6 Tips for Writing Multimedia Middle-Grade Novels That Captivate Readers

Years ago, I was in the midst of an MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and I was struggling. My advisor read the book I’d been working on and promptly suggested I start over. The first-person voice didn’t have enough urgency, she said. It wasn’t compelling or distinctive. To help me find my character’s voice, she suggested that I attempt to write a framed narrative, which clearly establishes an audience and purpose for its telling.

(How to Write Novels That Engage and Delight Middle School Readers.)

“Think how much easier it is to write an email than an essay,” she told me, and it’s true. When we know who we’re writing to and why, that shapes how we communicate. And if we set up clear circumstances for a narrator–—imagining they’re setting the record straight to avoid getting in trouble, say, or passing on a sensitive family secret to a beloved younger sibling—then we can often unlock a lively, captivating voice.

That semester, I read many framed novels. I also read epistolary novels, a special category of framed narratives that are told through letters, diary entries, emails, or other correspondence. And I read some multimedia epistolary books like Jaclyn Moriarty’s The Year of Secret Assignments, which consists of letters, diary entries, and other “stuff,” such as lists, transcriptions, and notebook pages.

I fell in love with multimedia epistolary novels that semester, and in my day job as a middle school English teacher, I’ve seen that kids and teens love these kinds of books, too. The variety of formats holds readers’ attention and encourages kids to play an active role in putting together pieces of the narrative. They are, as a bookseller friend of mine puts it, “reluctant reader gold.”

But the multimedia format isn’t easy to pull off, and it isn’t a good fit for every story. Here are six tips for writing a crowd-pleasing multimedia novel that will engage reluctant and avid readers alike.

Read as many multimedia novels as you can, including older ones, like The Year of Secret Assignments, and more recent ones. In addition to my new multimedia epistolary mystery, Where Ella Went, other recent examples include Claire Swinarski’s What Happened to Rachel Riley, Caroline Carlson’s The Tinkerers, Kate Messner’s The Trouble With Heroes, Megan E. Freeman’s Away, Tommy Greenwald’s Game Changers series, and Chrystal D. Giles’s forthcoming Listen to the Girls.

Read with your reader’s hat on first, paying attention to what engages and delights you. Is one particular type of multimedia element your favorite one to read? Why? Then put your writer’s hat on and take a closer look at the author’s craft. How many different kinds of multimedia elements are being used overall? Within a chapter? How long is each one, and how does the author link different elements together? How does the author make characters sound different from each other?

Some books go all in with multimedia elements while others use them more sparingly. All of Where Ella Went is told in non-standard narrative “stuff” (emails, texts, podcast transcriptions, lists, journal entries, school assignments, and more). But many books, including my previous novel, Keeping Pace, balance multimedia elements with chapters that are written in a more straightforward narrative style.

It can be fun and satisfying when everything within a novel is framed with a clear audience and purpose, but not every story will be a good fit for that kind of format. Often, stories with some kind of mystery, investigation, or group project lend themselves best to a fully multimedia format because there’s a built-in reason for narrators to be pulling together a variety of elements. Based on the story you want to write, consider how multimodal you want to go. Then choose some mentor texts that incorporate a similar amount of multimedia elements to help guide you.

One of my favorite things about Kate Messner’s acclaimed multimodal verse novel The Trouble with Heroes is the unique variety of multimedia elements Messner includes, from recipes, to “choose your own disaster” sequences, and even photographs. You can be very playful when writing a multimedia story, and sometimes the most unexpected elements are the most effective!

When I was writing Where Ella Went, I made a list of all the fun stuff I could incorporate. It was helpful to have a bank of out-of-the-box ideas, such as Google Classroom announcements, behavior reflection forms, secretly scribbled poems, and one character’s "Worst-Case Scenario" lists. When I was stuck, I looked back at my list to see what kind of element might fit, and my quirkiest options often worked best (and were fun to try out even when they didn’t).

When I started writing novels, I read The Art of Fiction by John Gardner and learned about the concept of a “fictive dream.” Gardner’s idea, as I understand it, is that writers should create stories that feel so true and immersive that our readers will forget they’re reading fiction. To do that, we need to include lots of “authenticating details” and avoid anything that ruins the illusion that our fictional words are real.

In general, maintaining the fictive dream means we don’t want to draw too much attention to how a story is being told. If a first-person present-tense narrator is charming enough, for instance, we won’t stop to wonder how or why this character is narrating all the events and feelings from their day. But multimedia epistolary novels draw attention to how they’re being told, over and over. They tell us, “Now a character is writing in their diary,” and that invites readers to wonder whether a character would actually write something this long in a diary, and would they really include other people’s dialogue?

Multimedia narratives require readers to suspend disbelief and buy into the fun of the format, and the best way to shore up a fictive dream is to craft such lovable, authentic characters that readers will be delighted to go along for the ride with them. But it’s also helpful to be on the lookout for places where some aspect of the format is making it hard for readers to suspend disbelief as much as they need to. You can ask a beta reader to go through a draft looking out for “fictive dream” violations, and then you can focus on revising those moments to be more believable.

Keep your reader’s experience in mind. When you include many formats, the reader has to do a lot of cognitive work to piece together the story. That process is highly engaging, and it encourages active reading and critical thinking. But we don’t want to add unintended complications and risk confusing readers.

One way you can help readers track the story is through names and labels. Where Ella Went opens with a list of “People You Need to Know,” and we had to think carefully about how to label each section so readers would always understand the context. What labels or context cues can you include to keep your story as clear as possible?

My MFA advisor helped me realize that figuring out a compelling narrative situation helps writers craft a compelling narrative voice, and when you write a multi-formal novel, you are creating compelling situations and voices all over the place! It’s fun to think about how a character would write an email to a teacher who intimidates them versus how they’d text a frenemy they’re being forced to work with on a project, but in a multiformat novel, you have to do that kind of thinking for lots of characters who get point-of-view moments, not just one.

One way to make sure each character has a distinctive voice is by giving your characters their own special formats. One of my characters in Where Ella Went writes poems, and her poems gave me an opportunity to distinguish her character’s voice since no one else uses that form. Another writes “Worst-Case Scenario” lists. You can also give characters specific verbal tics or a certain sense of humor. Try to identify any turns of phrase or linguistic quirks that feel especially true to each character! Multimedia novels lend themselves to character humor because it’s easier to be funny with an audience, and humor is a great way to set a character’s voice apart and draw in readers.

With all the different characters and narrative situations, multimedia novels offer an exciting opportunity to stretch yourself as a writer and experiment with anything that brings you joy. And often, the pieces that delight you will delight readers, as well, so lean into the fun!

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