Writing for Reluctant Readers (and getting them to read), Part Two

If you missed part one of this post, you can see it here: Writing for Reluctant Readers Part 1

Last week I covered different writing techniques and styles for writing for kids who don't enjoy reading. I'm also including tactics to encourage kids to read and my book suggestions for reluctant readers. As a parent, teacher and writer, encouraging independent literacy is important to me. Reading is a powerful tool, it can entertain, educate and inform.

Most writers are keen readers, so it's easy to overlook the many kids that struggle with reading and therefore don't get any enjoyment out of persevering though what they see as a chore. If you can change that, you can change a child's world.

Graphic novels

My eldest daughter struggled with reading at the age of ten. Our home is filled with kids books and every opportunity is given for the kids to read whenever they want. That was the problem--she didn't want. I tried giving her some classics to read and she hated them. What she did love was graphic novels. We got her favourite (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and she devoured it. There is text to read, but the images help kids follow the story. It's a good starting place for reluctant or struggling readers. There is a need to move on though, and we would reward our daughter with a new graphic novel every time she finished a text novel (of her choice). She loves reading now, enjoying stories like Of Mice and Men, but also still enjoys graphic novels, especially manga.

Combination graphic and text novels
This can be a good next step from comic books. There are novels that combine illustrated comics with text chapters. In Malice by Chris Wooding, the text novel converts to graphic novel when the kids enter a magical but scary world. 

Electronics
Kids love gadgets. Despite early talk that ebooks would kill books, I believe Kindles, Kobos and iPads have made reading cool again. One of my most popular creative writing classes is when I bring in iPhones, iPads and Kindles for the kids to play with and discover new ways of accessing books. They love it. Many whip out their iPods and iPhones and start downloading the Kindle app right away. You could take this a step further and create your book as an app. Mix in games, music, videos--you're limited only by your imagination! Blue Quoll create fantastic app books for younger readers (picture books), check out the trailer for Mr Wolf and the Ginger Cupcakes:

Interactivity
In the era of online gaming, kids want interaction. You could have games embedded within your story, codes to break or mysteries to solve. Another style of storytelling that's making a comeback is 'choose your own adventures'--readers get a choice at the end of critical chapters, will the protagonist turn left and take on the fire-breathing dragon, or right and attempt to rescue their best friend from the dungeon? Kids can read the same book several times and get different stories. I'm plotting out one of these kind of stories.
Skeleton Creek by Patrick Carman combines text and videos.

Contemporary

Language is an evolving creature. Even stories written only twenty years ago can be unappealing to new young readers. It's enough of a step to get them to read a book, you don't want them to struggle with the colloquials of a bygone time. They may rush to C S Lewis once they have the reading bug, but initially try contemporary novel that use lingo and technology familiar to the reader. Both Gabrielle Lord's Conspiracy 365 series and Christine Harris' Raven Lucas series are modern day adventure books. 

   

Age appropriate

Generally kids will read about characters their own age and older--not younger. Younger is about little kids (no matter what age, this is how a 9yr old feels about an 8yr old and how a 14yr old feels about a 13yr old). They don't want to read little kid books. They want to read books for their own age group even if their reading skill is not at the 'average' for their age group.

Audiobooks

This is a great way to get kids who won't read hooked on stories. Then they may want to push that further by reading their own books. For struggling readers you can combined print text with audio, kids can read along to a huge choice of books. It's pretty easy to get your book made into an audiobook these days with sites like Audible. You can narrate your own story or (if you have a dodgy reading voice like me) hire someone to narrate it. There's plenty of talent out there, like Luke Smith (my talented brother): 
http://www.lukesmithvt.com

Clear story lines. 
Ambiguous metaphors and casts of thousands don't belong in a beginner reader's novel. You might love Game of Thrones or The Stand, but keeping to just a couple of characters and no more than two locations is a lot easier to follow. Teen boys enjoy Mathew Reilly's action books, and they start off with quite a few characters, but hey, most get killed off pretty quick.

That wraps up my two part series on writing for reluctant readers. Do you have a favourite book for struggling readers? Share it with us in the comments! And if you think this post is helpful, feel free to share it.

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Themes of Friendship

Friendship is a strong motivational device for fiction. If you're writing YA fiction or have young characters in your novel, chances are you'll include a theme of friendship and what it means to you. Peer groups are said to have more influence in teenagers' lives than family (for more info on that visit Peer Pressure).

There's been a lot of great friendships in fiction, look at the trio in Harry Potter, Frodo and Sam in Lord of the Rings, or the touching protectiveness of Katniss with Rue in The Hunger Games. Of course, friendships aren't always positive, Truman Capote had a very disturbing bond with the killers he wrote about in In Cold Blood, and the friendship between George and Lennie in Of Mice and Men was just sad.

In Undead Kev, I'll have a theme of friendship that explores loyalty and responsibility. There's many different sides of friendship and many ways you can use it to drive your narrative, some possible themes to mix in are:

• Jealousy
• Loyalty
• Trust
• Dependence
• Attraction
• Betrayal
• Responsibility
• Death

And of course many more! Do you have a theme of friendship in any of your stories? Did you find it predicted your character's behaviour? Today I'm taking part in a writing challenge over at Romantic Friday Writers to come up with a short story for the prompt: Oh how I hate my beautiful friend! I've brought back Rosie for this one, she can be a bit foul mouthed sometimes, but I bleep her out. 

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Writing Fiction from Fact

Mummy collection visiting the QLD Museum

I've been bowing out of family excursions lately, choosing instead to hole up in the State Library to work on my manuscript. It's been very productive, but I think the kids would like me to join in. Yesterday they talked about the trip they would make to the Queensland Museum to see the Mummy exhibit. They asked if I would join them this time.

"Hmm, give me a plot involving mummies, then I'll need research."

"Mummified cat?" they try.

Pfft!

"Mummy comes to life?"

Now they were talking! So I went along, enjoyed the exhibit, made notes and have tossed out my war story to do a teen mummy novel.

Part of my May challenge has been to meditate each day. Straight after, I do some free writing, this has helped develop my story. Here's the blurb for my Mummy story (names and titles will likely change). I have no idea what the 'dark evil' will be, but figure there'll be some consequence to resurrecting a mummy...

Curse of the High School Mummy

Nim lives in the shadow of her big sister Isis, but that’s what happens when you’re related to a Queen and Goddess of Egypt. When Isis dies, fifteen year old Nimatehah is to be mummified before her time, just to keep her spoilt sister company in the afterlife. Only the High Priest, Jezzikah, shows sympathy for Nim and promises to perform the resurrection ritual.

She has no idea what went wrong, but her resurrection is three thousand years late. 

Zac Miller is on an excursion to see the museum’s Mummy exhibition. In his usual clutz manner, Zac bumps into a stand smashing an ancient priceless jar. The eternity amulet it contained falls straight into the mummy’s mouth. Before his eyes, Princess Nimatehah takes human form. Zac helps Nim try to fit into this strange modern world in return for help with his history paper on Ancient Egypt. Together they need to find the rest of the ritual to transcend Nim into a Goddess before a dark evil takes over the world.

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Y is for YA Fiction

Cartoon by Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com

I'm pretty excited about taking on Year of the YA Novel, so today I'm sharing some links for information on writing for teens.

Writing Young Adult Fiction for Dummies - this is a cheat sheet with lots of tips on writing for teens.

Radio National - The Book Show - How to Write YA Fiction - download the audio file to hear a talkback show on writing YA fiction.

10 Top Issues to Address in YA Fiction - this came from discussions with teens at my last high school. They were very honest about issues that were important to them, these can be the basis for your conflict and your theme. Some of their responses might surprise you.

My top tip for writing YA fiction? A non-judgemental voice. Yes teen pregnancy is a good edgy topic for a novel. No, we do not want to encourage a bunch of teens to rush out and get pregnant. BUT. If you are writing from the teen perspective, you have to be honest about their feelings, you have to be truthful about describing the rush of endorphins experienced with a first kiss, and the desire to take things further. You can't just skip straight to the consequences, otherwise you'll be like the coach in Mean Girls, "Don't have sex because you'll get pregnant and die." 

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