by Pat Marcello
August 1997
So, you want to write for children? You really like kids, and still have fond
memories of books you read as a child.
And it's easier than writing books for adults, right? Au
contraire, mon ami!
The world of children's writing isn't as
simple as talking animals or cute fairy tales.
In fact, before you write anything for children, you must first know
your audience. Extreme differences exist between writing for pre-schoolers and
writing for pre-teens. Here is an idea
of how different each age group can be:
Pre-schoolers are like brand new
notebooks. They are blank pages,
waiting to be filled with information.
Anything that interests them, even the simplest things, are amazing to
them. You could write a 25 word story
about a butterfly, a flower or a toy, and you might have a hit.
Yet with these early readers, adults do all
the reading to the little ones. They
are the people who are choosing and buying these books, too. These adults must not only like the books
themselves,
but they must have evidence that their
children like the books, too.
Children should be thrilled by what they hear,
and will probably make noises or seemingly interminable comments, while the
story is being read to them. They will
ask questions, and they will ask for that book to be read over and over and
over and over again.
For this reason, pre-school materials
should be kept simple, not only in content, but in style. Sentences must be short, but even with books
for the youngest children, the tone should never be
condescending. Here is how "picture books" break down for each age
group:
· Baby
books may have only one word to a page.
But this is a tough market. Many
of these are prepared in-house by the publishers themselves.
· Toddler
books require short sentences.
Vocabulary should include words that two and three-year-olds can understand
and repeat.
· Four
and five year olds want words they can pick out visually, allowing them to
begin the process of learning to read.
When writing picture books, sensory detail
is highly important. Make sure
characters not only see and hear, but taste, smell and feel, as well. Also, use words that can be dramatized by
the reader, like snap, tweet, grrr, or crunch, for example.
Younger children enjoy and remain
interested in readers who use lots of expression. Writers must give them something to express. Read your stories aloud to see if they work
well in the telling, and make sure they have a happy ending.
Colorful pictures that evoke emotions are
also important to pre-schoolers. If you
have some artistic talent, you may eventually want to illustrate your own
work.
Yet, unless you are a professional artist,
it's best not to submit illustrations with your manuscript. Artists are normally hired by the publisher
because they consider the illustrations in picture books so important. In fact, there is a consensus among
publishers of picture books that illustrations do half the work.
Therefore, the most important thing to keep
in mind when writing is visualization.
Make sure that your material lends itself to drawings or pictures, and
consider the format.
The standard length is 32 pages, although
it may be as short as 16 pages or as long as 64 pages, with word counts as low
as 25 words or as high as 1,500.
To make sure your story fits, it is helpful
to make a dummy copy. This will help
you to see if your story will work in words and
pictures.
A very detailed example of this is in
Barbara Seuling's book "How to Write
a Children's Book and Get It Published" and if you are interested in
writing picture books, I encourage you to read it.
Another consideration when writing for this
age group is their limited attention span.
A good rule of thumb for determining how long your story should be is to
take the age of your intended
audience and then add one minute.
For instance, if you have decided that your
book is to be for four-year-old children, write a story that can be read aloud
in five minutes.
But don't think that all subjects will
interest "pre-schoolers" in general.
The two-year-old may be interested in a story about a new bird flying
into the backyard.
Yet, the six-year-old needs a bit more,
like a mystery story that is as simple as learning Mom's secret cookie
ingredient.
Children in the 6-8
year-old group have a variety of skills.
Some have already learned to read, some are learning and some still want
to be read to. Here is how the market
breaks down for the primary graders:
Picture stories
Although children in this age group still
like picture books, they like them to be much longer. These books are still being read to the children by adults, and
twenty minutes is about the right length
of time for a story to be read aloud.
The story should move with a fast-paced
rhythm, and a lot of dialogue is good.
In fact, some editors like to see at least 50%.
But although dialogue has gained greater
importance, illustrations become less important because the story should be
carried by the text.
Known sometimes as "picture
stories", these works should have plenty of action. The sentence lengths can be longer, but
short enough to be comfortable for reading aloud.
Vocabulary should be simple enough to be
understood by the child, but can be more difficult than they would be able to
read themselves.
Children in this age group have already
begun to learn to read, and some of them will be moving into "Easy Readers
(also known as Easy to Read or Young Readers)".
Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat is a prime example of this type of work. Pictures are still important, but simpleness
of the language is just as important. A
writer of easy readers must choose words that readers can sound out.
Some larger words are okay, as long as the
reader will be able to understand their meaning from the context of the
sentence, or
they are explained before the word is
presented.
For instance, you might write: "The
falcon's long claws at the end of his foot are called talons."
Primary-grade readers still like simple
subjects, but love to garner basic facts from what they read, so they can tell
their friends and family what they have learned.
Yet, the plot must be simple and clear, but
lively. Humor, mystery and adventure
are good bets, and they should be fun to read.
Books about children who live in foreign countries, with tidbits
about the culture interwoven, are perfect for easy readers. For instance, let's say that Kaiko, your
main character, lives in Japan.
What does she eat when she comes to
breakfast? How long does she have to go
to school each day? These are details
that readers in this age group can relate to.
Children love to identify with the
characters they are reading about, and always want to feel a bit older than
they actually are. Yet, characters
should always be a bit older than your intended audience. It's been said that kids read up, not down.
Still, keep sentences short (5to 6 words),
but intersperse some longer sentences (not longer than 10 words each) to give
your piece variety and greater readability.
But don't talk down to these children, either. They never want to be thought of as "babies" and
language that is too simplistic will produce that effect. The preferred length of an easy reader is
1,000 to 1, 500 words.
Children of the 6-8 year old age group, who
are a bit more advanced, may be enticed by Chapter Books. These books are short, around 38 pages of
text, and their plots remain simple.
There is plenty of action and dialogue and
short, short chapters. A good example
would be Sarah, Plain and Tall by
Patricia MacLachlan.
If you are writing an Easy Reader, try not
to break up phrases between lines.
Again, the best way to see if a child will be able to read your story
comfortably is to read it aloud.
And if you have access to children, no
matter what age you age writing for, they are always the best judges of what
works and what doesn't.
This age group is reading by themselves,
almost entirely, and they are hungry for entertainment and for
information. They love to collect
things, and they have begun to shift their focus from family to friends.
Characters should be older—12 to 13, and
sentences should be 10 to 20 words long.
Middle-graders like plenty of action and quirky little facts, but hate
too much description.
Their interests rangefrom fantasy to novels
with historical settings, but they still like adventure. There are few illustrations, if any. A length of 20,000 to 40,000 words is
preferred.
This market has been very good for the past
several years. Evidence exists in the
popularity of the Baby-sitters Club
series by Ann M. Martin and the popular Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine. Yet, one of the best examples of quality
middle-grade fiction is The Whipping Boy
by Sid Fleischman.
Don't call these kids "children"
or you're in for trouble. Adolescents want
to be teenagers in the worst way, and they want to read stories with
substance.
In fact, they want to read about life,
death and even age-appropriate sex , which is recognized, but never
explicit. Oh, and they love drama, but it has to be believable
drama.
Although the mechanics of writing for
adolescents isn't much different than writing for middle-graders, "Young
Adult" fiction is more advanced in style and plot.
Main characters should be junior high or
high school age, and although no subject is off limits, good taste is still in
order.
A good example of young adult writing is
S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders.
Teenage readers are looking toward college
or careers, but your audience will rarely exceed fifteen years of age. Still, they want to read about life, and are
trying to learn how to cope with it through
what they read.
Dating, sex, jobs, college, getting an
apartment and similar subjects will interest teen readers. Suspense is popular, as is science-fiction
and romance that is realistic and modern.
Yet, teen readers' abilities are widely
different. Some have difficulty
reading, some have the same skills they had in the middle-grades, and some are
more advanced.
The best thing for writers of teenage
material to do is to study the market they want to write for, and study the
style and subject matter of different
publications that meet their interest.
Along with subject matter, tone is the most
important criteria by which to gear teenage writing. Never talk down to teenagers, either. Many of them have already advanced to adult material, but even if they haven't, they want to be
considered "adults".
Hi-Lo books are for older readers
(intermediate grades through high school) who need to improve their reading
skills.
So that they may remain interested in their
reading material, Hi-Lo's (meaning high interest/low reading level), the
subject matter will match that of texts for high school and beyond.
You will find action, humor and romance with
quick dialogue and plots that cover only one circumstance. Yet, that problem should be realistic and
contemporary.
The size and shape of a Hi-Lo book is that
of a short novel. It is often
illustrated heavily, but with photographs, rather than drawings.
Hi-Lo books are purchased mainly by
schools. They use a controlled
vocabulary, and are 400 to 1,200 words in length.
You now know why writing for children is so
different than writing for adults—the subject matter, style and format changes
for each stage of the child's reading development.
But how do you figure out which type you
want to write? Read, read, read! Go to
the library. Take out several books in
each segment of the market that interests you.
When you find which type of children's
literature enthralls you, you'll know what to do.
Go back to the library, take out more
picture books or easy readers or young adult novels and read them to really get
a feel for what you're about to do.
After that, you still aren't quite ready.
Find children of the age group you want to
write for and listen to them. Watch how they move. See what interests them. Find out what makes them laugh.
If you have children of your own at the
level you want to write for, it's a start.
Yet, I encourage you to watch someone else's children, too. Go to a park. Ask a school if you might be able to sit-in on a class.
Volunteer at the school cafeteria or in the
playground. Eat at McDonald's and get a
laptop computer, so that you can write everything you see, hear, smell, taste
and feel (In lieu of that, a pen and
paper will do).
Some of my best stuff has been written in a
fast-food restaurant. Try it! You might surprise yourself.
© Pat Marcello, 1997