Jeff Kinney on inspiring kids to be wimpy for over 15 years

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Seth Hartman: Hello, listeners. I'm Seth, an editor here at Audible. Today, I'm lucky enough to speak with Jeff Kinney, the award-winning author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a children's book series with numerous film adaptations. Jeff also owns and operates An Unlikely Story, a bookstore founded by him and his wife, Julie. Today, we'll be talking about the latest entry in his series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: No Brainer. This book is as sharp and comically insightful as ever, introducing protagonist Greg Heffley to a whole new host of things to worry about. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeff Kinney: Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

SH: So, No Brainer marks, by my count, the 18th book in the Wimpy Kid series. By all accounts, the series is a smash hit. I know you've been iterating on this idea since 1998, but I'm curious, what keeps you coming back to Greg Heffley and the Wimpy Kid world?

JK: I think it's the fact that childhood is a really big universe. There's a lot to play with for me, and it feels sort of endless. The other thing is I get to travel all over the world. I've gone to 42 countries so far. And what I'm finding is that kids everywhere are experiencing similar childhoods, or mostly in the world they're experiencing a very similar childhood to the one that I had. So, it's fun to write about things that we all share in common.

SH: Awesome. I definitely feel you on the relatability. It's all just a collective experience. So, Greg has this really signature voice. I could definitely say that he's wimpy, but more accurately, he has this adult sense of logic, and he's more disillusioned than any middle schooler I've ever read or met in real life. How did you find that voice?

JK: It took me a little while. I guess, in ways, it's just my own voice. From the very first line of the first book, he says, "First of all, let me get something straight. This is a journal, not a diary." It's like he's contradicting what's on the cover of the book in the very first sentence. And I think you can kind of tell this is going to be a little bit of a different kind of character, and it's going to be a different kind of book. And so I always worry a little bit that I might lose that voice. But so far, I haven't. I'm 52, and I don't seem to have lost that voice yet.

"Childhood is a really big universe. There's a lot to play with for me, and it feels sort of endless."

SH: I definitely agree. I've read most of them at this point, and it's definitely still there and sharper than ever, in my opinion. So, from the Larry Mack embezzlement anecdote to the creative solves to school budget issues, it seems like money is a pretty consistent theme in this Wimpy Kid entry. What were you thinking about while writing?

JK: Well, I was a little bit nervous going into this book because I committed myself to writing a book about the education system, really sending up and satirizing school. And I wanted to really wring out the sponge. Of course, I've done lots of books that have to do with school, so I was afraid that I might not be able to come up with an original plotline. And then, I was in a hotel room, I was actually somewhere in Arizona, and on that day, I was like, "I have to solve the third act of this story today." And it just, on my walk to the bathroom in my hotel room, it all came to me. So, I feel extremely lucky that I was able to solve this plotline.

SH: I really enjoyed it. It reminded me of, if you've ever seen that movie Bad Education—

JK: No, I haven't.

SH: It's a story about this Roslyn High School embezzlement scandal in real life. All the teachers were taking money out of the budget. It's a pretty good one, but definitely reminded me.

So, I could not stop laughing about the so-called fudge dogs that the cafeteria started selling after accidentally dropping tofu sticks in a vat of melted chocolate. And I have to ask, have you ever had fudge-covered tofu? Is it any good?

JK: You know, it's really funny, because in the book, the kids just go crazy for these tofu dogs that are covered in chocolate. And I didn't even give it a second’s thought of whether or not it would actually taste good. And then, to celebrate my book launch, my Wimpy Kid team made chocolate tofu dogs. And I wouldn't touch them. They thought I was going to eat them. I was like, "No way. I don't even know what tofu is." And then they all took turns and tried it out and made the worst faces, spit them out. I learned my lesson. I should have done my research before saying that these things were going to taste good.

SH: You know, I'm a pretty adventurous eater, and I feel like there's a way to make that delicious. I feel like there's potential there.

JK: We're in the middle of a tour right now, a book tour, and we're doing a Survivor-type challenge. And the original plan was to have people do this food challenge where they had to actually take a bite of a tofu dog. And we bagged it because we were worried about how people might react to that.

SH: Well, if you ever did the fudge dog challenge, I would definitely try it.

JK: [Laughs] Okay.

SH: Greg has never fit in perfectly to the school ecosystem. Despite this, he's got this pretty strong sense of self. When I was a middle schooler, Wimpy Kid definitely empowered me to go my own way. Have you heard that from readers and listeners before? And what else have fans said to you about what they've learned from Greg's story?

JK: Well, that's interesting. I think that, in a way, what humor does is it allows you to see the world like you're sort of in on a secret. It helps you to understand your world a little bit better. And so I think that, if anything, what I'm hoping is for kids to see themselves and Greg in the good ways, and then to have a little bit more of a wry take on the world. So, I'm really hoping that kids develop their sense of humor through my books.

SH: Definitely had some impact on me, I will say.

JK: Oh, cool.

SH: So, at this point, Diary of a Wimpy Kid has been adapted into a live-action film series, an animated series. Of course, it's in audiobook form. And that's not even to mention the plethora of merch and other things out there. How does it feel to see your work adapted in so many different ways?

JK: Yeah, and one of the new adaptations is a musical as well, which I think might be the best of the bunch. It's really cool. You know, at this point, I've realized that I've met maybe 13 Greg Heffleys, and I have friendships with some of them. And when the musical gets out into the world, there's going to be kind of unlimited Greg Heffleys. And what a privilege it is to have your work reach lots of people. Hopefully, it's for the good, for the betterment of society, and not to the detriment. But I think that's what makes publishing so exciting, is that you have an idea and then it gets out into the world and it gets amplified. And so I just feel very privileged. That's the word that I'd use.

"What humor does is it allows you to see the world like you're sort of in on a secret. It helps you to understand your world a little bit better."

SH: It seems pretty amazing that you can connect with so many people about all of your work and kind of interact with other stories. And that has me curious about your bookstore. In 2015, you and your wife opened up An Unlikely Story, which frequently hosts authors and community events around Plainville, Massachusetts. Part of me wonders if you got into writing and cartooning just so you could eventually open up your own shop.

JK: Ha.

SH: How has this experience affected you as a creative?

JK: What it's done is it's broadened my horizons. What's really exciting to me is that every week we have multiple authors come in and do events. And I read their books before I interview them. I've gotten to meet lots of people of different stripes, different backgrounds, and it's really edified me. I don't know what kind of person I'd be right now if I hadn't had that experience of eight years of meeting all sorts of people who I could learn from.

We definitely didn't set out to create a bookstore. It started with an old downtown building that really needed to be replaced. And once we made that decision to replace that building, then we started to think, "Well, what could be in this?" And so it became a bookstore, which is the craziest thing.

SH: I'm up and down 91 all the time, so maybe I'll find myself in there one of these days. So, since we are Audible, I want to ask you a bit about the narration. Ramon de Ocampo has voiced Greg across 18 books since 2008, and he does a great job portraying the skeptical, anxious kid. What, in your mind, does he bring to the character? And has that performance influenced your writing in any way?

JK: Yeah, I think that Ramon brings that really wry, sort of sarcastic sense to Greg. He's done a great job of capturing that. I actually met Ramon for the first time about two weeks ago in LA, which is crazy after 18 books that I got to meet him for the first time. And we really hit it off. And I actually asked him to join me onstage that night. And he helped to host this No Brainer show that we're running right now, so he was a gameshow host. And he's amazingly skilled. I had no idea that he was so skilled. He’s very, very versatile as an actor. So this is just one of the many personas that he can take on.

"I started, right around book 12, using this process called systematic inventive thinking... It's this way of being creative without having to wait for divine inspiration."

Does it influence my writing? It's funny, I've listened to parts of the audiobooks, but I actually try not to listen to too much. And I try not to experience other things in the Wimpy Kid world that might influence my writing. I try to keep whatever the thing is that I do, I try to stay in that lane. And then I get to see the way that other people interpret it. And Ramon's done a great job.

SH: Yeah, I'll say. I definitely understand that feeling of not wanting to kind of pollute the water, even with the good stuff. So, Wimpy Kid has been going for over 15 years and it's enjoyed by people of all ages. I definitely know that it was a big thing for me and my brother in our house. And I know a lot of people who love this series. Has the way that you approach Greg's stories evolved over the course of those years? And if so, how?

JK: Yeah, I used to draw from my memories. I used to only write jokes that had things that I had experienced. And right around book 5, book 6, I started to run out of those memories. So, I started, right around book 12, using this process called systematic inventive thinking, which is developed by this Israeli group. And it's this way of being creative without having to wait for divine inspiration. It's a systematic way to go through and come up with good ideas. So, I use this technique and that's how I generate all my jokes right now. And it's very reliable.

SH: Wow. I'll have to look into it. Sounds interesting. So, we're curious here at Audible, what's next for Greg? Are you cooking up some new middle school adventures?

JK: I have been really thinking about this, about what's next for Greg. I think that I would really like to do a story where the family goes on a vacation, but it's this very specific idea where Greg's mother's family wants them to join her family for a big family vacation. And Greg's father's family wants the family to join his family for a big family vacation. And they're sort of torn. So, what they do is they basically go on both vacations. They bounce back and forth between these two rented properties, trying to keep it from the other family that they're actually sort of double dipping. And I don't know if that's a strong enough idea, but I like the setup where you know the whole house of cards is going to come falling down. So, I might do a book like that.

I'm also sort of interested in doing a book where it's the, well, I hate to say the dog days of summer because I did write a book called Dog Days, but I would really like to dive into what it's like when you go from school into summer and your days are unstructured, and you have to make something of those days. That feels like juicy territory to me as well.

SH: Awesome. I'm looking forward to what you do next. Just personally, when I read the first book in middle school, there was an active thing going on in the locker area that was extremely similar to the Cheese Touch.

JK: Oh, really? [Laughs.]

SH: And I've never felt more seen in my adolescent years in my entire life. We had this disgusting bottle of Gatorade that we were just putting whatever we could find in and hiding it up in the rafters. And we'd like burp it every couple of weeks. And it would just smell worse and worse every time. And it was kind of a prank thing. So, you're definitely on the pulse.

JK: That's hilarious. Well, thank you very much. This was really, really cool. Thank you for being interested in my work.

SH: Oh, absolutely. This is nothing short of a pleasure for me. And, listeners, you can get Diary of a Wimpy Kid: No Brainer, and the rest of the Wimpy Kid series, on Audible Now.

JK: Thanks so much, Seth. I really appreciate it.