For those of us that write kid lit, especially at the chapter level and below, it’s essential to understand reading levels. Unfortunately, there are nearly a dozen different scales you can use to “grade”  your story. Additionally, how do you know what makes a story a higher or lower level, are your edits even working?

So what’s a writer to do?

Let’s tackle the second question first. There are few things you can actively look for to make your story more readable.

• Sentence length. The longer the sentence the higher the grade level.
• Word choices. Can you use a simpler word in place of a more complicated word.

These two things will go a long way in bringing down your grade level. That brings me to that first question. The short answer is I don’t know which scale is best. If you want to dig into it more you can check out how libraries place books HERE.

Thankfully, I was tipped off with another tool this week. It’s called the Hemingway Editor. Copy in your text into the free web version and not only will it give you a grade level but it will also highlight your difficult sentences, incorrect grammar, and even adverbs.

I hope you find this as helpful as I do.

Happy Questing!