Suzy Vadori

Show don’t Tell Writing Podcast: Episode #99. [Show, don’t Tell Page Review] From the Seed of an Idea to a Story

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Sometimes you have just the seed of an idea, with no clear path on how to expand it into a whole story. This week, Suzy works with Author Tracie Renee, who has written a poem and wants to expand it to a novel-in-verse. They discuss where to begin and strategies for teasing out a full idea. 

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Podcast Episode Transcript (unedited)

99. Tracie Transcript

Suzy Vadori: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Show, Don’t Tell writing podcast with me, Suzy Vadori where I peel back the layers of how to wow your readers with your fiction through nonfiction. Anybody can bang out a first draft, but it takes a little more work to make your book as amazing as it can be. Join me as I share the step-by-step writing techniques you could apply to your writing right away as I host successful writers who share a behind-the-scenes look at their own [00:00:30] writing lives and as I live coach writers on their pages, giving practical writing examples that will make your own writing stronger.

Nobody is born knowing how to write an engaging book. There are real and important skills that you need to learn. On this show, I cut through the noise and get you all the info you need. I can’t wait to see how this information is going to transform your writing.

Today we have special guest Tracy Rene on the podcast,

[00:01:00] and Tracy won a one-page review.

These are some of our favorites on the Show, Don’t Tell writing podcast. And she wrote to me and said she won it through a contest with Writers Helping Writers, but she wrote to me and said, “Hey, I actually have this really awesome poem that I love, and I don’t know how to turn it into a novel. Can we talk about that on the show?”

And I said, “Yeah.” I read the poem and said, “That’s absolutely amazing.” Tracy’s actually completed two middle grade novel manuscripts. One is a novel in verse and one in [00:01:30] prose, and is trying to arrange her standalone poems into a collection. So she’s trying to develop a new project to draft while she dives into querying, ’cause she’s also got one that she’s querying on her second manuscript.

So this poem that I read during the episode, the themes in it are self-acceptance and self-confidence and financial precarity, but she was still working out how to build a book out of it. And both of her completed manuscripts center around chronic illness and children with congenital heart defects, so her

And [00:02:00] her prose novel also addresses the current measles epidemic, so she likes to take hard things and find the light in them. And this poem was just speaking to her and seemed on track with that kind of a journey. So we decided to dive in. This is a really cool conversation. So if you’ve ever wondered how to take a germ of an idea, I like to say, and actually blow it out into a novel, this is where we start Tracy Rene is a librarian, a Publisher’s [00:02:30] Weekly book reviewer, and a BOTN-nominated writer who lives and dreams in sort of Chicago.

She’s written and published words for teens, kids, and adults, and most recently appearing in Had and Orange Blossom Review. On the kid lit side of things, Tracy is a 2025 #50PreciousWords winner, a 2025 Spring Fling Kid Lit contest winner, winner of the 2025 I Am Writing Middle Grade prize, and the recipient of a 2025 [00:03:00] Highlights Foundation scholarship.

She is absolutely recognized for her writing. I am so excited to have her on the podcast today. You can look for her teen poem, After, in Macmillan’s anthology, You’re Never Too Much, that will come out in September 2026. Welcome to the podcast, Tracy. It is so good to have you here.

Tracie Renee: It’s so great to be here.

Thank you for having me.

Suzy Vadori: You’re so welcome. I know you’re working on lots of different things- Mm-hmm … but this was the one that was on your [00:03:30] heart that you wanted to discuss. Can you tell us a little bit about the poem that I’m about to read?

Tracie Renee: Yeah, so it, this was actually just sort of a standalone one-off thing that I wrote in response to a contest prompt a few years ago, and it didn’t place in the contest at all, but it kind of stuck with me, and I just kept thinking that maybe there’s a bigger story in there that it wants to be part of.

Um-

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. Okay …

Tracie Renee: but, like- And I’m- … I’m sort of at a [00:04:00] loss for, like, where to go with it.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah, and I, I’m, I mean, I’m excited to see what comes out of it this episode. Today we’re gonna talk through that and see what comes out, and this is, this is what happens, is we have an idea, and then it won’t let us go. Like, it’s been a couple of years that you’ve been kind of- Mm

percolating on this. You know that there’s a story in there somewhere. I can’t wait to get to it, but first, I’m gonna read the poem.

Tracie Renee: Okay.

Suzy Vadori: It’s called Someday. Summer sunflowers stretch tall, and I do, [00:04:30] too. Last year clings where I curve, gaps where I lengthen, and this neighborhood feels too small, too. Cap low, shades on, I search for threads that fit, flatter, keep up with what my body wants to be.

Sometimes there’s more than one top. Sometimes I like the Ts cut. Sometimes the jeans are ripped right, and sometimes I think if someone asks where I got ’em, I won’t [00:05:00] lie, won’t say a store we can’t afford, but the rummage sale on Fourth and Pine with my head held high like I don’t care, like it doesn’t matter someday.

Beautiful. I’m sure that- Thank

Tracie Renee: you.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah, absolutely beautiful. Can you tell me, what’s this poem about at its core?

Tracie Renee: I think that the poem at its core is really about self-acceptance. And, you know, I think that’s something that we all really [00:05:30] struggle with, especially in our teen years. And the speaker in the poem in particular is struggling with, um, kind of, you know, she doesn’t have a lot.

She seems to come from a family who is maybe a little bit more impoverished, doesn’t have all the things that she sees her friends having. And for her, I think the story is about not hiding that, but just sort of owning

Suzy Vadori: it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think [00:06:00] the someday is, there’s a lot of message… I mean, we’ve come a long way since, since I was younger in that there’s a lot of messaging available to kids these days like, “You should be proud.

You should be this. You should be that.” And she’s heard all of that, and yet, right? Right. And yet she’s not ready to step into that, not ready to own it yet.

Tracie Renee: Yeah.

Suzy Vadori: Beautiful. Okay. So what happens when, and, and most of our listeners are going to, you know, whether you write poetry or [00:06:30] middle grade or fantasy or adult fiction, whatever it is that you write, we all feel this call.

And sometimes the story just really strikes us, or a character just really strikes us, and as Tracy’s saying, yeah, I think she’s, you know, like, like- Mm-hmm … your character’s still quite distant for you, but there’s something about this particular story that is pulling you. So what would you say is your why for wanting to write this particular story about this particular character from the [00:07:00] poem at this particular moment in your life?

Do you know yet?

Tracie Renee: Not sure I 100% know, but I feel that the voice is kind of pulling me a little bit. Mm-hmm. I, I think the speaker feels very real even though the poem is just one page. I can already get a sense of, like, a little bit of who she is and what she wants. And I think that those themes of self-acceptance, I think those are still themes that really resonate with me.

Suzy Vadori: Absolutely.

Tracie Renee: It’s something that we work on our [00:07:30] entire lives- Totally …

Suzy Vadori: unfortunately, right? Yeah. And, and a lot of that stems from, like you said, those teenage years or those early tween years, um, where we develop that sense of self or we don’t, right? Yeah. And, and then we often will be dealing with that throughout our own lives.

And it’s interesting because, yeah, just pay attention as you go along. Like, not to get too personal because this is a podcast, but as you go along, just pay attention to the reasons why you’re interested in doing it. A lot of times when I ask a writer [00:08:00] why it is that they’re writing a story, it unleashes something that- Sort of resonates because as we work through things, you know, whether it’s other people in your life or yourself or whatever it is, or just something that you’re passionately interested in, remember that writing is always personal, and we can only, you know, not just write what you know, but write what you maybe don’t know and want to know, and write what you maybe haven’t experienced and want to, or how you would’ve liked to be different, or how [00:08:30] you, every, uh, it’s just all within your lens, right?

Tracie Renee: Yeah. Okay.

Suzy Vadori: So you think this might be a middle-grade story? Is that my understanding?

Tracie Renee: I’m not quite sure where it would really end up. I feel like it could go either way, where it could fit nicely on the upper end of middle grade, but it could also be one of those lower YA books that kind of fills the gap between middle grade and teen.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. Absolutely, and I write lower YA myself. Okay. I coach lots of [00:09:00] different things, but it’s a difficult spot to be, I gotta say. Yeah. And I did that on purpose. I like the difficulty of it. I like that there’s a gap. But at the same time, it doesn’t have a shelf, it doesn’t have a category. It’s very difficult, and even review-wise, professional reviewers will say, “Oh, it felt very middle grade,” or, “Oh, it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t upper YA.”

Mm-hmm. And I’m like, well, it’s not, right?

Tracie Renee: Mm-hmm. But

Suzy Vadori: it has different themes. So let’s just go through, and maybe this will help you sort out where it fits. Do you know how old the girl [00:09:30] in this poem is? Like, what do you imagine? I assume it’s a girl. I don’t know.

Tracie Renee: Yeah. I, I- I think it is a girl. I wanna say that she is about 14.

Okay. Um, and that’s why I was kind of thinking, like, it could really go either way.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah, absolutely, and, and the age of the protagonist is more important than we think in terms of the themes that are expected and things. And when I say these things now, dear listener and dear Tracy, I, I teach what the norms are in these areas only so that you can understand.[00:10:00]

It doesn’t mean that you can’t break the rules. You can break the rules, but don’t break all of them because then you’ll end up without a place to sell your book, and it becomes very, very difficult. So know the rules before you break them. But in terms of genre expectations for middle grade, right, readers will only read up.

So a 14-year-old protagonist could be still upper middle grade, right? Because your readers are 9 to 12. Typically, your protagonist would be 12 to 13 in that. [00:10:30] But for lower YA, you know, lower YA is kind of this weird category. There isn’t a category, but it is that gap, like you said. There’s 9 to 12, and then there’s 14 plus, right?

Like, in, in terms of what’s on the shelf, and that’s really irritating. It’s also very different because of the topics that those tweens, like those strong readers from 11 to 13 who are ready to read the reading level and are curious, but maybe not ready to read the content that’s in a lot of YA stories these days.

Mm-hmm. [00:11:00] So there’s this sort of gap, right?

Tracie Renee: Mm-hmm.

Suzy Vadori: But if you were to make the protagonist 11, 12, 13, you’d be solidly in that middle grade. Now, middle grade, the bigger… And then after you decide the age of the protagonist, the second thing is the themes that are in it, or the- Right … the actual sort of concept.

And in middle grade, kids are still very solidly within their family unit, right? So there’s a lot- Mm-hmm … of family dynamic themes in middle grade. [00:11:30] There’s a lot of, they’re starting to see themselves as separate from their family, but, but figuring out where they fit and how to be independent is a big piece of it.

By upper YA, we’re killing the parents. Like, get rid of the parents, however, right? Like, however you can. They’re either gone, they’re somewhere, they’re not available, because the problem is to send a teen on a quest with a parent as a backup with a credit card and a cellphone and all the things, you ruin it, right?

And, and in middle grade we can still have that family unit, um, and, and explore those [00:12:00] things. And so I think for your character, and, and both, I mean, I have these age kids in my house, right? Um, so, so this sort of body image and understanding and, and where, where do I sit on the economic scale, and all those things are real things that they struggle with throughout.

But do you have a sense, I see you wrote a note. Do you have a sense, like, which one of those sort of, like is she going on an adventure, right? Where she’s gonna be on her own, and her [00:12:30] background is her background, but let’s go. I’m ready to shed that. Mm-hmm. Or is this sort of still a family unit type story?

Because that will help you decide which category that fits into the best.

Tracie Renee: Right. I feel like, I feel like Pong is more concerned about what her friends think than what her family thinks. Yeah.

Suzy Vadori: So I

Tracie Renee: definitely- I think that kind of sets us up to be maybe a little bit more towards the YA side.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. Um,

Tracie Renee: but yeah, still, still kind of trying to figure out, like, where [00:13:00] this story would wanna go.

Suzy Vadori: I, yeah, I totally agree. I could see that because, like you said, once they get into their teens, they are all about their friends. They start to shed it. It hurts our feelings as parents. Yeah. I gotta tell you, if my kids ever listen to this podcast, it hurts my feelings a little bit. But at the same time, it’s a rite of passage to sort of go and be more with your friends, and I’m here as a backup, right?

Yeah. Um, and, and that’s sort of that lower YA into upper YA category versus I’m, I’m here, [00:13:30] I’m part of the family unit, and showing some of those interactions in, in the middle grade stories. Again, there’s exceptions. I have colleagues who purposely write parents into YA because they reject that wholeheartedly- Right

as parents, that, that we can’t be involved, but it’s not typical.

Tracie Renee: So whatever, whatever floats your

Suzy Vadori: boat. Okay, so the reading level I think is perfect For a higher, is a higher reading level. Um, it’s very smartly written. We won’t be publishing the poem, but I [00:14:00] wish you could see it. It’s actually gorgeous on the page.

You’ve got… Hopefully I did it justice when I read it, but because it’s got words that stretch is stretched, and small is small, and, and, you know, like all of the different dynamics that you can do in poetry. Very cool. So your idea is to expand this into a short novel, right? Yes. And the other, the other thing is how long is it?

And I would say because you’re thinking about writing it in poetry, uh, or prose, right? What’s your vision there, or do you have one yet, or [00:14:30] do you know?

Tracie Renee: From what I know about verse novels and books in general is that we’re seeing that lower word counts are kind of trending, and particularly in novels and verse, it seems like the norm is around, I wanna say 30,000 words.

I definitely have more experience with middle grade novels and verse versus teen. I know that the teen ones can be a little bit more hefty. But as a book that would sit kind of somewhere in between [00:15:00] there, I think I’d be aiming for around 30,000 with my first draft.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah, and I think that’s appropriate, or even lower- Yeah

honestly, and, and the reason I say that is because, you know, a middle grade book would be a regular novel that isn’t written in verse, right? Would be 35 to 50, and a lower, a lower YA would probably be 65, right? Around there. Like, that’s the difference is it’s just a meatier version of that. But when we write in [00:15:30] verse, obviously there’s less words on the page, and you need the space for them to breathe, and you need the, especially the way that y- your poetry, if you wanna continue on like this, which I think is beautiful- Right

needs that visual aspect as well. And I would pay more attention to page count than word count, to be honest. I mean, I say that publishers care about word count, and I also care about word count, but in terms of what does it feel like when I hold it in my hands, that’s really important-

Tracie Renee: Mm-hmm …

Suzy Vadori: for teens who are choosing books, especially if they’re choosing [00:16:00] physical books, which many of them still do.

In many categories, we are seeing e-books and audiobooks and everything else take off, but for teens it’s still in print. But I love the approachability of a lower word count, but keeping the reading level high as you have, and making it really smart because we are competing with many other things. We’re competing with graphic novels, and we’re competing with video games, and we’re competing with TikTok, and everything that they are pulled toward, [00:16:30] unfortunately, right?

We need these gateway books, I’ll call them, that make them realize how beautiful it can be while still being a little bit more approachable. Does that make sense?

Tracie Renee: Totally. I was wondering, though, if you can talk a little bit more about, like, what an appropriate page count to aim for would be, and how- Yes

does this translate from when I’m drafting on my computer?

Suzy Vadori: Yeah, absolutely. And so, okay, so page count is how s- we don’t talk [00:17:00] about that very often, but in graphic novels and in, and in verse, it makes more sense to think about it that way. I can tell you that one of my books, actually The Fountain, my very first lower YA book, initially was printed as a six by nine, so the, the paper copy was a six by nine, which is sort of a typical middle-grade format.

Mm-hmm. But what I found was when I was handing it to kids at events or something, they’re like, “I like thicker books,” right? And so when we actually, it had a second edition printed, [00:17:30] and when we were looking at doing book two and everything else, we actually reissued it in a five and a half by eight and a half, which made it denser- Okay

and condensed everything on the page. And w- the reason I say that is because it went from, I might get the numbers wrong, it went from, like, 260 pages to 300 and some pages, like, just by changing the format. Right. And then kids were like, “Oh yeah, this is the book I like,” right? So it does matter. Right. It does matter, and page count matters in terms of what they’re willing to…

And I was looking for that [00:18:00] really avid reader that doesn’t want something really simple, right? So page count does matter in that respect. In a typical novel, the page count number that we use is 250 words, right? Mm-hmm. Per page. And that is exactl- it’s almost exactly the same if you’re working in Word.

It’s approximately the same. Again, it, it depends on how the publisher formats the book, and there’s things that you can do such as only ever starting a chapter on the right-hand side. You know, I don’t know if you would [00:18:30] format in chapters probably. Um, or some sort of section. You know, there’s things that you could do to have blank pages in there to make it feel a little meatier.

I don’t know if you were thinking of having illustrations or, or what your plan was. But yeah, so 250 would be a novel. Mm-hmm. I’m not sure, do you know how many words that whole poem is?

Tracie Renee: I don’t.

Suzy Vadori: I’m gonna put you on the spot. Okay. We’re gonna find out. Okay. Um, we’ll, uh, I can’t do it quickly ’cause I think I have it in PDF, which means I can’t do the word count quickly.

But yeah, I mean, if you do that [00:19:00] calculation, and then figure out what the word count, I mean, so in a typical middle-grade novel that’s 35 to 50,000 words, that would translate to roughly 140 to 200 pages, right? Sure. And in a lower YA, as you can see by my story, you’re pushing 300, right? So that might also be a consideration.

You can certainly do it shorter than that, but it depends on whom you’d like to attract and what, what level of reader. There’s a lot of leeway in terms of what publishers are willing [00:19:30] to do with a verse novel, because it, you know, they’re all, they’re all kind of different. So word count is, it’s important, yes, I keep track of it.

Do some math. I love math. You asked me a question I can answer, like, off the top of my head. I was a, I was an operations professional in my executive career before I became a writer, so things like this are kind of my jam. Do you know if you’re planning to do illustrations with it?

Tracie Renee: I hadn’t really gotten around to thinking about it with this poem- Yeah

but so [00:20:00] just as an aside, the word count for that poem is about 113 words,

Suzy Vadori: um- And so you’re, you’re running at about half the word count- Right … of, of a regular page- Right … ’cause that’s, that’s roughly a page, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, which so if you, to just notice that, like, there’s, again, it’s not a hard and fast rule, but you know, if you look at, I think you’ve written children’s books, is that right?

I’ve written two, um,

Tracie Renee: middle grade novels. One was a novel in verse that did include illustrations and [00:20:30] kind of a mixed media formatting. Mm-hmm.

Suzy Vadori: And

Tracie Renee: then my second one is more of a, a prose story.

Suzy Vadori: Excellent. Okay. And then where do the word count sit for those two?

Tracie Renee: For the novel in verse, the word count including, like, all my illustration notes and formatting notes was about 36,000.

Suzy Vadori: Okay.

Tracie Renee: Um, so a little higher than probably what is typical. And then for my prose novel, it was about 41,000.

Suzy Vadori: Okay. Yeah. No, th- those would make perfect sense.

Tracie Renee: Okay,

Suzy Vadori: let’s [00:21:00] talk about what if, let’s just dream for a minute. I know that you don’t have this all worked out. Mm-hmm. We’re gonna start to brainstorm.

Hopefully you’ll leave this episode after we record- Yeah … thinking a lot about this, and you know, maybe by the time this airs you’ll be well underway writing this novel in verse. Mm-hmm. But do you know what your character’s name is yet?

Tracie Renee: I don’t.

Suzy Vadori: Okay. Okay. So- I’ve

Tracie Renee: been a little bit drawing blanks there.

Suzy Vadori: Drawing blanks. Okay. So I would, I would make a suggestion that at some [00:21:30] point soon you sit down and give her a name, even if it’s temporary. It doesn’t have to be- Perfect … perfect, right? And, and the reason is because you need to start to separate her or start to see her as a person- Mm-hmm … and start to think about her in terms of a person, and what she might do.

Because this poem is gorgeous for that snapshot, that one moment in time, but in a novel we want to have a thread, right? And so you’re gonna have a series of poems that, that go, come together, but we still need to [00:22:00] have them connect in some way. And so the only, you know, the only way that we have a story is if your character goes through some kind of change.

Mm-hmm. And so here we’re seeing a snapshot in time. You’ve done a great job of capturing that. Do you think that this poem is the beginning of her story or the end of her story?

Tracie Renee: I originally thought m- it was more of a beginning, and then the book would be the path towards today becoming [00:22:30] someday, where, you know, today she’s able to accept herself and her life and take pride in it wherever she is on her journey.

But I can also see how it might be more of an ending poem too. So I’m not sure, I’m not sure I have an answer yet.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. Okay. Well let’s, let’s roll with the, the beginning because, I mean, the only way forward, like when you haven’t made a decision, and when I coach writers, um, we get into this overwhelm, and all overwhelm means is that our brain [00:23:00] hasn’t decided or we haven’t made a decision, and so our brain can’t actually move forward.

It’s like you stand at a fork in the road and you say, “Should I go left or should I go right?” And you don’t make a choice. You just stand there. There’s nothing to do, right? So until you start to make these small decisions, you can’t move forward, right? But if you decide, and I force you to decide, we’re standing at the fork in the road and it’s like, okay, well let’s try right.

You know, you might go down that path and realize that the trees are all burned out, and, you know, it’s really dark and [00:23:30] gloomy and a little bit scary, and maybe, maybe you should’ve gone the other way. That’s okay. You can backtrack and you can go the other way. But if you were still standing there, you wouldn’t even know, right?

Right. So I’m gonna- Right … I’m gonna push you right now to s- Okay … if you’re open, I’m gonna say, let’s just say what if. What if this was the beginning of your story, right? So a story, any novel that’s worth reading has a journey, as you know. And so you’ve got this character who says [00:24:00] someday, and we start there.

This actually is beautiful because you could easily mirror it. I love to- Mm-hmm … mirror beginnings and endings and, um, we do that in most books have that in some way. And especially in poetry, it’s so beautiful ’cause you could use repetition, you could use lots of ways to mirror that beginning and ending.

It feels, the readers won’t notice. Now you’re gonna notice, all you listeners out there, you’re gonna notice every time you read a book, especially a children’s book or something that’s really [00:24:30] well-crafted where every word counts, and also every movie, every Netflix episode, everything that you ever watch, you’re gonna be able to tell.

My family dri- it drives my family crazy. I’ll be like, “Oh, there was a monkey in the ER. There’s gonna be a monkey in the ER at the end.”

Tracie Renee: Right? Like something strange.

Suzy Vadori: But the typical reader or watcher doesn’t notice these things, but it actually feels very satisfying, and that’s one of the things about poetry is like you can’t always put your finger on what it is that feels so beautiful, and that when [00:25:00] it comes together it’s just so cohesive.

It’s the same thing when we mirror that. So I could see, you know, I could see this easily being a beginning. If this were the ending, I think you’d almost have like, it’d be a very different tone, right? Because you’d leave her in this space. Yeah. I, I think

Tracie Renee: it probably does make more sense to treat this like a beginning because then the last poem in the book could be, like, as you said, have a similar structure, but instead of using someday we would be using [00:25:30] today.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah And

Tracie Renee: if we’re trying to create that circle

Suzy Vadori: It’s kind of powerful. And again, it feels, when we’re talking about it, it feels trite, a little bit compact, maybe too easy, but the readers won’t see that, right? Right. It’s, they won’t see that because they’re not having this discussion, but they will feel it.

They will feel, you know, you’ve opened this thing. If you saw this as an ending, I mean, it could work as well, it’d just be a very different vibe of a book. It’d be a little darker, right? If this is- True … where we leave her, it’d be a little darker, which is okay too. [00:26:00] And, and oftentimes we, people often ask me about why, I mean, you’ve written middle grade before, and lower YA, and so you know you can go there.

You can absolutely go there, and kids can handle a lot. I mean, look at Grimm’s Fairy Tales. They’re grim, right? Like, like all of the, all of the stories, kids love horror and fear and, you know, like, they don’t have a lot associated with it yet, so it’s fine. So, you know, I, I would say map her journey from X to Y, and I think you’ve done it here.

You know, [00:26:30] she’s going from this unacceptance, not unacceptance of her body. You could, y- you could put much more beautiful ’cause

Tracie Renee: I’m sure,

Suzy Vadori: poetry is not my strong suit, by the way. Uh, I love to read it. I love to work with writers to do it, but because it’s, it’s a skill I don’t have. But yeah, from where she’s sitting there, where she’s thinking someday she knows what she’s doing isn’t where she wants to be.

She’s not living her authentic self, right? She’s putting on a face for the world, and [00:27:00] so what are the things that have to happen between that and her accepting that will make your story, right? Like, what is, what is that climax where she decides that this is no longer okay, and what are those interactions, and how, how overt do you want to be on the page, right?

Like, how, how abstract or how obvious are these going to be, right? And that’s totally up to you as the artist, as the writer. So the other thing that I [00:27:30] want you to start thinking about, and I think you’ve articulated it, but maybe put it down, is instead of thinking about theme or the point of your book, or there’s different ways to think about it, I like to flip it on the reader.

And especially when we’re dealing with young readers, this book will have an impact. It will have an impact, hopefully a large impact. So what message do you want the readers to take away when they’re done? I like to flip it this way because it’s different from what you want to say, right? [00:28:00] Right. ‘Cause you may need to be, we talked about this at the beginning, why are you writing this particular book at this particular moment in time?

And this is a slightly different take on it. What impact do you want this to have on your reader? What do you want them to take away? And this, I love doing this one ’cause it can be a bumper sticker. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be poetic. It doesn’t even have to be good. It doesn’t have to be original.

Nobody’s going to see it but you And maybe your [00:28:30] editor, your coach, you know, if you work with somebody on it. But you will never be asked this, what was this? Uh, what was the theme? I mean, maybe when seniors are reading this in school, or, you know, middle grade, I guess middle school readers are reading this in school, they will debate, what did Tracy Rene, what was the theme that she was going for, right?

And they’ll guess, and th- they might get it right, they might get it wrong. But it doesn’t have to be rocket science. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t, but it just has [00:29:00] to be a touchstone. And so as you’re going through, so for example, in the Harry Potter series, every single book is love conquers all, right?

Like, it’s not original. But every single answer is whoever loves Harry defends him, and then they win, right? Every book, and it doesn’t have to be original. But in this book, I think you’ve already sort of articulated some of this, right, which is some- something around acceptance. I don’t know, you probably have more words around it.

But something about owning yourself or being [00:29:30] authentic, right? And so play with that, because what you can do then is as you come up for ideas for events that take place within the story, and what you’re gonna write poems about, poetry about, is you can test those to say, well, does that actually point in the right direction?

Does that actually feel cohesive? Does that fit? Or is this poem really cool and I love it, and I’m gonna park it and put it in my next one, right? Does it work? Is it there? I [00:30:00] actually think it’s interesting that you haven’t named her yet, and even though I’m saying, even though I’m saying name her because that will make it more real- Mm-hmm

I wonder, you know, it would be a totally valid choice to never name her in the book, but you might need to know.

Tracie Renee: You know, I was thinking about that too, and I was asking myself, “Well, why haven’t I been able to come up with a name for her?”

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. And I think

Tracie Renee: that in this case, it’s partly because I haven’t figured out the story, because what I noticed with writing, you know, a novel in [00:30:30] verse versus a novel in prose, is that sometimes the name of the character is going to guide the word choices that I make in a poem.

Because, you know, I’m building rhythm or that alliteration. I have a hard time if a name has too many sy- syllables. That’s really hard to pull off well, I think, in a poem, especially if you’re writing-

Suzy Vadori: Nothing rhymes with orange, right?

Tracie Renee: Exactly. So I was wondering too, like, if maybe if I figure out the plot a little bit more, I’ll have a better sense of what kinds of [00:31:00] images I’ll need to pull into the story, and then I-

Suzy Vadori: Yeah

can

Tracie Renee: figure out the name too.

Suzy Vadori: Absolutely. And I think, you know, just on this name or, you know, I don’t wanna force you into a corner, I think you should know her name for yourself. Whether it ends up in a poem maybe doesn’t matter, because you really want readers to see themselves. Additionally, does it need to be all her, or could you formulate this story- With it being different people, right?

Like, I, I [00:31:30] don’t know Like

Tracie Renee: multi voices or-

Suzy Vadori: Yeah, multi voices- Yeah … or even just it could be anybody, right? Uh, it could be- Yeah … anybody, and, and sort of that every man or every woman or every girl, it’s such a ubiquitous experience to stand there. I mean, the piece about, you know, her economic challenges with her family, right?

Yeah, I mean, it could all be from her point of view for sure, or it could show that no matter where you are on the spectrum there, um, we all have [00:32:00] the same, same issues. I don’t know. Or what are the different challenges, right?

Tracie Renee: Right.

Suzy Vadori: So many places you could take this story. How are you feeling? Is this feeling exciting that you’ve made a couple of small decisions, or is it instead- Great

feeling wide open?

Tracie Renee: You know, I was taking some notes as we were talking, um, so I think I have ideas to kind of play with, and some things that really struck a chord with me that you had mentioned was the, what has to happen in order to create that self-acceptance. So that is something I’m gonna be turning over in my [00:32:30] mind.

Suzy Vadori: Yeah. I mean, we’re on the Show Don’t Tell podcast- Right … so I always bring it back to this. So I mean, what are the ways, like, you know where she needs to go, so what are the ways that we can show all those points of how she gets there? Yes, it’s from X to Y, but what are all those little micro changes that happen along the way?

And of course, we wanna have the high before the low and the low before the high, so we’re gonna bring her all over the map, and there’s going to be challenges, right? And she’s [00:33:00] gonna backslide. It’s not gonna be, you know, just- Yeah … build, build, build, build, build, and then get there. If y- you know, if it was a really short four-poem collection or something, that might make sense, but to come together as an entire novel and verse, you’re gonna need more, right?

We, we always- Definitely … need more than we think. Yeah. And especially, you know, depending on how much time passes between each of these snippets or, you know, whether they’re each their own scene or how, how you end up working [00:33:30] through the poetry piece of it and how you organize it, um, you might need a lot of them then, right?

Tracie Renee: Right.

Suzy Vadori: Maybe even more than in a prose novel.

Tracie Renee: For sure.

Suzy Vadori: Um, so yeah, I’m, I’m excited to see where you go with it. Let us know how it goes. So thank you so much for coming on the show today. This was so much fun. When you sent it over and said, “Hey, can we work with this?” I was like, “Absolutely. Let’s do it. Let’s talk about it.”

But I hope it’s given you some ideas, and I can’t wait to see where you go with it.

Tracie Renee: [00:34:00] Oh, thank you so much. I’m excited to… I’m both terrified and completely excited, which is how I know it’s worthwhile. There’s a- That is the good place to be as a writer … absolutely.

Suzy Vadori: Absolutely. Well, best of luck.

Tracie Renee: Thank you.

Suzy Vadori: Thanks for tuning in to the Show, Don’t Tell writing podcast with me, Suzy Vidori. It is my absolute honor to bring you the straight goods for that book you’re writing or the book that you’re planning to write. Please [00:34:30] help me keep the podcast going by helping people find us. You can subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you’re listening to show how much you enjoy the show.

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See you again right here next [00:35:30] week.

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