London Writers' Salon #207: Writing Bestselling Middle-Grade Fiction — Jasmine Richards (Storymix), Natalie Doherty (Puffin and HarperCollins), Soman Chainani (The School for Good and Evil) on Standing Out on the Shelf and Writing Unputdownable Voice | Compilation
Center The Reader From The First Thought
- Commercial children's books start by centering a specific reader and delivering their wish‑fulfilment fast.
- Jasmine Richards says a clear, genre-hitting message and pithy logline help a book cut through industry noise and sell.
Write A Single Moorish Logline
- Create a moorish one-line logline to carry your book from slush pile to playground.
- Richards stresses this line must let sales directors pitch in 30 seconds and excite booksellers and buyers.
How A Toy Shop Plaque Sparked A Novel Idea
- Jasmine Richards steals idea ingredients from real life and lets them simmer until connections form.
- Example: a Hamleys plaque plus reading about Queen Victoria and her imperial godchildren fused into a Victorian children-focused idea.
Children’s fiction studio founder Jasmine Richards (Storymix), publisher Natalie Doherty (Puffin and HarperCollins Children’s Books), and bestselling author Soman Chainani (The School for Good and Evil) on shaping an idea commercial enough to sell, what makes a children’s book impossible to put down, and trusting the unconscious to write it.
You’ll learn
- Why the most commercial idea is the one that centres its reader from the very first thought.
- How a single pithy log line can carry a book all the way from the slush pile to the playground.
- The counterintuitive trick of starting your story at chapter three.
- How to read what children are reading now so your pacing keeps up with theirs.
- What a publisher is really looking for when a manuscript lands on the desk — and why voice comes before plot.
- How the categories from early readers to YA actually break down on the bookshop shelf.
- The difference between weaving in a message and writing a book that feels worthy.
- The case for never self-censoring in a first draft, and saving the negotiation for later.
- How tiring out your conscious mind can unlock a freer, more instinctive way to draft.
- Why the goal of writing should be the writing itself, not the bestseller list.
Episode Links
- #050: Jasmine Richards — How to Pitch Commercial Children’s Fiction & The Business of Children’s Publishing
- #081: Natalie Doherty — The Magic of Writing for Children, Market Trends & Behind the Scenes of Publishing Children’s Books
- #035: Soman Chainani — Writing Dark Tales for Children & Balancing Creative Work with Discipline
About the Guests
Jasmine Richards is the author of over a dozen children’s books, ranging from picture books to teen fiction. Her most recent novel, Keeper of Myths, was published by HarperCollins. She has over 15 years of experience as an editor, including roles at Hamish Hamilton, Puffin, and Dutton Books in New York. Jasmine is the founder of Storymix, a children’s fiction studio, where she uses her unique experiences to develop new voices and inclusive stories.
Natalie Doherty is a Publisher at Puffin, although during this interview she was at HarperCollins Children’s Books. She’s worked with award-winning and bestselling authors, including Tom Fletcher, Robin Stevens, R. J. Palacio, Tamzin Merchant, and Nazneen Ahmed Pathak. Before moving into editorial in 2010, she worked in Contracts and Rights at Hachette and holds a BA in Modern European Languages and an MA in Translation. Her recent middle-grade acquisitions include Simon Stephenson’s The Snowman Code and Philippa Leathley’s Inkbound.
Soman Chainani’s debut series, The School for Good and Evil, has sold more than 3 million copies, been translated into 30 languages across 6 continents, and became a major motion picture from Netflix starring Charlize Theron, Laurence Fishburne, Kerry Washington, and Michelle Yeoh, with Chainani as an executive producer. Each of the six books in the series — The School for Good and Evil, A World Without Princes, The Last Ever After, Quests for Glory, A Crystal of Time, and One True King — debuted on the New York Times Bestseller list. A graduate of Harvard University, Soman created his own fairy-tale major before going on to an MFA in film at Columbia University. He has made films that have played all over the world, and his writing awards include honors from Big Bear Lake, the CAPE Foundation, and the Sun Valley Writers’ Fellowship. In Beasts & Beauty: Dangerous Tales, Soman reimagines old stories into fresh fairy tales for a new era.
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