How Not to Mess Up Your Middle Grade Fiction

If you grew up before the 90s, you experienced an issue with a lot of middle grade fiction: it wasn’t very good. Although outliers did exist, there was a general attitude in publishing that kids don’t know good books from bad, so quality mattered far less than quantity.

Then Harry Potter happened. Whatever you might think of Rowling as a human, her books changed the industry. After that many middle schoolers (and adults!) read high-quality fiction, publishing couldn’t go back to the quality level that used to be enough. 

And neither can we. Writing for the middle grade audience requires the same passion, skill, and attention to detail of any other genre. To help you achieve this, we’ve compiled a list of the ten most common mistakes people make while writing for middle graders, and how to avoid them in your next project. 

Middle Grade Basics

The first way some people mess up their middle grade novels is by writing something of the wrong length or format. Generally speaking, a middle grade novel is:

• Written with shorter, simpler sentences and paragraphs. 
• 20,000 to 40,000 words long.
• Lack graphic descriptions of “mature” themes like sex, violence, or drug use. 
• Avoid foul language, or use it very sparingly.
• Have a protagonist in middle school or high school.
• May have a dark conflict, but end on a hopeful note. 

Exceptions, even highly successful exceptions, abound…but if you pay close attention you’ll notice most of those exceptions come from authors who had already successfully broken into the field. That first novel you’ll submit or self-publish should stick with the conventions of the genre.

10 Too Common Mistakes in Middle Grade Fiction

1. Talking Down

This is the biggest sin committed by mediocre writers of middle grade fiction. Never, ever, ever underestimate your audience. Oversimplifying situations, using “kid language”, or overemphasizing an attempt to educate or moralize creates a bad book and alienates your readers. Middle grade readers — those in the process of transitioning from being a kid to being a teenager — are especially sensitive to this. 

Avoid this at all costs. If you can, have a tween you trust read your first few chapters looking for exactly this kind of thing. They’ll spot it more easily than any adult, and most likely answer you with more honesty. 

2. Overcomplicating the Plot

Although the above is true, having a plot with lots of subtle twists and turns is equally problematic. Middle grade readers have minds, but they are still developing minds. It can’t be simple, but it can’t be Agatha Christie or Vladimir Nabokov. 

In general, you should focus your action on one or two characters maximum, and have at most an A plot with the core action and a B plot that is either a romantic interest, or the actions of the antagonist happening outside the protagonist’s view. Have no more than two major plot twists, and usually one or none. 

3. Relying on Slang

There are two reasons to be very, very careful with using kids’ slang when writing middle grade fiction. 

The first is that slang changes rapidly. I grew up when you called something that you thought was of high quality “rad”. Then you called it “boss.” Then “sick”. Those all changed between fourth and tenth grade for me. 

I’m given to understand that as of this writing, the word I’m looking for is “lit”, or “fire”, or “bussin.” Apparently what I would have called a “babe” in high school, or a “woo-hoo hottie” in college, is now a “baddie.”  My point is, if you want your book to be relevant five years after you finish it, slang makes that extra difficult to achieve. 

The second reason is, unless you grew up with it, you are using slang wrong. Middle graders speak their slang as natives. The best we can hope to achieve is to sound like a tourist who took a couple years of the language in college. 

4. Over-Involving (and Under-Involving) the Adults

In books for younger students, parents are the source of safety and comfort. It’s okay, even necessary, to have the parents deeply involved in the tale. In books for older children, parents are often either missing, disinterested, or actively among the obstacles they must overcome to successfully resolve their journey. 

With middle grade, adults are present somewhere. They can be resources, or provide resources, a key to success… They cannot be a driving force. For example, they cannot show up suddenly at the eleventh hour to save the day…but they can be manipulated or led to the climax through the actions of the protagonist to play a role.

It’s a tricky needle to thread, but thread it you must.

5. Forgetting Humor

Everybody loves to laugh, and middle grade readers like to more than most. Include humor, and make it the sort of humor people that age appreciate. This isn’t the place for subtle satire or laughs based on The Office-style public embarrassment. 

Keep the jokes simple. Keep the jokes accessible. Above all, keep the jokes coming. 

6. Using Age-Inapproprate Themes

I touched on this while defining middle grade fiction earlier. Themes that resonate with middle graders include young romance (crushes and first kisses), family dynamics, friendships and loyalty, self-discovery, coming of age, and pushing the boundaries of expectations. Themes that are more important to adults (ennui, heavy-handed social issues), or to younger children (animal stories, how great mommy and daddy are) simply won’t keep middle grade readers turning the pages. 

Middle grade books are also places to touch on heavier issues like death, suicide, LGBTQ+ issues, mental health, illness, and divorce. Think back to some of the best books you read in late elementary and middle school, and you’ll see a lot of this covered. Just remember to avoid Talking Down (there’s a reason it’s #1 on this list) when you’re doing so. 

7. Describing Too Much, Too Deeply

You don’t want a Wall of Text in books for any age reader, but it’s especially deadly to success in middle grade writing. Minds at this age want to see action. Their brains are literally still developing the ability to delay gratification and focus outside their areas of immediate interest. 

Keep two rules of thumb in mind. First, give information only when it is absolutely essential to understand the scene you are writing at that moment. Second, if you ever find two sentences of description in a row, seriously consider cutting one of them. 

8. Lack of Empowerment

Middle graders exist in a very specific kind of frustration. Unlike early readers, they have begun to want and need things their adults don’t want for them…but unlike high schoolers they rarely are empowered to do anything about those wants and needs. This “fantasy of empowerment” is among their most powerful driving forces. Books they read serve that fantasy, whether it’s by portraying a Chosen One hero of their age, building a treehouse on their own, or having a protagonist sneak out of the house to solve a mystery the adults could not.

It’s especially important in this genre to avoid having parents, teachers, coaches, or other adults come in and “save the day”. Even if it only comes at the climax, after the protagonists have solved all the other problems, it steals that agency middle graders so desperately crave. The protagonist should get into trouble on their own, and out of trouble on their own. 

9. Underestimating Emotional Depth

Rule two on this list was to not underestimate the intelligence of middle schoolers. They’re smart, and they understand more than many authors give them credit for. They also feel deeply, and complexly, about the things they care about. Ascribing the high-speed, low-drag, single-note emotions of a second grader to protagonists in middle school is a mistake. 

One important thing to remember when writing emotions in middle-grade fiction is that many middle graders experience emotions in the full complexity that adults do, but don’t yet have the experience to articulate them well. Some of the best and most successful middle grade books have articulated that emotion for them, giving them a foundation on which to build their own understanding. 

10. Leaning Too Hard Into Stereotypes

We already know better than to write racism, sexism, and other harmful bigotry into any level of fiction, but the temptation to dive into stereotypes is even stronger when writing about life in middle school and early high school. Here we’re talking about the jock, the nerd, the hard-nosed gym teacher, the clueless parent, and the out of touch school counselor. All those tropes that populated TV shows when we grew up are to be used, at best, sparingly. 

The best practice, when tempted to lean into stereotypes, is to add one layer. This can happen in either direction. If you’re including a stereotypical nerd, that nerd runs the school’s D&D and chess clubs, and has a special internship at NASA coming this summer… or that nerd is nerdy, but also captain of the school’s wrestling team. Subvert the stereotype or go over the top with just a little extra thought and description. 

One Last Thing You Should Do…

This article has been mostly about what to avoid in writing middle grade fiction, but I’d like to close with one thing you absolutely should do: let your characters make mistakes.

Middle grade readers are in the deep center of beginning to become teenagers. Their lives are filled with public and embarrassing mistakes coupled with private, nerve-wracking terror of making mistakes. They will resonate deeply with characters who err, err often, and err publicly. 

Besides, mistakes can be funny. We’ve already established how important humor is in this genre.