Writing for Children

THE VALUE OF A CRITIQUE

Have you ever had a professional critique? Or even listened to someone else get a critique? Having your work read out loud to people who haven’t heard or read it before is a great way to get unstuck. You can go to conferences and get a critique from attending faculty, or get one within your own critique group. If I hadn’t had my work critiqued I never would have grown. Even when there are growing pains, critiques are worth it because you end up in a better place, creatively. But there are a couple of big things to keep in mind.

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AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDREA J. LONEY

Andrea J Loney received the 2014 Lee & Low New Voices Award for her picture book biography Take a Picture of Me, James Van Der Zee!, a Junior Library Guild Fall 2017 selection with a starred Publishers Weekly review and an NAACP Image Award Nomination. We talk about getting unstuck including what do you do when writer's block happens to you, strategies for when you're writing but you don't like anything that's coming out, and tips for handling rejections and what to do when you feel stuck in the submissions process?

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WRITING WHO YOU KNOW

If you interview published authors across all genres, you will be hard pressed to find one who claims his or her characters sprang forth from thin air. More often than not, the fictional players that populate stage, page, cinema and television reflect aspects of the writers’ own personalities, composites of friends and relatives, or are modeled after specific actors, politicians, rock stars, or criminals. The longstanding advice of “write what you know” translates aptly to “write who you know” and what their actions reveal about their character, strengths and flaws, and motivations.

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INGREDIENTS FOR THE PERFECT CHARACTER

Character creation can be approached in many different ways, but overall, most great characters come about as a mixture. Like a particularly tasty casserole, a writer grabs a pinch of this and a dash of that during the creation process. So let's look at some of the most common ingredients in our character casserole.

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

The importance of character development can not be understated. This episode recounts a letter from Move Books editor Eileen Robinson to our Writers' Block members on how to improve our characters, and thereby improve our connection with our readers.

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GREAT CHARACTERS ARE ALL AROUND

One way to find great characters is to look in the world around you. This seems relatively simple but may actually be harder than it sounds.

Why?

Because the key to creating vivid characters is writing them objectively and letting the reader draw their own conclusions.

What does it mean to be objective when writing about your characters? It doesn’t mean you can’t have reactions to, or opinions about, your subject. It does mean showing the reader what you observed in terms of concrete detail, rather than telling what you thought or felt. Yes, we’re back to our good friend, the “show, don’t tell” rule.

Let's get inspired.

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INTERVIEWING THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR

Leslie Connor is the author of several award-winning books for children, including THE TRUTH AS TOLD BY MASON BUTTLE, the 2019 winner of the ALA Schneider Family Book Award, WAITING FOR NORMAL, also a winner of the ALA Schneider Family Book Award, CRUNCH, MISS BRIDIE CHOSE A SHOVEL, and the young adult novels DEAD ON TOWN LINE and THE THINGS YOU KISS GOODBYE. She lives with her family in Connecticut.

We talk about:

-character development. Why it’s so important, how to do it, and when.

-how Leslie’s characters go deeper, and are so fully realized the reader feels like they know that person, leaving them sad to leave these people when done with the book.

-does Leslie think of the story first, or the character or characters?

-does she outline first, either mentally or physically?

-how to keep it straight when you write out of order.

-using verbal tics, like Mason’s “Tell you what…”

-revealing a character's learning disability through his language is a great “show don’t tell” method.
How does she tap into that without overdoing it?

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KEEPING IT SIMPLE

Part of building any story or magazine article is translating what you know and what you’ve researched in usable information for your characters and your readers. In fiction, your character may long to be an astronaut, so you need to be able take that extended process and explain it to your young reader in manageable bits. In nonfiction, it may be taking the technical jargon of how a chocolate factory works and breaking it down into words your audience understands. Inspired by an ICL market guide article written by Devyani Borade, today we are taking complex subjects and keeping them simple.

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GETTING ORGANIZED FOR THE LONG HAUL

You might think the first draft is the first step in your story's life and for some it might be. However, there are steps you can take before you put pen to paper that will help you out on the journey ahead. Today we talk about researching (for nonfiction and fiction!), getting to know your characters through prewriting, and managing your time to get your project over the finish line.

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BUILDING YOUR STORY

Let’s do something a little different today. February is Building Your Story Month at ICL. So, today I’m going to walk you through one of our writing exercises in our Writing for Children and Teens course. Download the show notes at writingforchildren.com/135 to follow along with the photos.

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