33:00] Is there anything else that we didn’t cover that you’d like to talk about before we say adieu?

Heather Preusser: I guess the only other thing I wanna mention is something that I tell my students, which is this idea of, you know, in order to play with grammar b. You need to know grammar A and so I, approach these voicifying techniques as all these different devices that you can use in grammar B, But in order to be able to insert a very purposeful, artful sentence fragment in your story or a purposeful runaway sentence in your story, you need to have followed grammar A and everything else needs to be perfectly punctuated properly, or else. It just looks like you don’t know comma splices and run-ons and fragments. It doesn’t stand out. And so, that’s just one more thing that I would emphasize the difference between grammar A and grammar B.

Sharon Skinner: That’s an absolutely great point. So where else can we find you, Heather?

Heather Preusser: I’m online a little bit. You can head to my, author website, which is [00:34:00] heatherpreusser.com, and the last name’s spelled P-R-E-U-S-S-E-R, and I’m also on Instagram at Heather under score preusser.

Sharon Skinner: Thank you so much, Heather, for being here. We will put those links in the show notes so that people can find you and find your books, it’s been a pleasure. Speaking with you today. Thanks for taking the time out.

Heather Preusser: Yeah. Thanks for having me. This has been so wonderful. I’ve been listening to you all summer on my morning run. So it’s been a treat to talk to you here today.

Sharon Skinner: I’m so glad that we could have you on transform you from a listener to a guest. That’s exciting. thank you again. Bye for now,

We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Coaching KidLit, a writing and book coaching podcast for writers who want to level up their KidLit game. For more episodes, visit coaching KidLit dot com and to find out more about what a book coach could do for you, visit my website, book coachingbysharon.com.