When I critique middle grade and young adult fantasy manuscripts, I often find myself jotting notes like "Why is this character the one called to this adventure?" and "What's at stake here of monumental consequence?" A cornerstone of successful fantasy is seemingly ordinary teen and tween protagonists who save the world. Without that, you're just writing a novel with quirky characters. Another hallmark is that this usually happens without (or in spite of) any help from adults. Teen heroes, impending doom, absentee parents. What's not to love?

Author Cassandra Clare understands this well, and has written an excellent piece about the secret world teens inhabit in their fantasy novels for The Wall Street Journal. Required reading for any author working on a fantasy, or for a parent with a fantasy-loving teen at home.

Are you drawn to Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dork Diaries?  Do you enjoy reliving the angst of the middle school years? In recent years, writers for tweens have developed a new genre: the cartoon novel (which is usually written in diary form). Young readers feel like they’re reading a notebook or diary that is illustrated with cartoon sketches. So, have you ever considered writing a cartoon novel? Why not give it a try?  Here are a few tips:

1. Find an interesting premise. You’ll need an interesting idea to draw readers in.  Before you begin writing, think about the storyline.  What will your cartoon novel be about?  Why will it stand out in the crowd?

2. Find a compelling voice.  Cartoon novels are usually written in the first-person narration, and they are generally marketed to the 8-12 group.  When you read cartoon novels, you'll see why young readers fall in love with Greg Heffley from the very first lines, "First of all, let me get something straight.  This is a JOURNAL, not a diary."

3. Read the first lines of cartoon novels. The voices of main characters emerge quickly and boldly on the page. For instance, Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Popular Party Girl opens with the following line, “I can’t believe this is happening to me! I’m in the girls’ bathroom FREAKING OUT! There’s no way I’m going to survive middle school.” Young readers are immediately thrown into the angst and frustration of the character’s life; the author establishes the voice, setting, and situation in the first lines of the book. Can you draw readers in this quickly? Or should you appeal to readers with a less dramatic approach? Make a decision and start writing.

4. Try writing in your character's voice.  Whether you are describing the horrors of fifth grade or surviving high school as a zombie, you need to write with gripping, believable details.  Start writing a daily entry in this voice.  Can you pull it off?  Now, compare your journal entry to Dork Diaries and Big Nate: In a Class By Himself.  Does your voice compare?  Are you able to pull off this format?  Consider buying a diary and writing in it directly instead of typing the entries.  Remember, you want to feel like you’re in the character’s skin.

5. Invent a catchy, appealing title.  Cartoon novels usually have fun titles like Wonkenstein: The Creature from My Closet and Tales from a Sixth-Grade Muppet.  Don't make your title too long or complicated.  Experiment with a few possibilities, and consider how your book will be marketed to the general public.

6. Draw a few cartoons.  With a few diary entries under your belt, you need a nifty drawing style.  If you can only draw stick figures, you’re better off submitting the manuscript without illustrations.  Finding your inner artist isn't easy; the illustrations need to work with the tone and landscape of the story. Draw something funny!

7. Read cartoon novels.  Before trying your hand at this genre, read some of the books kids love.  My Life as a Book, Dork Diaries, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid are particularly popular.  Is your idea original enough to compete with these hits?  Consider whether it is essential to write your story as a cartoon novel.  Study these books carefully, and you'll see that humor and compelling characters are the backbone of a good cartoon novel.

7. Start writing your book.  Once you've developed a voice and premise, it's time to dive in.  Whether you are drawing readers in with a personal crisis (Dork Diaries), the day-to-day experiences of a wimpy kid (Diary of a Wimpy Kid), or an unconventional storyline (Wonkenstein: The Creature from My Closet), you need to get the ball rolling.  Create an authentic voice, and you'll win the hearts of young readers forever.

8. Ask young readers to look at your text.  Sometimes the toughest critic is a 10 year old, so ask kids if you've hit the mark – or missed entirely. Edit and revise.

Now continue writing. Have fun drawing pictures and writing text. Whether you are describing the antics of a fifth grade werewolf or the anxiety of a young vampire, have fun telling your story. If you are lucky enough to get your book published, you’ll be able to tell people (at the next cocktail party you attend) that you write cartoon novels for a living. What could be better?

Dr. Suzanna E. Henshon teaches full-time at Florida Gulf Coast University.  She is the author of several books for young adults, including Mildew on the Wall (2004) and Spiders on the Ceiling (2006).

I once heard a writer of adult literature read an essay she’d written about how Checkhov proved all truisms about what makes a well-written story wrong. But writers of children’s literature don’t have to go literary to get examples of their own. Here are five rules of writing I learned in children’s writers workshops, and what a quick rereading of the opening of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone says about such advice.

1) Kids’ books should never start with adults, a.k.a. “kill the mother.”

True, Harry doesn’t  have a mother. But the first book immortalizing this character starts with the Dursleys, who aren’t even major characters. Their names are apparently Mr. and Mrs. Their son is “small”—definitely not a middle grade fiction reader. As we move forward with the confusing narrative, we meet elderly wizards sitting on a wall. This goes on for seventeen pages. The wizards talk about a baby. A giant arrives (OK, this sounds exciting, except he), bursts into tears, and needs to use an enormous hanky.

2) Kids’ books need to introduce the central tension immediately, without any confusion about “what this book is about.”

Yes, we do find out that Harry has been orphaned and he is going to live with “Muggles,” whatever they are. But we don’t get a whiff of the central tension of this book, or the series, anywhere near the first pages of this book. The Dursleys, who open the book, are always bit players, the tragi-comic relief of the series. You-Know-Who is mentioned but is apparently dead. And Harry himself, the boy who lived, literally sleeps through the scene. Judging from the opening, what the Harry Potter character “wants” is a good night’s sleep!

3) Kids’ books need to stick with a kid’s point of view.

Students, take note: Kids don’t want to read about what grown-ups are thinking and feeling. Never, ever write about a grown-up’s perspective or a grown-up’s concern. This line from Harry Potter must be a fluke: “It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold, hard wall all day…”.

4) Never start with generalized background descriptions of our characters.

I need only quote the second paragraph of Harry Potter: “Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.”

I could stop there (it’s pretty self-evident), but I must channel now the voices of JK Rowling’s writers’ group, who all learned what children like when they took writing classes as adults. “Now, Jo, you’ve got to cut all that Dursley nonsense. All those details can come up when they’re necessary. No kid is going to get past that first page with an expository paragraph like that!”

5) Children get impatient with long descriptions—keep it to a few words.

I can’t do better than Rowling, who stakes her £560 million on the belief that children do love a delicious description: “Nothing like this man had ever been seen on Privet Drive. He was tall, thin, and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak that swept the ground, and high-heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright, and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked as though it had been broken at least twice. This man’s name was Albus Dumbledore.”

So what does it tell us that the biggest selling children’s series in history breaks every one of the “unbreakable” rules offered in children’s writing workshops? I think it tells us a few things:

First, it tells us that great writing makes its own rules. I’m sure that if Rowling had followed all of the above advice, one of the twelve big publishing houses that rejected the book would have published it. And I’m equally sure that there would now be no Harry Potter mania of the sort we’ve seen. It would have been a fine book, as dismissible as the other fine but dismissible books that publishers feel safe publishing.

Second, it tells us that writers who want to rise above the din need to stay true to themselves. If the story that speaks to you is about wizards, it just can’t matter that the publishing industry says (as they did before HP) that kids are over wizards and are looking for dystopian romance or some such. A fine writer can crank out fine books that sell well by catering to the market. A writer who wants to do more must follow her muse, which may be whispering a long paragraph full of flowery adjectives in her ear.

Finally, the success of the Harry Potter series tells us that the publishing industry is too quick to elevate practical advice to received wisdom. Every piece of advice quoted above is good advice in many cases, but that doesn’t mean that it’s law. Of course, good writers work on their craft, and they try out advice to see if it improves their writing. But good writers, unlike mediocre writers, are not beholden to the rules.

As Harry Potter himself might say, when what you know to be true is at stake, there’s no point in following rules just to stay safe.

Suki Wessling is a writer, blogger, former English teacher, and homeschooler living in Coastal California. Links to her work can be found at www.SukiWessling.com. Check out her Parenting and Education Page on Facebook.

Know your audience. This sage advice is appropriate for all writers and, in particular, authors of children’s books. “Children” is a broad concept, representing a wide range of readers from birth to young adulthood.

Nancy Kelly Allen writes fiction and nonfiction for young children. Visit her website at www.nancykellyallen.com, and her writing workshop blog at www.nancykellyallen.blogspot.com.

In order to communicate clearly so readers will enjoy and understand the story, we have to recognize the differences in age groups. The writing should be appropriate for the age group of the target audience. Emerging skills and changing interests of children require different writing for different ages.

Before writing the first word, determine the age group of the reader. Understanding the interests and abilities of the audience helps us adjust our message of what we say and how we say it. We should also consider the interests of the age group so we can develop a character with which the reader can identify. Younger children respond to child-centric books and to concepts reflecting their life experiences. Most kids like to read about characters their same age or slightly older. Boys like to read about male main characters and girls will usually read books with either male or female characters. Read more

Looking for a manageable recommended reading list for all ages of children's books? Four Delaware seventh graders — Benjamin, Brittany, Shayna, and Chrissy — told me about a site they've been using for their summer school ELA requirement: Sofa Adventures in Reading: Reading Suggestions for Kids, Tweens and Teens. A mixture of new books and older titles, the site breaks the list into four age categories and gives a nice summary of each book. Thanks for the tip!

And if you're serious about keeping tabs on the market and who's publishing what, check out the Spring Sneak Previews from children's publishers in a recent Publishers Weekly. Can you spot the next big trend?

Know your audience. This sage advice is appropriate for all writers and, in particular, authors of children’s books. “Children” is a broad concept, representing a wide range of readers from birth to young adulthood.

In order to communicate clearly so readers will enjoy and understand the story, we have to recognize the differences in age groups. The writing should be appropriate for the age group of the target audience. Emerging skills and changing interests of children require different writing for different ages.

Nancy Kelly Allen is the author of fiction and nonfiction picture books, including Happy Birthday: The Story of the World's Most Famous Song, Trouble in Troublesome Creek, and the Little World Math Concepts series. See all her work at www.nancykellyallen.com. For more information on writing for different age groups, see The CBI Challenge, a step-by-step writing course on The CBI Clubhouse.

Before writing the first word, determine the age group of the reader. Understanding the interests and abilities of the audience helps us adjust our message of what we say and how we say it. We should also consider the interests of the age group so we can develop a character with which the reader can identify. Younger children respond to child-centric books and to concepts reflecting their life experiences. Most kids like to read about characters their same age or slightly older. Boys like to read about male main characters and girls will usually read books with either male or female characters.

Toddlers are concrete learners. They explore books to learn about the world around them and accept the information at face value. Concept books with the themes of counting, colors, and objects are appropriate. Bedtime stories and books about family and animals are favorites, as well. Toddlers enjoy picture and novelty books (board books, cloth books, flap books, and pop-up books). Most of these books, such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, have bright colors, few words, and illustrations that are easily recognizable. Read more

Lauren Myracle is being called this generation's Judy Blume, and since she's a fellow resident of Fort Collins, I just had to link to her interview in Publishers Weekly. Lauren's got that gift for speaking directly to teens and pre-teens, and especially captures the sensibility of girls wrestling with issues that their parents might not want to talk about. And even though her books routinely make the challenged and banned lists, she's not all dark and emo-ish. Check out her website to see her sunny, sensitive side that readers so love.

I've written in Children's Book Insider newsletter and on the CBI Clubhouse about the difference between middle grade and young adult books. One hallmark, in my mind, is that in YA fiction the protagonist is faced with an adult situation for the first time, and in living through it crosses a threshold into the adult world. At the end of the book the main character is forever changed–he/she can't go back to being a child or adolescent. The protagonist's eyes have been opened a bit to the larger world, and a certain innocence has been lost. In middle grade fiction, though the main character may emerge a somewhat wiser or more worldly than at the beginning of the book, that character is still fundamentally a child. That internal shift that signals a more adult way of moving through the world hasn't quite taken shape.

But writing isn't an exact science, so a second opinion is always welcome. Agent Michael Stearns' post Middle Grade? Teen? Where Do You Draw the Line? on the Upstart Crow Literary blog offers a slightly different way of measuring where your book fits, and comes with a nifty graph. Check it out.

My eight-year-old daughter is a scientist. This isn’t a career choice. This is just a fact of her being.

When she was 18 months old, she accidentally pulled on her sensitive big brother’s hair.

He cried!

Another child might have felt guilty or might have been upset. Not my daughter. She had only one possible reaction:

I wonder what will happen when I do that again!

And again and again.

Fast forward seven years, and she’s a regular exhibitor at our county science fair. If I want her to practice her penmanship, we do science. If she learns new words, it’s through science.

In the midst of this we had an accidental book club. We’re homeschoolers, and we do a lot of driving. Those two combined mean that we love audiobooks. I balk at the high price tag, so we get most of our audiobooks from the library. This means that more often than not, we listen to whatever happens to be on the shelves.

Unintentionally, two of the books we listened to were about girls who love science.

The first was The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. This lovely book by Jacqueline Kelly covers nearly a year in the life of a girl living in rural Texas at the turn of the 20^th century. She forms an unexpected alliance with her grandfather, an amateur naturalist, and becomes entranced with science the way that some girls now become entranced with teen idols.

This positive portrayal of a girl scientist in a place where she is so completely out of place is riveting. Not only did it inspire more interest in evolution and botany in my already science-loving kids, but it presented the role model of a girl who is a scientist against all odds.

The second book, The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages, is also historical, set in Los Alamos as scientists work desperately to create the “gadget” that will end the war. Dewey is a born scientist also, in this case, an inventor. She loves to create her own gadgets, and largely ignores the taunting of the other kids. When she is unexpectedly required to spend a few weeks living with another family, she forms an alliance with another misfit girl, who is finding her calling as an artist.

Sea and Tate are very different books. In Tate, the negative pressure on the main character comes largely from adults. In Sea, however, adults are largely charmed by Dewey’s inventiveness, but the kids are just short of brutal to her.

In both books, however, today’s girl scientists can see girls sticking to science because it is what calls to them. Interestingly, both books almost ignore the girls’ schooling, which seems tangential to their real lives. Read more

Editor's note: Audrey is a 13-year-old student from California who is currently working on her own novel between school, sports and choir. She's also a Contributing Editor to Write4Kids, focusing on middle grade and YA literature. If you have writing-related questions for Audrey, or want to suggest a topic for a future column, please contact Laura at Laura@write4kids.com.

Hi!

Since I’ve received some questions from YA writers, I’ve decided to do a Q-and-A post. If you like it, I’ll do more in the future.

Elizabeth asks:

 Do historical mysteries appeal to you at all?

My answer:

I hate to have a cop-out like this, but honestly, it depends. The historical fiction we read in school is so darn boring. Everyone agrees about that. It’s because every single book we read in class has the exact same plot: orphan goes on a “quest” to find their remaining family/find out who they are. Seriously, all the books we read have the same plot, but just a different time period. The Girl Named Disaster (Nancy Farmer), Crispin and the Cross of Lead (Avi), The Sign of the Chrysanthemum (Katherine Paterson), The Winter People (Joseph Bruchac) are some of the books we’ve read, and if you are interested, choose a couple of titles out of that list, read them, and just see for yourself the oddly identical plots.

I know there is an influx of “glam” historical fiction coming into the YA market now. The Luxe (Anna Godbersen) is what, in my opinion, started this influx. But I apologize in advance, because some people now equate insulting The Luxe to dissing Twilight (but dissing Twilight has become somewhat PC now), but I really didn’t like The Luxe. Ok fine, it was superbly researched, but it was just boring, because once you get over the pretty cover picture and fluffy vocabulary, it’s like, “Plot? What plot?”

So I guess it depends. A historical novel I enjoyed was Wicked Girls (Stephanie Hemphill), which was a beautiful novel-in-verse about the Salem Witch Trials. I liked Wicked Girls because the characters were very interesting and entertainingly creepy, and the poetry was stunning. Another that I enjoyed was Abundance (Sena Jeter Naslund), a fictionalized account of Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution (Abundance is listed as adult fiction, but I’d say it is very YA). I liked Abundance because it was very intriguing, and painted the queen in a sympathetic manner. I also enjoyed the semi-insane cast of supporting characters. What I didn’t like about Abundance was that it got really boring and overly political in the middle/end parts.

History has always interested me, but I’ve yet to find a completely engrossing historical fiction novel, which is a shame.

Taurean asks:

What's Behind the Curtain anyway. What is it about Ty that's so irresistible?

My answer:

Behind the Curtain is a very well-written younger YA mystery by Peter Abrahams. Check it out.

Now that I’m over Ty (fickle, fickle teenage girls) I can tell you why I liked him without being all fan-girly.

Ty was awesome because he was a normal badass. Like, he didn’t carry around a switchblade and he couldn’t fly. He was also pretty detached and had his own life, but he was super sweet and/or protective (NOT in a creepy Edward stalker way) to girls. Also, he was the only freshman on varsity football and I found that cool, because, I don’t know, athletic guys are usually pretty cool.

But he did have his issues. He was on steroids for a lil bit there, but he got it all sorted out.

And also somewhere it said that he looked like an Abercrombie model, and that’s always a plus.

So, yeah. That’s why I liked Ty Levin-Hill.

Nancy asks:

From your last post: “A lot of times, the language in YA books seems really dated and not authentic…." Not to split hairs, but a sincere question: Do you mean to refer to YA manuscripts? Or do you actually find recent, published YA books to be dated/not authentic?

My answer:

Both. I remember reading a book a few weeks ago aloud to my mom, and laughing about how out-of-touch it was. And it was published in February. One of the many examples is, “'Oh, nuts,' she sputtered, looking down at her once perfectly creased tan slacks that matched the stripe in her violet sweater vest.”

Actually, I’ve researched, and turns out it’s an entire series of books (I only read the first one). So yeah, books with awfully outdated slang have been published.

Also, I read another book (published last year), and the only sort of slang it had was an abundance of swearing. And trust me, swearing isn’t slang.

Amber-Dawn asks:

You mentioned that you hate it when young people in books have dialogue that sounds like they’re from another time period. Do you feel the same way if a book is written in a fantasy world that is supposed to be from, well, you know, a long time ago? And also, I’ve never tried to do accents before, but you mentioned it’s a pet peeve of yours for writers to sound out the words like an accent would sound. So is it ever cool to try and write a character’s dialogue in the accent where they’re from?

My answer:

I meant that I don’t like it when books that take place in modern times have characters who speak like they’re from another time period. If you are writing a book that takes place in a fictional world or is set in 1853 or whatever, you should definitely have the characters talk like they’re from the past.

I don’t know what you mean by accent. If you’re writing about a character from the South, you should definitely have the stereotypical Southern-isms in it, such as “y’all”. But please don’t write the character’s normal speech like “can yah pah-lease tell me the tahme?” That would be really annoying, like, trust me, as annoying as reading a The Clique book. Because that’s how they talk in those books (for example, “'Uh’v koursse!' said Ah-nna.”)

Tobi asks:

What’s your take on the incursion of “dark” young adult novels?

My answer:

I hate vampires. Sorry. They’re lame. Like, Edward Cullen is the most stalkerish, creepy, epic fail at badass-ness character ever. So he basically killed all curiosity in vampires that I could potentially have. And all my friends feel the same way. Also, Stefan, from the Vampire Diaries, really annoys me because he’s all sensitive but tries way too hard to be a tough guy. And I don’t particularly like werewolves either, but everybody knows they’re dead by now.

Also, the Ellen Hopkins novels (Fallout, Glass, and others) are something that I have absolutely no interest in. People with serious and creepy mental problems don’t interest me. Same with Wintergirls. I don’t particularly like books about mentally disordered people (such as cutters or anorexics), but I do enjoy the books by Mary Downing Hahn, which are interestingly scary.

Don’t follow trends, because trends will be dead and gone by the time your novel is out on the market. So, if you’re writing a book about vampires (dead last year) or werewolves (dead last summer), stop now, hit the Control-f keys to find and replace the word “vampire” or “werewolf” with “guido” and the word “pale” or “furry” with “orange”.

Any other questions? Comment or email!

Audrey