Children’s Writing Web Journal

A former workshop student of mine recently thanked me for reminding her that query letters are best when they’re short and to the point. A published writer, she said she’d gotten away from the KISS method of querying (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

The more I thought about her acronym, the more I realized it applied to all aspects of writing children’s book fiction. When dealing with kids one-on-one, we adults often give them information on a need-to-know basis. When asked, “Why do I have to change my underwear every day?” we could go into detail about germs or proper hygiene, but instead answer, “Because you’re starting to stink.” It gets the point across with minimal verbiage. And that age-old parental justification–”Because I said so”–sometimes is the only reason needed.

So why do we get so complicated when writing for children? Why do our picture book plots span several weeks and contain characters with large extended families and numerous friends? Why do our magazine articles attempt to cram a subject’s entire life into 800 words? Kids are masters of cutting through the fog and getting right to the point. Here are some ways we can learn from our audience:

Eliminate adjectives and adverbs. If your nouns and verbs are strong, you won’t need to add extra words to describe them. He trudged up the hill says the same thing as He walked slowly and steadily up the hill, placing his feet heavily with each step, only more succinctly. Instead of describing a house as huge, grand, or enormous, let your character do it with one word: Jason gazed at Grandma’s house. “It’s a castle,” he thought. A single, well-chosen noun draws a picture in your reader’s mind better than several general adjectives.

Write your plot direction in one sentence. In our Children’s Authors’ Bootcamp workshops, Linda Arms White and I teach writing a story line as a tool for plotting (This a story about __________, who wants more than anything to ________, but can’t because ____________.) This story line identifies the main character, his/her greatest goal, and what’s standing in the way of the character achieving that goal. Regardless of the length of your story, the age group, or whether you have subplots and chapters, the story line works to keep the action of your plot on track. The key: Keep it to one sentence (there’s no wiggle room on this one).

What if you’re not writing about your character achieving his greatest goal, or its flip side, your character avoiding facing his greatest fear? A plot about something your character sort of wants isn’t good enough. A conflict involving a minor annoyance isn’t as compelling as a life- changing event. Maybe your character is up against so many obstacles that the reader can’t figure out which one is the most important. As the author, you need to boil your story down to the one aspect of your character’s life that’s going to take center stage for the duration of the book. Remember, you’re not writing about your character’s entire existence, just the period of time encapsulated in your story. One goal shines above the rest. All subplots and secondary characters serve as stepping stones toward that goal. Some lead your character in the right direction, some take detours, but all ultimately end up in the same place.

Give your reader only the information he needs right now. Don’t throw in details about a character unless it’s directly related to the current action of the story. This often happens with secondary characters, who suddenly develop a phobia or acquire an annoying sibling in the middle of a scene. Such dangling attributes feel contrived and only raise distracting questions in the reader’s mind. The same goes for a character’s life before the story began. We generally don’t need to know the past of every person who appears in the book. Reveal as much information as the reader must have to understand what’s happening at each point of the plot, and cut the rest.

Use the “need-to-know” philosophy with query letters. When composing a query letter or cover letter to an editor, include only the information an editor needs to judge whether he or she may be interested in reading your manuscript. Your motivation for writing the story doesn’t matter; your ability to summarize the plot in a few sentences does. Your experience as a parent or grandparent doesn’t guarantee you’ll write a strong article; your adherence to the magazine’s word limit shows you’ve done your research. Editors are busy people who love short letters with lots of white space. Respect the simplicity of presenting your work with minimal buildup and letting your manuscript speak for itself.

Above all, keep your message clear and age-appropriate. A picture book about poverty is too broad and abstract for a six-year-old to understand, but a story about a child who is embarrassed because she gets free lunch at school is more specific. Whatever age you’re writing for, use one well- defined character to represent the bigger issue. Smaller, intimate stories are more relevant to the reader. Nonfiction that shows the reader how the topic relates to his life, or focuses on one aspect of a subject, makes a greater impact. And remember, if you want your manuscript to sell, start with a KISS.

Interested in learning how to write a book and send it to children’s book publishers? Come on over to The CBI Clubhouse for audios, videos, insider writing tips and much, much more!

Having problems viewing the video?  Try these links:

http://www.5min.com/Video/Writing-Picture-Books—How-to-Get-Started-188470615

http://www.viddler.com/explore/cbiclubhouse/videos/44/

http://www.blip.tv/file/2660410

Interested in learning how to write a book and send it to children’s book publishers? Come on over to The CBI Clubhouse for audios, videos, insider writing tips and much, much more!

Unlike their parents, when kids look for advice they don’t usually turn to Oprah. Most kids get everyday, self- improvement type information from children’s magazines. If you’re brimming with ideas for articles on how to teach kids to help themselves or develop new skills, here are some tips:

* Let the audience and age group guide your topic. Each magazine has a different focus–some are health-related, others might concentrate on the activities of a specific organization. Make sure your advice fits with the magazine’s editorial slant. Also, pay attention to the age of the targeted audience. An article on why spreading gossip is a bad thing is relevant to teen and preteen readers. A piece about being a responsible pet owner could appeal to any age group, depending on how it’s written. So check out potential markets before you sit down to write.

* Don’t preach. You’re giving advice, so it’s tempting to lecture or preach to the reader. Don’t. You’ll lose your audience faster than you can say Dr. Phil. Instead, acknowledge what your readers face in their lives and let them know you’re on their side. “The hard truth is, sharing DNA with your siblings is no guarantee that you’re always going to like each other,” is a better approach to an article about resolving sibling rivalry than, “Brothers and sisters are supposed to love each other. Fighting just drives your parents crazy. Let it go!”

* Don’t try to sound “hip.” Use a normal conversational tone when writing advice for kids, as if you’re speaking to agroup of them in person. Don’t throw in slang or pop references unless they routinely roll off your tongue. On the other hand, opening your article with an anecdote, unusual statement, or humorous question can be an attention- grabber. Just make sure those anecdotes are about other kids, and don’t begin with, “When I was your age….”

* Talk directly to the reader. This is one of those rare situations where the second person point of view works. Address the readers directly (The first time you walk into a new school, you may feel nervous. You might even think everyone’s looking at you. Don’t worry–all new students feel this way.) Put the readers right into the article so they can see how your advice can be useful in their lives.

* When possible, combine the advice with a “how-to” approach. After explaining to the readers how to make an improvement in their lives, show them. Either as part of the article or as a separate sidebar, give how-to, step-by-step instructions that can be seen at a glance. For example, if you’re writing a piece for teens on being financially responsible, you can include a how-to sidebar on finding a summer job, complete with tips for filling out applications and doing interviews.

Use other self-help and advice articles in your targeted magazine markets as templates for how you should write your article. Pay attention to style, length, and whether the information is presented in small bites or large chunks. Then unleash your best advice, and one day you too may be on Oprah!

Interested in learning how to write a book and send it to children’s book publishers? Come on over to The CBI Clubhouse for audios, videos, insider writing tips and much, much more!

Mysteries have always been popular with middle grade readers. They are typically fast-paced stories that build self-confidence by permitting the reader to solve the crime. Simple mysteries for this age group follow a clear formula in which the author lays out clues for the reader in a predictable fashion, using escapes, setbacks and coincidence. The Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books fall into this category.

As readers become skilled at solving mysteries, they reach for books that require careful scrutiny to discern clues. Goody Hall by Natalie Babbitt and Mystery of Drear House by Virginia Hamilton and are good examples. Here are some tips to keep in mind if you choose to write mysteries for children.

* Unlike other types of children’s books, the child protagonist in a mystery does not go through major character development during the story. His or her character must be strong at the start of the book, and have qualities the reader will identify with or admire. However, one of the protagonist’s character traits (a photographic memory, for example) can be used to solve the mystery, as long as the readers know about it.

* Another difference between mysteries and other types of fiction is that in mysteries there is little or no underlying theme to the story (such as loneliness, peer pressure, etc.). The plot drives the story, and the conflict and tension is derived from what happens to the main characters from without, rather than what’s going on inside themselves.

* The child in the story need to be as smart, or smarter, than the grounups. Adults can help in certain situations in order to make the story believable, but the child must uncover the major clues and solve the case.

* The clues to the crime, as well as the crime itself, must be accessible to children in real life in order for the story to be realistic. This also helps the reader solve the mystery. A child would not know, for example, how someone could alter the brakes on a car, but he or she is most likely aware of how this was done to a bicycle.

* The reader needs access to all the clues available to the protagonist. It’s not fair for the author to withhold information.

* It helps if the author rehashes the entire crime and rounds up all the clues at the end of the story. A common method is using the protagonist to summarize the crime to another character just before solving the case. This will remind readers of the clues, and give them a better chance of coming up with the solution on their own.

Laura Backes is the publisher of Children’s Book Insider, the Newsletter for Children’s Writers. For more information about how to write children’s books, including free articles, market tips, insider secrets and much more, visit Children’s Book Insider’s home on the web at http://write4kids.com and the CBI Clubhouse at http://cbiclubhouse.com

This video explores some cool alternative methods of telling a story. If you’re struggling to add some flair to your writing, check these tips out!

If you can’t view this video properly, you can also find it here: 5min graspr Viddler blip.tv Veoh DailyMotion Sclipo YouTube

Feel free to share this video or embed on your site or blog!

Interested in learning how to write a book and send it to children’s book publishers? Come on over to The CBI Clubhouse for audios, videos, insider writing tips and much, much more!

A while back, I took up karate. It’s a wonderful workout, but the biggest reason I train is I want to be a formidable senior citizen. If someone tries to grab my purse or deny my senior discount at Denny’s, I’ll be able to answer with a quick roundhouse kick to the solar plexus. By laying the foundation now, I’ll be a badass when I’m 65.

But the neatest thing about taking up karate when you’re a woman in her mid-40’s is that people don’t automatically expect it. If you’re just a casual acquaintance, you won’t know I’m working toward my black belt. And by the time I’m collecting Social Security, the possibility won’t even cross your mind. Unless you try to steal my purse.

In life most people become more complex as we get to know them. This should also be true for characters in children’s books. At a conference I recently attended, Lyron Bennett, editor for Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, called it “the slow reveal”. It means investing your characters with enough varied qualities that some can be withheld until called for in the plot.

The slow reveal is particularly important when writing a series. If J.K. Rowling had allowed Harry Potter to reach his full power as a wizard in Book 1, would fans have waited nine years and six more books to discover if he finally defeated you-know-who? But equally important is planting the seeds early on for who you want your character to become. From the beginning, readers saw Harry’s potential, and Rowling allowed greatness to surface in Harry when it was least expected. Those qualities expanded along with Harry as the series unfolded.

You don’t want to reveal everything at once in stand-alone books either. Picture books and easy readers, with their lower word counts and straightforward plots, do best with characters who have one or two surprises up their sleeve. In Peggy Parish’s classic easy reader Amelia Bedelia, the child sees that Amelia is doing a poor job on her first day as a housekeeper because she can’t understand the list her employer left her. But even before Amelia begins on the list, she whips up a lemon merengue pie. What the reader doesn’t know is that Amelia makes the most delicious pies anywhere, which eventually saves her job at the end of the book.

Doling out your protagonist’s strengths and weaknesses keeps the tension taut in a novel. In Gary Paulsen’s timeless Hatchet (ages 11-14), Brian, a city kid, is stranded in the Canadian wilderness after the his bush plane crashes, killing the pilot. Neither Brian nor the reader know if he’s got what it takes to survive on his own. Can he figure out how to start a fire? Yes, quite by accident. Can he fish? Eventually. Kill and cook a bird? How about live through a moose attack or weather a tornado? Brian evolves from reacting to his predicament and stumbling upon solutions to thoughtfully taking control of his situation. But nothing Brian does is out of character. Though he must teach himself to live in the wild, he draws upon bits of information he learned from watching TV or at school, and reserves of strength that were in him all along.

Even if you’re writing a single title, make your children’s book characters complex enough to carry on for several books, just in case. Fans loved Brian so much that Paulsen was persuaded to reprise the character in several other wilderness adventures. Picture book series (such as Mo Willem’s Pigeon books) or easy reader series like Amelia Bedelia typically grow because the protagonist’s quirks are open-ended and funny enough that readers don’t mind exploring them over and over in different circumstances.

The slow reveal works particularly well in mysteries. In this genre, the readers slowly get to know the victim (perhaps an honor student who is discovered to be running an Internet business selling test answers), and the villain (who may seem like a nice guy at the beginning of the book). Or, how about a first person narrator in any genre who appears normal and likable early on, but becomes less and less reliable as the story unfolds? Read Robert Cormier’s outstanding young adult I Am the Cheese for a superb example of a shifting first person reality. If you prefer a broader perspective, try Avi’s Nothing But the Truth: A Documentary Novel for ages 11-14, which looks at one incident from several viewpoints, gradually separating fact from fiction. So when you first breath life into your characters, don’t stop too soon. Add layers that can be exposed later on. These surprises will keep readers , whether you’re writing about a boy wizard, a demanding pigeon, or a ninja grandma.

Laura Backes is the publisher of Children’s Book Insider, the Newsletter for Children’s Writers. For more information about how to write children’s books, including free articles, market tips, insider secrets and much more, visit Children’s Book Insider’s home on the web at http://write4kids.com and the CBI Clubhouse at http://cbiclubhouse.com

Suppose you’ve just experienced a divorce and lost custody of your kids. Or a loved one has recently died of cancer. Or you struggled in school as a child because you have dyslexia.

Many writers transform tough periods in their lives into books for children, hoping to help young readers through similar painful experiences. Here are some tips to think about when creating and selling books based on real-life events:

Remember that you’re crafting a children’s book, not a personal essay intended to relieve your soul from a painful memory. Kids want to read about how they feel. Many writers create a young character and tell the story through that character’s eyes. Don’t write in first person if the “I” is you, the adult author. Instead of describing how bad you feel that your kids no longer live with you, show how a five-year-old character feels about only getting to see Daddy every other weekend.

Books for younger children (up to age eight) centering around a personal crisis are generally most effective if the author uses a fictional vehicle for imparting the information. If you want to stick closer to nonfiction, write a book that focuses on the child in the center of the event, and is told in a narrative format with a beginning, middle and end. Older children can deal with more traditional self-help books, with each chapter concentrating on a specific aspect of the problem. However, interspersing the advice with personal anecdotes from other children who have gone through the same thing will make the information more appealing and relevant to the readers.

Targeting appropriate children’s book publishers with these manuscripts is important. Look in subject index of Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market under “Self Help” and “Special Needs” for publishers. Peruse the children’s nonfiction section of a large bookstore, and read reviews in Publisher’s Weekly, School Library Journal and Horn Book (trade magazines found online and in most libraries) to see which publishers do similar types of books. Check out websites for editorial guidelines (if you can’t find them, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the children’s editorial department requesting guidelines before you write and submit your manuscript). You can also look at books written for parents to help their children cope with an illness, loss or divorce, and query the publisher asking if they’d like to publish a children’s book on the same topic.

Though many mainstream publishers are interested in books that deal with special issues, some topics have too narrow an audience for a large house to market the book successfully. In this case, many authors have elected to self-publish. If you get several personal rejection letters from editors who praise the book but say the audience isn’t wide enough, you may consider publishing it yourself. But self-publishing should be approached cautiously; color illustrations are essential for picture books, making them very expensive to produce. And you must be prepared to devote at least a year of your life to selling and distributing your book. Most self-published books are sold primarily online or through direct mail. Can you purchase mailing lists of parents with children who could benefit from your book? Stories on adoption, specific childhood illnesses, or those that might fit in a pediatrician’s waiting room or hospital gift shop are examples of books with a very clearly defined audience.

Laura Backes is the Publisher of Children’s Book Insider, the Newsletter for Children’s Book Writers. Want to learn how to become a successful children’s book author? Come hang with the Fightin’ Bookworms at http://cbiclubhouse.com Whether is writing picture books, chapter books, young adult novels, finding children’s book publishers — or anything else — you’ll find all the answers at the CBI Clubhouse!

You’ve got a children’s book idea and you’re eager to write that manuscript.  But is your idea good enough to invest your time & effort?  Here’s how to tell!

If the video is not viewable, you can see it at YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, Veoh, Sclipo, Viddler, 5min and Graspr

Interested in learning how to write a book and send it to children’s book publishers? Come on over to The CBI Clubhouse for audios, videos, insider writing tips and much, much more!

The market for getting a children’s book published is very competitive. In order to make your manuscript rise above the rest, you not only need an enticing story and vivid characters, but your prose must be solid and fresh. Write exactly what you mean, but write it differently from everyone else. Sound impossible? It’s not, if you know what to look for.

The following are words which, if used in excess, will cause your writing to lifeless. While these words can’t be eliminated entirely, often they can be replaced with more creative choices. In children’s book writing, every word counts, so let’s see how we can make the most of every one we use.

* Quantifiers

Really, very, all, big, little, many, some and “a lot” are used too often and rarely add much to a sentence. The key with descriptions is to find the precise word or phrase that will paint a picture in your reader’s mind. “Uncle Bill was very tall” does not give the reader any useful information. But if you offer a point of reference, the reader can visualize Uncle Bill’s height: “Uncle Bill was so tall that when Jessie stood on a chair she could barely see his whiskers.” This not only tells the reader exactly how tall Uncle Bill was, but it also mentions another physical element–his whiskers– which makes him more interesting.

Sometimes removing the quantifier will make the sentence more powerful. “Sara stood at the bus stop. She was very cold.” The word very is not necessary and delays the reader from getting to the essence of the sentence, which is that Sara is cold.

*Telling Instead of Showing

“Like”, “as if” and “seemed” can make writing sound passive instead of active. “Tom picked up the puppy, who seemed as if she was afraid.” This is lazy writing, because the author relies on the reader to fill in what “afraid” means. “The puppy was curled up in a corner of the sofa. When Tom picked her up, she let out a soft whimper. He could feel her shaking as he held her close to his chest.” By giving concrete details, the author shows the reader exactly how this puppy acts when she is afraid.

One word many authors rely too heavily upon is “felt”. How a character feels should be clear from the surrounding text and dialogue. If the author has to tell the reader that Max feels happy, then the rest of the text is not working as hard as it should be. Show how Max is happy (perhaps he’s turning cartwheels on his way home from school), and let the reader draw his own conclusions.

Laura Backes is the Publisher of Children’s Book Insider, the Newsletter for Children’s Book Writers. Want to learn how to become a successful children’s book author? Come hang with the Fightin’ Bookworms at http://cbiclubhouse.com. Whether is writing picture books, chapter books, young adult novels, finding children’s book publishers — or anything else — you’ll find all the answers at the CBI Clubhouse!

Reference librarian Lisa R. Bartle has created a resource of immeasurable usefulness to children’s book writers—and anyone else who cares about literature for kids.

The Database of Award-Winning Children’s Literature offers over 4,000 records from 50 major children’s book awards across five English-speaking
countries. Looking for a young adult novel set in the 17th century that’s won an award? A pre-school book with a female, African-American protagonist that’s
been honored? No problem—the database makes such searches easy.

Here’s how this site can help writers: If you’re planning to write a story, visit the database and find honored books that have similar settings, age-group
targets, characters, etc. Then, go to your library or bookstore and examine these
award-wining books closely. You’ll get instant insight into not only what
makes a book well-received, but what makes your particulartype of book a winner.

Go to http://www.dawcl.com and check it out.

And for more information about children’s book writing — including our exclusive writing course, the CBI Challenge — visit the CBI Clubhouse at http://cbiclubhouse.com.