Jordan Brown: Five Principles For Revision

One of the coolest things about attending the SCBWI Summer Conference is that when you're wowed by a faculty member's breakout session – if you time it right – you can go to their other session as well. To dig deeper. To learn more.

So, after being wowed by Jordan's breakout session on Voice, I attended (and here blog) his second breakout session, on Revision...

Jordan Brown is an executive editor with the imprints Walden Pond Press and Balzer + Bray at HarperCollins Children's Books.

The room is packed, every seat filled, people sitting on the floor.

Jordan starts us out the way he starts out when creating an editorial letter for a book he's editing. He aims to define the core of the manuscript.

The core is three important qualities:

1. A central element of the story to which all readers can ideally relate - the universal.
2. What is the most formative experience of your young character's life? That's what your book should be about.
3. Something your character chooses, or has agency.

He illustrates the core of the manuscript with Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games":

1. The concept is survival.
2. The most formative experience of Katniss's life is being in the Hunger Games.
3. It's her choice. She volunteers to save her sister.

It's these core concepts that Jordan uses to ground his revision notes, to make sure he and the author share a vision of what the book is.

He walks us through his five principles of revision. I'll share one of them.

Character Drives Plot

You want your plot to ask the right questions of your character:
1. What does my character want?
2. What are the stakes for my character? What happens if she doesn't get what she wants?
3. What complicates things. Why can't the character get what they want?

As full as the room is, Jordan's speech is still more full of great content, tips and examples. He ends with his explaining how to know if your book is ready... or if it's not ready.

A final note:

Jordan reminds us that our manuscripts don't have to be perfect, that

"As editors, we're not acquiring your pages. We're acquiring the vision they represent."

And revision is the way to get our books to match our vision.

Jordan Brown: What We Mean When We Talk About "Voice"

Jordan Brown is an executive editor with the imprints Walden Pond Press and Balzer + Bray at HarperCollins Children’s Books. In the ten years he has been in children's editorial, he has been fortunate enough to work with such esteemed authors and illustrators as Jon Scieszka, Anne Ursu, Gris Grimly, Steve Brezenoff, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Chris Rylander, Erin McGuire, Laura Ruby, Kevin Emerson, Christopher Healy, Greg Ruth, Dan Wells, Lois Metzger, M. Sindy Felin, and many others. Amongst the books he’s edited are New York Times bestsellers, ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults, an NPR Backseat Book Club Selection, and a National Book Award finalist, in addition to other accolades. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Your voice is the way you distinguish yourself as a writer.

With everyone hanging onto every word, Jordan defines voice as what comes between the objective facts of your novel and your readers. He leads us in exploring

what voice does,

the elements of narration that define voice,

tasks and challenges to help our voice stand out,

and some examples that do voice well.

Three highlights:

1. Readers want to feel the character they're reading is emotionally real. And the way to get that authenticity is by being specific.

Authenticity = Specificity

2. Think of voice as a camera in a movie that chooses certain things to focus on over others, like leaving the room with one character while leaving the others behind.

3. The idea of psychic distance. Using five sentences from "The Art of Fiction" by John Gardner, Jordan walks us through the different distances of voice, from the helicopter view that's the most remote and objective to as close as it gets, no outside world at all. Each distance has its own feel and strengths and things to be aware of. And the point isn't to choose one level and stay there the whole book.

"The key is to know when to make moves between levels within your manuscript."

The session is packed with information and tips, covering first versus third limited points of view, how knowing something your character doesn't can disconnect readers from your story, the benefits and retraints of present versus past tense, and much, much more.

Jordan Brown and Sara Sargent: Editors' Panel

What Hooks Jordan and Sara?

Jordan Brown is an executive editor with the imprints Walden Pond Press and Balzer + Bray at HarperCollins Children’s Books

Highlights from Jordan:

He asks himself, "What kind of books do kids need?" and "What kinds of things are desperately important to kids growing up today?"

Jordan is looking for books that "expand a kid's capacity for empathy." Characters who aren't all white, cis-gendered, characters who are different from readers.

Questions to ask ourselves as writers: "What does our character lack? What's their wound?"

He advises that "plot is intrinsically tied to character."

And he's looking for a narrator telling him a story, "a story that needs to get out."

Jordan also explains how the decision process works for him, and much more...

Sara Sargent is an executive editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books, where she acquires picture book, middle grade, and young adult fiction.

Highlights from Sara:

Sara edits books for the same reason she reads them: "escapism"

She's excited about re-imagined fairy tales, is really into fantasy and likes stories that are

romantic

fantastical, and

transportive.

She's looking, for even on the first page, a "feeling of being well taken care of." That the author has a mastery of language. An atmosphere that immediately envelopes her in the world.

Sara also speaks of the challenge of not editing something into the familiar, allowing projects to keep the unique thing about them that captured her in the first place.

The Editors' Panel Begins!

#LA15SCBWI Editors' Panel underway

From Right to Left:

Moderator Wendy Loggia, executive editor at Delacorte Press/Random House Children's Books (primarily MG and YA)

Jordan Brown, executive editor with Walden Pond Press and Balzer + Bray at HarperCollins Children's Books

Allyn Johnston, vice president and publisher of Beach Lane Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

Rotem Moscovich, senior editor at Disney-Hyperion

Sara Sargent, executive editor at HarperCollins Children's Books

Julie Strauss-Gabel, vice president and publisher of Dutton Children's Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers

Alison Weiss, editor at Sky Pony Press

Jordan Brown: Writing for Boys

Jordan Brown is an editor at two HarperCollins imprints: Walden Books and Balzer + Bray, and he shared the secrets of writing books that boys will like to a packed crowd (which included the illustrator Dan Santat, who drew a robot as Jordan talked).

Definitely not
Jordan Brown

Jordan says there are some misperceptions about writing for boys: that there are certain authors that appeal, or that the content matters (such as far jokes). 

To understand how to write for boys, you have to understand how to find books and how boys choose what to read, Jordan said. 

He shared six observations with us about how boys find books they like. Here are the first four: 

Observation No. 1: Boys won't like reading if they don't like what they're reading. "I know that sounds like Yogi Berra's Guide to Writing for Boys, but I'll explain." 

Almost Jordan Brown

If a boy is told that reading a graphic novel isn't real reading--if reading is seen as work or punishment--who's going to start to think of something as enjoyment. If boys don't develop a love of reading, they're not going to get to any of those other books that people want them to read.

When Jordan was young, "reading really felt like work." He felt ashamed and connected the act of reading to shame. He never would have been turned on by reading until he had a visceral experience reading what he loved. 

Turning kids into readers is the first priority--more important than having them read certain books. 

A Jordan Brown book

Observation No. 2: Boys live in a multimedia world

Demonizing video games and television isn't going to work. Books, TV, games can appear on different platforms. 

Observation No. 3: The Rise of the Do-It-Yourself aesthetic

Diary of a Wimpy kid looks like something a kid could have done. Or a book like the Sid Fleischman winner THE FOURTH STALL have humor, which feels accessible to kids. The voice feels like them. 

Observation No. 4: Develop connections with authors and illustrators

After they finish a book they love, they often ask, "What should I read next?" This is why series are popular. It doesn't mean you have to write a series, but develop a brand for yourself, as Jon Sciezska has done. 

Another Jordan Brown book,
the Sid Fleischman award-
winner about a middle
school godfather type

Other notes: Writing for boys isn't the same as writing for reluctant readers. All boys can become readers. 

What does this mean for writers? Jordan rarely thinks "for" boys. He thinks about boy appeal. Boys don't like to be talked down to, and they're really good at recognizing it. Gross-out humor is an example of this. Boys do like it, but it's not the only thing. 

Also, just because a boy likes to play hockey (or whatever) doesn't mean he wants to read about it. 

Boys are drawn to things that are 100 percent real, or things that feel real. "Tether your fiction to the truth," he said. 

THE FOURTH STALL really seemed like something that reflected authentic middle school currency. Jordan read us a hilarious passage about a bully named Kitten, which conveyed a lot of feeling and emotion through plot description and action (not thoughts and feelings). 

The bottom line: It comes down to theme, a feeling of reality, and characters. 

Editor Panel: Jordan Brown

Jordan Brown is a senior editor at HarperCollins Children's Book with two imprints under his proverbial belt: Walden Pond Press and Balzer + Bray. His authors include Jon Scieszka, E.L. Konigsburg, Frank Cottrell Boyce, and Anne Ursu, among many others, and books he's edited have been bestsellers and award-winners. (He's kind of the bomb, people.)

What he's looking for: "great characters and really strong voices--the RSTLNEs of literature," as well as "new stories told in old ways, and old stories told in new ways."

"I'm in the business of publishing authors and not books," he says.

Not only does he have to love a book in order to take it on, but he also has to see a market for it. Those two things are inextricably linked. 

Jordan Brown and the world's biggest (in spirit) fan
of THE HERO'S GUIDE TO SAVING YOUR KINGDOM,
 by Christopher Healy

A smattering of Jordan's books:

On voice: "Voice for me is how a writer makes a character's specific experience and perspective relatable to a reader... We only care about those things as much as the character does, and as much as we care about that character."

A third-person voice transfers to how the reader perceives the character. So if it's a funny voice, the reader will think the character is funny.


On the attributes of successful writers: The knowledge that what the editor wants and the author wants is essentially the same thing. "The people I like working with best know we're pushing in the same direction," he says.

Greg Ruth, an illustrator, told Jordan the constraint an editor provides is actually freeing.

"The interplay between the author and editor ... is my favorite part of the process."

On the digital horizon: "We've coasted (with print) for about 500 years now. But now this is the first time that doesn't necessarily define a book."

The first time he saw a Kindle, he was excited. If you buy an e-reader, it means you want to buy books.

"When I was a kid, I wasn't the biggest reader in the world. A lot of things that turned me off were the thickness of the book and size of the type. But the 8-year-old in me got excited when he saw a Kindle and realized that every book was the same thickness and you could make the type size anything you wanted."

Kids today are living in a world where your entertainment works for you--it's not necessarily about the physical object.

Ebooks are going to get better at what they do, and print books will evolve.


What makes a book enduring? "I feel like there are a lot of core stories and core experiences of middle grade and teen literature. That moment we realize the authority figures in our lives, our parents, are not infallible.

The books I like the best are where somebody's taking one of these core experiences and putting their own spin on it. The tools change, the environment changes, but I feel like there are these enduring stories that are told. It makes it relatable no matter what era you're reading in."

Pre-#LA12SCBWI Interview with Jarvis Braun... err, Jordan Brown

Jaime Temairik talks with Harper Collins Senior Editor Jordan Brown in the run-up to the 2012 SCBWI Summer Conference.  They diss John Scieszka, toss invisible sunflower seeds around Jordan's office (and show us the proof!) and talk about writing for boys (the subject of Jordan's breakout session at the conference.)

They even talk about how Jordan edited this year's Sid Fleischman Award-Winning novel, The Fourth Stall, by Chris Rylander (you can read my interview with Chris here.)

It's a great glimpse into the fun (and substance) Jordan has to offer.  For your chance to learn from and be inspired by Jordan and the rest of the publishers, editors, agents, art directors, illustrators and authors who are part of the amazing conference faculty, you can still register here!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Writers Roundtable Intensive Afternoon Panel: Editorial Process: Model for Authors/Editors

After the afternoon roundtable critique, we were treated to an expert panel on the editorial process.

With Tina Wexler, Agent at International Creative Management

Jordan Brown, Senior Editor, Walden Pond Press and Balzer + Bray at HarperCollins Children's Books

Alexandra Penfold, Editor, Paula Wiseman Books at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

and

Kate Sullivan, Editor, Little Brown Books for Young Readers

Tina Wexler (at podium) moderating panelists Jordan Brown (left), Alexandra Penfold (center) and Kate Sullivan (right)

The panel covered a lot of territory, from acquiring books versus authors, preparing authors for that first editorial letter, the importance of managing your online reputation, author input into cover design, and even a description of their editorial letters!

Here are some highlights:

"An editor's job is to take what the author has in their head and help them get it on the page in the best way possible."

- Jordan Brown

Speaking of the acquisitions process, Kate Sullivan said, "At Little Brown we have a saying, Do you like this book or do you want to marry this book?"

And Alexandra Penfold offered this tip: "Google yourself and make sure it's what you want agents and editors to see with your submission."

An excellent panel, and the perfect conclusion to the Writers Roundtable Intensive!