sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

Five Cool Things About Writing for Children

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One of my students at my teaching dayjob asked me recently why I needed a day job if I am a ‘real’ author (as opposed, I guess, to being an unreal one). I explained that , like most authors, I need a day job to supplement my income. She was a bit puzzled by this, and went on to ask why I bother with writing if it doesn’t make me enough money. 
Although I answered her with several reasons, I’ve been thinking about this conversation – and all the wonderful things I love about being an author – and have decided  to kick off a new semi-regular series of posts (semi-regular meaning I’m not sure how often I’ll do it) celebrating the good stuff in my life by talking about the good parts of being an author.
So, here goes – five cool things about being a children’s book author:
1.      1.   Holding a book in your hands with your name on the cover and knowing that you wrote it. You.
2.     2.   Holding that same book and knowing that kids (and maybe adults too) are going to read it – and picturing that happening.
3.     3.  Getting to go into schools, and to festivals, or online venues such as blogs and forums, and talking to kids about your books and the sheer joy of reading and writing.
4.     4.  Getting to do silly things and pretending it’s research for your next book.
5.     5.   Fan mail! Young readers say the nicest things – sometimes through snail mail, sometimes by email, and other times in person. I have had notes scrawled on the back of festival programs, or corners torn from notebooks, which have become prized possessions.
These are not the only five cool things about what I do – and not even necessarily the top five things, but they are the first five things that came to me when I started to write.
I’ll be using the five cool things format again to talk about different topics. Stay tuned! In the meantime, I’d love to hear what YOU think is cool about writing for children.

Sophie Masson on Writing for Children

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Look at this – two blog posts in as many days!  I feel compelled to pop in this morning and share this link. Sophie Masson, wonderful Australian children’s and YA author, has written a brilliant blog post at Writer Unboxed in response to British author  Martin Amis’s somewhat controversial statement that :  ‘I’d need to have a brain injury before I write for children’

I won’t rehash here what Sophie has said there – go check it out for yourself.

Guest Article: Creating Believable Characters in Children’s Books, by Robyn Opies

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Creating Believable Characters in Children’s Books
by Robyn Opie

If you’ve read my previous articles on writing for children you’ll be aware that I’ve defined children’s books as books that feature a child as the main character and the target audience is children.

So, let’s take a look at children as characters.

In picture books, no description of the characters is necessary. Picture books are highly visual and therefore all characters are obvious from the illustrations. When writing picture books, you have a limited number of words to work with (less than 1,000) and you can’t afford to waste words on unnecessary description.

The same can be said of easy readers and chapter books. These books still contain plenty of illustrations and a limited word count. Description should be restricted to what is essential to the plot.

For example, if you’re writing about a child who is bothered by their appearance – wearing glasses or being too small – then a limited amount of description is necessary.

A general guideline when writing these shorter books for young children is to only include what is essential for the story to make sense.

To make your character seem real to the reader you must think of him or her as a real person. People are around us every day. It’s useful to take bits and pieces from the people we know to create our characters. Be careful to always mix and match. Never use an entire person in a novel. That person may not appreciate it.

When writing for children – or any type of fiction – it’s best to avoid stereotypes. They are boring and unimaginative. They are an example of lazy writing. Be creative.

A character comes alive through their actions and dialogue. Actions, in particular, will show a character’s personality. What they do and how they react largely depends on their personality, background and experience.

For example, a child who has been bitten by a dog will react differently when confronted by a strange dog than a child who has never experienced this trauma.

Believable characters always act consistently.

For example, in my book Working Like a Dog, Lucia wants new rollerblades. Her parents won’t buy them for her. She must save the money herself or go without. So Lucia decides to start a dog-walking service to earn money for new rollerblades. Later in the story Lucia loses two of the dogs. She worries about the dogs and spends a lot of time searching for them.

The action in this story shows Lucia’s character. She’s a likeable responsible young lady. She is prepared to earn the money to buy new rollerblades. She could have stolen the money or rollerblades. She could have bullied other children for their lunch money. She could have nagged her grandmother into giving her money or rollerblades.

When she loses the dogs, she could have left them to find their own way home. She could have lied to the owners about losing them.

Lucia is responsible when she decides to earn money to buy her own rollerblades. When she loses the dogs she is responsible and searches for them until she finds them.

Lucia acts consistently and her behaviour is believable.

Imagine if Lucia decided to lie to the dog owners about knowing what happened to their precious pooches. She could say that the dogs were missing when she went to walk them. This element of the plot would probably be hard to swallow considering what we already know about Lucia. She would suddenly seem unbelievable.

It is essential to know what your character wants – their motivation. And why they want it. Your character’s goal must be something that readers can relate to and care about.

Your readers must care about your character and be interested in their plight. Otherwise there is a good chance they’ll put your book down and never return to it.

You, the writer, must care about your character. If you don’t care about him or her then you can’t expect your readers to care either. To care about your character you need to know him or her well.

Sometimes writers use a habit or habits in an attempt to make a character appear real. Habits can take the form of action and dialogue. Maybe a character chews their nails or adds the word “like” to the beginning of too many sentences or wears a particular type of clothing.

Be careful when giving your characters habits. Too many habits can distract the reader from your story and become an annoyance.

When writing for children, characters should be kept to a minimum. Too many characters can confuse our young readers.

As children’s books become longer and your audience older, there is more room for character development. But it is important to remember that every word in your children’s book should be essential to the plot.

© Copyright Robyn Opie. All Rights Reserved.

Guest Article: How to Find a Publisher

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You’ve written your book, but now where do you send it? Robyn Opie’s article is full of good advice.

How to Find a Publisher
by Robyn Opie

I frequently receive emails from people writing for children, who ask me to recommend a publisher or publishers. It seems like a simple question.

Ah, if only life were so simple

The problem with most of these emails is that the author neglects to include pertinent details:

a) What they’ve written – novel, article, short story etc

b) The genre – horror, romance, thriller etc

c) Fiction or non-fiction

d) Length

e) And in the case of children’s fiction, whether it’s a picture book, easy reader, chapter book etc

f) Where the author lives

But, even with these details, I’m not in a position to recommend publishers.

I provide FREE information on my wesbite to help people writing for children. I provide FREE advice on how to get your children’s book or books published. So why don’t I recommend publishers?

Simply put, because the author of a book is the best person to find a publisher.

The author of a book knows that book better than anyone.

With little knowledge of the book, I can only guess about suitable publishers.

What if I guess wrongly? After all, I really don’t know anything about the book in question. I could be giving you bad advice. And, trust me when I say, the last thing I want to do is give you bad advice.

I could be wasting your time. I could be costing you money.

So if I recommend publishers to you then I’m not really being fair to you. I’m not necessarily giving you and your book the best chance in the market place.

Only you can do that, or a good agent if you have one.

Now this doesn’t mean that I want you to send me your manuscripts to read so I can learn more about your children’s story. It doesn’t mean that I want you to send me a synopsis of your novel.

It means that you, as the writer and manager of your career, are in the best position to find a suitable publisher. You know your children’s book. You know what you want from a publisher and your career. You know what matters to you.

What I can do, though, is give you advice on how to find a publisher or publishers.

So here’s some more FREE advice to help you with your writing career.

1) Write your book.

When you’re starting out in your career of writing for children, publishers want to see a finished product, or at least part of a finished product. They want to know that you’re capable of writing the whole novel. So before you approach a publisher or, even research the market, write your children’s novel.

2) Research the market.

First you need to know what sort of book you’ve written. Who is your reader? Males? Females? Both? What is the age of your audience? Is your book genre fiction? What genre? What about the length?

Visit local bookstores and look for children’s books similar to your own in length and genre. You’ll find the publisher’s information easily, both on the cover and inside the book. Write down a list of the publishers you find that might be interested in work similar to your own.

3) Research the publishers.

I own a copy of The Australian Writer’s Marketplace. You can buy Writer’s Marketplace reference books for other countries as well, including the US and UK. You’ll find details of many publishers in this reference resource. These details include their address, phone number, email address, website and submission requirements.

The Internet has made finding publishers a much easier task. If a publisher has a website, and most of them do, then visit the website. Research what they are publishing. And look for submission information. Firstly, do they accept unsolicited manuscripts? Your manuscript is unsolicited if a publisher or editor hasn’t requested to read it. In other words, your manuscript is unsolicited if you’re sending it to a publisher without their prior knowledge.

A lot of publishers include submission guidelines on their websites, which can be downloaded with a minimum of fuss. Always read a publisher’s guidelines and always follow their instructions. Give your manuscript the best chance. If guidelines aren’t readily available on a publisher’s website, then send them a polite and professional email asking for a copy of their guidelines.

The reason you conduct research on publishers before you submit a manuscript is to save you time and money. There’s no point sending your horror novel to a publisher that only publishes romance novels. There’s no point sending your children’s picture book to a publisher that doesn’t publish children’s books or picture books. There’s no point sending your unsolicited manuscript to a publisher that doesn’t accept unsolicited manuscripts.

4) Be professional

When you deal with publishers or anyone associated with the publishing industry it pays to always be polite, friendly and professional. Publishers are looking for writers who can produce great novels and conduct themselves professionally. This includes submitting your work in a professional manner. A neatly formatted manuscript, accompanied by a well-written query letter will be more readily accepted than a hand-written, unedited story!

5) Be Realistic

Biggest does not equal best! Almost every writer wants to see his or her own book up there on the New York Times Best Seller lists. But aiming your book at the biggest name publishing house you can locate is not always realistic – nor is it always the best possible publishing home for your precious work. In many cases, a smaller, more specialised publisher might have a better chance of placing your book in front of the right readers for your particular genre.

6) Research again!

Just because you may have found the name of a publisher willing to publish a book similar to your own does not necessarily mean they are still accepting submissions! Keep a close eye on websites that list publishers actively seeking manuscripts. Some of these even list publishers who are no longer accepting submissions, so you’ll at least have some idea of where NOT to send your work.

Here are some links to help you find a publisher’s website:

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozlit/austpub.html
http://www.publishers.asn.au/links.cfm?doc_id=35
http://www.publishers.ca/CNM_Index.wws
http://www.lights.com/publisher/alphabetic.html
http://www.publishers.org/member/members.cfm
http://www.ukwebstart.com/listbookpubs.html
http://www.booktrust.org.uk/publishers/pubindex.htm

Naturally there are many more websites on publishers that you can find for yourself by searching the Internet.

You are in the driver’s seat of your writing career. Take control and target your submissions to the best of your ability. And that means researching the market and researching publishers.

© Copyright Robyn Opie. All Rights Reserved.

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