I’ve worked in educational publishing for 8 years now and sometimes it dovetails with my author life. My favorite way this happens is when I need to write short reading passages for assessments.
You’re likely familiar with those English tests where you read a story or informational text and then answer questions about it. But have you thought about where those passages come from? Many times, they’re either public domain texts or custom written, not licensed from real publications. A publisher who creates these assessments often hires a company like my day job to quickly scale the passage and test item development. And companies like my day job will hire freelance writers when our internal staff can’t handle the load within the time frame.
From a writer’s perspective, projects like these can be a taste of the dream. You get to write stories! And you’re paid for them! But some aspects about writing assessment passages may go against your artistic sensibilities and even contradict what we generally know as “good writing.” So while writing assessment passages can be a great freelance gig, you need to understand these factors to be successful at it.
The Primary Purpose of an Assessment Passage is to Educate, Not to be Artistic
This is a frustrating truth to accept as a fiction writer, but a truth nonetheless. You can write the most original story with an amazing plot and perfect prose, but if it doesn’t give students enough information to answer the assessment questions based on the skills being tested, clients will reject it.
I’ve seen particularly artsy freelance writers submit “edgy” work to us to make poignant social or political commentary. But a passage for 4th graders can’t be that complex. When these passages are paired with multiple choice questions asking students to identify the theme or correctly define a vocabulary word, they can’t bury those elements beneath artistic flair.
Most of these passages are 500-1000 words and their first goal is to convey the information the test questions are going to ask about. The most cliched passage about a kid having trouble studying for a test will pass through if, for example, it clearly establishes a point-of-view and the questions tied to that passage ask about point-of-view.
Don’t despair. It’s totally possible to write fun, original stories while overemphasizing certain elements for the sake of the assessment questions, but your main thought while writing a passage must be “What do I have to include or show for a kid to answer a question about this?” Your priorities when writing educational content are different than when writing your own fiction.
Most Educational Content Publishers Have Strict Sensitivity Guidelines
You know how some middle grade and YA books get to tackle tough issues and face the scarier parts of life head-on? Educational assessment passages don’t get to do that, despite being written for the same audience. Many sensitivity guidelines make perfect sense: no violence, no sex, no stereotypes, no foul language. But I’ve worked with many clients whose sensitivity guidelines are much, much more elaborate. Forbidden topics include:
- Birthday parties
- Holidays of any kind
- Unhealthy food
- Injuries
- Anything that doesn’t resolve in a happy ending
- Anything celebrating competition
- Anything remotely scary
- Magic, witchcraft, the occult, etc.
- Politics
- Pirates
With these clients, you feel like you can’t write any conflict in your passages at all. Guidelines like these are a major reason why so many of the passages you might see in lessons and assessments recycle the same tropes: kid has some struggle in school that parent/friend/sibling helps them overcome. Kid loses something to learn a lesson from parent about cleaning up after themselves. Kid does a science experiment. Kid has a family or friend conflict that is easily resolved within a few paragraphs and a squeaky clean lesson learned.
But this is done with good intentions. Because students are forced to engage with educational content, the goal is to never include anything that will stir trauma or cause them to feel negative emotions. They are already under the pressure of taking the test or completing the lesson. The reading itself shouldn’t make them feel inadequate or remind them of what they have or don’t have in their personal lives. Educational publishers have to consider every objection students or parents may have to the stories told in their content. The same publisher targeting school districts in California may also want their product used in Texas. There is a reason why some larger publishers even have separate Texas versions (or other state versions) of the same curriculum.
Breaking sensitivity guidelines is not only a quick path to having to rewrite the passage, but may also result in phone calls discussing the problematic elements. If the quality of your work doesn’t change in the client’s eyes, you won’t get hired for the next assessment project. When writing educational assessment passages, you have to pick the safe option over the edgy one. That is soul-crushing at times because it means you can’t always address important topics.
Passages Must Be Grade-Level Appropriate
Often, this means that passages must fall within a certain Lexile or Flesch Kincaid range. Lexile and Flesch Kincaid are readability tools that measure the complexity of a text and tell you what grade level it’s best suited for. In my experience, the lower the grade level, the harder it is to write. You have to rewire your adult brain and what you learned about beautiful prose to write a story a 9-year-old can read independently. This means you’re writing in short, simple sentences.
Passages also have to be relatable or interesting to the targeted age group. A 3rd grader is not likely to care about college or career preparation. Generally speaking, the best bet is to write a story about a kid the same age as the students taking the test.
Passages Must Emphasize the Tested Skills
Most assessment work I see involves creating Common Core aligned assessments. Each grade in Common Core English and Language Arts covers specific skills. For example, RL.5 in some grades focuses on text structure. RL.2 in most grades focuses on theme or summary. Assessment questions will test one or more of these skills, which means the passage must include them in a discernible way.
For example, if the test questions will focus on character or setting descriptions (RL.3), the passage must have at least one character or setting description. If the test questions ask for definitions of grade-level vocabulary, the passage must include words or phrases with enough context clues for students to determine the meaning. To make these accommodations, you sometimes may have to break cardinal “rules” of writing fiction. You may have to state the theme. You’ll have to tell more than show. You’ll have to use cliche idioms. Remember that the educational element is the primary goal of these fiction passages. “Bad” writing is less of a concern.
But that said, even with all of these constraints working against your artistic instincts as a writer, you can still write stories you’re proud of. A couple years ago, I had a project where I wrote passages all day for a week or two. Considering everything that I explained about writing fiction passages in educational publishing, here are some stories I came up with:
- A Percy Jackson knockoff where the kids run an underground society that captures the gods and steals their powers.
- A story told as journal entries about a kid trapped in an online RPG.
- A story about a school teacher who takes two students back in time to solve their dispute about whether technology has helped or hurt people.
- A story about a girl who builds a Rube Goldberg machine with her mother to take a break from a frustrating school project.
- A story about a girl who shadows at a weather control company in a futuristic society.
Luckily for me, this project allowed genre fiction, so I went to town as much as I could.
Passage writing provides great practice for writing flash fiction and making high stakes from small conflicts because the larger/easier conflicts like death and violence aren’t allowed.
Tips for Writing Interesting Assessment Item Passages
Remembering these tips may help you compromise your artistic desires as a writer with the unique needs of educational publishers.
- The smallest conflicts mean the world to your main character.
- You only have 500-1000 words. Unless otherwise required, develop your character through action and dialogue rather than description.
- Recycle and adapt plots from your favorite kids shows or books.
- Favor that concise, close POV you find in YA to get the most out of your word count and meet the readability requirements.
Hopefully, this gave you some helpful insight about writing fiction for educational publishing. While much of what you know from fiction writing in general applies, you do need to learn to prioritize some other elements that you usually don’t have to consider otherwise. Now, you can go into that passage writing gig feeling prepared.