Writing for Children

NONFICTION DOES NOT MEAN NONFUN

Many new writers connect the word "nonfiction" with horror filled memories of slogging through dull textbooks and trying to memorize all the war dates through history. Or trying to memorize the states and capitals. Or trying to memorize scientific terms for the test. In other words, we remember mostly painful associations with nonfiction as a child. So we assume kids won't want to read our article unless we jolly them into it.

So many beginning writers will do one of the following:

1. Address the reader directly, a lot, in kind of a jolly voice, and often asking questions about the reader’s life to try to draw comparisons with the article’s subject.

2. Mix fiction into the nonfiction much like you'd mix tasty syrup into icky medicine to force it past the lips of a cranky child. Since we assume fiction is tasty and nonfiction is icky, we're sure we need some fiction to make the nonfiction fun.

And yet, those are two things editors hate to see. You could easily get a rejection over that. Why?

Listen to the episode and find out!

Read more in our show notes plus get clickable links at http://writingforchildren.com/014

Don’t forget to leave your questions!

The faculty of the Institute of Children’s Literature answers the podcast questions. You can leave your question at http://www.speakpipe.com/WFC. If it’s featured on the show, you’ll receive an awesome embroidered ICL all cotton baseball cap

What’s Working in Your Manuscript, What’s Not, and How to Fix It:
Go to https://www.instituteforwriters.com/critique-service/

WHERE DID YOU GET THAT INFORMATION?

If you do much nonfiction writing, you’ll hear a lot about sources. How good are your sources? Do you have primary sources? Nonfiction is only as good as its sources – meaning, everything in a nonfiction book or article needs the support of a good source. Now, if you happen to be an expert (or in the case of personal experience articles, if you happen to be the person who had the experience) then the need for outside sources lessens a bit, but it may not disappear altogether.

WHEN DO YOU NEED SOURCES?

Anytime you state a fact, you need a source:

• In Iceland, steam from volcanoes heats homes.
• In an annular eclipse, a ring-shaped part of the Sun remains visible.
• Benjamin Franklin once worked out a magic square of sixteen x sixteen.

Read more in our show notes plus get clickable links at http://writingforchildren.com/013

Don’t forget to leave your questions!

The faculty of the Institute of Children’s Literature answers the podcast questions. You can leave your question at http://www.speakpipe.com/WFC. If it’s featured on the show, you’ll receive an awesome embroidered ICL all cotton baseball cap

What’s Working in Your Manuscript, What’s Not, and How to Fix It:
Go to https://www.instituteforwriters.com/critique-service/

Is This a Picture Book?

Okay, you've written a great story. It's pretty short, under 1000 words (hopefully closer to
500). You like it. Your critique group likes it. It really is good, but is it a picture book? It isn't
enough that it be good or even great, a picture book is a particular kind of writing. So, ask
yourself some questions:

1. Does your story sing? Whether the story rhymes or not (and not is usually better), your
prose needs to sing. Read it aloud, or better yet, try humming the story to yourself. Does it
have a flowing, singing rhythm? Not sing-song, but melodious. Picture book stories require a
special attention to the sound because if they succeed, they will be read again and again.

For 6 more valuable tips on evaluating your story, listen to the show!

Listener Question of the Week:

Jennifer asks:

How do you know if the book you're writing is targeted at the right age group?

Two episodes you might like:

Episode 003 - Creating Characters for Children's Magazines

Episode 005 - Picture Books 101

Will you please review our podcast … It really makes a huge difference in iTunes. Thank you!  Click here

Magazine Nonfiction that Grabs Kids

Too many of the children's nonfiction articles that editors receive each day lack a connection with kids. We hear and read over and over that editors are looking for nonfiction, but many times that isn't translating into sales for individual writers because of these missed connections. Here are some tips to help stop those missed connections:

1. Don't Parent. Do Entertain and Inform.
Kids don't read nonfiction to replace parental involvement. They read nonfiction because it's interesting, lively, fun and includes things they want. Too many writers are crafting nonfiction to fix a perceived flaw in today's kids and editors know kids won't read lectures, so editors don't buy them.

2. Don't skim. Do focus.
The number one flaw in nonfiction that editors receive is the lack of focus; when you try to say everything about frogs, you end up with an article that skims the subject and is likely to contain a great deal of information the target audience already knows. But when you focus on one aspect of the subject, that frogs can survive freezing solid and what scientists are learning from that, then you can really dig in and give fascinating details kids don't know.

3. Write for the kid in you, but know about the kids out there.
Editors complain that not enough writers are writing for today's kid. You need to remember this is a kid living in a technologically rich world. This is a kid who worries about the environment, is probably really informed about recycling, and is maybe following the news on self-driving cars. This could be a kid who never heard of a tomboy, doesn't worry about being one, but does have gay friends. This is a kid whose school probably has "what to do if bad people attack the school" drills. A kid who wants information to help in today's world.

4. Know that one‐size doesn't fit all in magazines.
The only cure for this is getting to know the individual magazines and what they're actually publishing in terms of tone, approach, length, and format. It's time consuming. It can be expensive. It can force you to become creative about seeking out issues in libraries, but it's always worthwhile to know the needs of the consumer (the magazine) before trying to sell your product (the manuscript.) So, please, editors are begging, put away the shotgun for submitting and try using a scope to target instead.

5. Don't write for anyone you can't respect.
Kids don't like to be baby-talked any more than they liked being lectured, so speak to your reader as you would have wanted to be spoken to as a kid. You don't have to be jolly to be lively; strong clear verbs, specific details, and clear crisp writing will win out over hyper-bright cheerleading peppered with exclamation marks!!!

Listener Question of the Week:

Tammy asks:

What’s the best way to have your story reviewed before you submit to an editor?

Three episodes you might like:
Episode 002 - Three Keys To Writing Nonfiction For Children

Episode 003 - Creating Characters for Children's Magazines

Episode 006 - Writing Holiday and Seasonal Material (for magazines)

Will you please review our podcast … It really makes a huge difference in iTunes. Thank you!  Click here

Stories for young children are sometimes written in unusual forms. These could be a great way to ...

You’re probably familiar with the standard plotted story that appears on the magazine page with an illustration (or sometimes two). But there are others, and it’s worthwhile to know them, in case they’re exactly the right form for you.

REBUS

This one is familiar to many (if not most) magazine writers. In a rebus story, concrete nouns are replaced (or illustrated in the line) by small pictures. Thus, if you used the word “tree” in your story, a tiny tree would pop up right in the middle of the sentence and either the printed word “tree” would be in tiny print below it or it would disappear completely. Sometimes there is a kind of “key” in the illustrations bordering the story that reveal what the pictures stand for.

Rebus stories are very short––often 100 words or slightly more. They often have some kind of twist or surprise at the end. They almost always use each concrete noun more than once and limit the number of concrete nouns overall. So, for example, a rebus with a fall theme might show us “tree” three times, “acorn” three times, and “squirrel” four times. They try to avoid nouns that cannot be illustrated, and stick to very simple concrete ideas.

Magazines that use Rebus Stories: Highlights, Ladybug, and Your Big Backyard (their rebus is done in-house, they don’t buy them––but you can see examples there.

Learn more when you listen to the entire episode!

Listener question of the week:

Geraldene asks:

Would today’s fourth grade children be interested in what life was like for kids back in the 1920s and 1930s?

Get the links to the articles below in our downloadable show notes HERE.

How to Write a Rebus

What a great way to get published!

Metafiction - What Is It?

Metafiction is not new, but it’s being used in new ways. This is a great article to learn more about it.

Wordless Spreads in Picture Books

How and why to use them. Awesome article!

Episodes you might like:

Episode 004 - Don't Tell Us A Story

Episode 006 - Holiday and Seasonal Material

Will you please review our podcast … It really makes a huge difference in iTunes. Thank you!  Click here

Stories for very young children tend to come in two flavors: the story with a plot and the story with a purpose. Now, a story with a plot can also have a purpose, but if you don’t have a plot, you better have a purpose. The purpose of a very young child’s story may be to introduce a concept like counting or colors. The purpose may be to introduce the child to a moral or character-building activity like sharing or patience. The purpose may be to introduce the child to a potentially scary activity they will soon face like going to the doctor or starting school. All of these purpose things can also have a plot (and will probably sell far more easily if they do). And if the story has a plot, it probably has a single main character as well.

So let’s think a bit about that main character. Your character needs to be someone the young child can (1) relate to and (2) care about. Your main character may not be the nicest person we know. Children are actually much more forgiving about the flaws of others than we expect. Most kids know that they are not always so nice themselves––especially inside. However your reader needs to relate to the character––the reader needs to find something in the character that feels real.

Listen to the show to learn more!

Listener question of the week:

Claudia asks:

Can a long poem for children, where a character doesn’t really grow, but the story does advance, be a picture book?

Want to ask your own question? Go to speakpipe.com/WFC.

Download the show notes and get the links to the following articles:

The Delicate Art of Character Folding

Advice on character creation in writing for older kids

Humpty Dumpty Submission Guidelines

This group now consists of two magazines: Humpty Dumpty (ages 5-7) and Jack and Jill (ages 6-12)

22 Lessons for Writing Narrative, Expository, and Persuasive Texts.

This is actually a site for teachers, but whoo-boy, is it great for writers to read!

Here's another episode you might like:

EPISODE 007 - The “Write What You Know” Loophole

Why You NEED To Separate From Your Work

Anyone in any area of the arts knows it’s difficult to separate yourself from your work. Your writing feels like an extension of who you are. It hurts to hear anything negative said about a piece you’ve written. As long as you’re writing only for your own enjoyment, and not to be published, feeling totally bonded to each thing you produce is fine. But once you begin looking for publication, it can just kill you. Not only does rejection hurt, but every single step in the process of publication has fresh hurt for writers who cannot see the piece they produced as something other than a shard of their soul.

Go to the show notes HERE to get the links to the article included below.

Listener Question of the Week:

Wendy asks:

How do I handle back matter in a picture book? Is it included it in the word count, should the font be different, and how would I include it––as a separate document or within the story?

You can leave your question at http://www.speakpipe.com/WFC. If it’s featured on the show, you’ll receive the fab embroidered ICL cap.

Maybe It’s Your Punctuation?

This little PDF about using different punctuation marks is well worth printing out and putting up beside your computer.

12 Tips of Creating an Engaging Flawed Hero

Heroes can be tough. We have to be able to connect with them, but no one should be perfect. Here are some great tips to achieve the balance.

If Only My Mom Owned the Publishing Company

Rick Riordan on having connections. (Do you have any?)

Episode 007 has a question about rejection…click here to listen to the answer.

Join us at our webinar!

Click here to register. If you entered the novel contest, it’s free, and if not, it’s basically a $7 lesson from ICL on how to a whole bunch of great stuff every writer should know how to do!

It’s the Writing for Children Podcast, with your host, Katie Davis. Katie’s an author and is the Director of the Institute of Children’s Literature, where, since 1969, aspiring writers have learned to write for children and get published.

Young children do not consider themselves unreasonable. They also don’t consider themselves tiny and adorable. They don’t consider their arms to be tiny, their hands to be tiny or their faces to be tiny. All of those things are adult perspectives and they grow out of adults writing about kids from the viewpoint of adults.

Does that mean you can’t write kid stories from life? Sure you can.

Listen to the show to learn more!

Reminders:

Whoohoo! Congratulations to our two winners of the podcast launch giveaway:

• Laura Ceville
• Julie Thompson

You'll be getting the huge package of writer's courses and products. Thanks to all who entered!

We have our ongoing writing for children contest right now with $1,300 in cash prizes. Every contest is following by an instructional webinar with the faculty from ICL. All the info is on our homepage, at the bottom.

The Institute for Writers market guides are available here and if you want your odds of getting published to improve, get either the Book Markets or Magazine Markets for Children’s Writers. Book Markets, for example, has

• over 1,311 (total) entries
• 101 all-new listings (in total)
• ways to find out where the latest literary agents are!

 This week's tips are linked in the downloadable show notes:

Research: A Writer’s Best Friend and A Writer’s Worst Enemy

“I have always considered “Write what you know” one of the most useless pieces of advice a beginning author gets…”

Clean Teen Publishing

Accepts teen and new adult manuscripts. 

Rainbow Rumpus

The magazine for youth with LGBT parents.

Rainbow Rumpus pays $300 per story on publication.

Another episode you might like:

Episode 002 - Three Keys To Writing Nonfiction For Children

Don’t forget to leave your questions:

The faculty of the Institute of Children’s Literature answers the podcast questions.

You can leave your question at http://www.speakpipe.com/WFC.

“My journey began with an ICL course and now I have five traditionally published books (in Christian teen fiction trilogy, middle grade fiction, and marriage nonfiction) and a cheeky little self-published picture book.”

Laura Caron Thomas, ICL graduate (Writing for Children and Teens and Writing Children’s Books)

Really? Now you want to talk about this...at the start of summer?

Whether for Christmas, Independence Day, Fourth of July, Hanukkah, or whatever, magazines are a prime spot to sell your writing for children, but you need to submit it way early! Holidays as a cultural experience are welcome at many magazines. They expand reader horizons. You can also do well with holiday crafts, recipes, and activities. These are especially welcome if they offer more of a season feeling than a tie to a specific holiday. If a treat can be shaped like a Christmas tree or a Chanukah dreidel, you can probably find an interested magazine but if it can be shaped like a snowman, a snowflake, or a snowy tree, you'll have even more takers.

Learn more by listening to this episode.

The tips in the show notes, which you can download at writingforchildren.com/006 include:

Chase’s Calendar of Events -

If you're looking to tie a promotional event to a special month, travel to a music festival halfway around the world, blog about a historical milestone or do a celebrity birthday round-up on your blog, Chase's Calendar of Events is the one resource that has it all.

Goofy Days of the Year -

Get inspiration for new stories, or tie your book into one of these funny holidays.

How to Tie Your Book Into a Holiday -

One creative way to publicize your book is to tie it to a holiday or special event. You'll be able to reach your audience on a more personal level by promotion your book alongside a holiday, theme month, or cause.

Our listener question of the week is from Angelique and she asks, "What are the key differences between writing a story for a magazine and a book? How can we tell if our story is better suited for one or the other?"

Episodes you might like: Episode 002 - Three Keys to Writing Nonfiction for Children

Episode 006 - Magazine Nonfiction That Connects

Picture books are a marriage of two totally different story telling styles. The writer tells a story in words––either prose or verse. The illustrator tells his or her own story in pictures. And the two story styles together bring something deeper and richer than either could do alone. Even though the author and illustrator usually don’t interact, the story is truly something created by both. The book at the end isn’t the author’s book or the illustrator’s book; it belongs to them both.

Listen to the episode for more info!

This week’s links and bonus links:

-Picture Book Summit 2016: The first online picture book conference.

“My pores are oozing with information and inspiration. Many thanks for all the work that went into bringing us such a wonderful conference.”       ––Merry Haugen Bradshaw

-Check out the show notes for Episode 004 which includes a link to the Twitter Picture Book Pitch Fest where you can…wait for it…pitch to agents on Twitter!

-Writing for Young Children Cheat Sheet This week’s listener question is asked by Keri: “How do you get important messages across in a book for children without sounding too preachy?”

Download the show notes at writingforchildren.com/005

Reminders:

CONTEST: We have our ongoing writing for children contest right now with $1,300 in cash prizes. Check it out!

GIVEAWAY: To celebrate the launch of the show we’re having a random drawing for two $918 writers bundles!

QUESTIONS: Don’t forget to leave your questions: The faculty of the Institute of Children’s Literature answers the podcast questions. You can leave your question HERE at speakpipe.com/WFC.