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If you’ve always wanted to write for children but didn’t know where to start, follow these basic steps and you’ll be putting pen to paper, (or fingers to keyboard), in no time.
1. Know Your Subject
To write for children, it helps to be in touch with your “inner child.” If you can put yourself in their shoes, or remember what it was like to be a child, chances are you will be able to connect to children with your writing. Just remember that children today are much different than when you were younger. They are much more sophisticated than even a few years ago, and catch on to things much more quickly than we did at their age. So, use memories of your childhood emotions, but play them out through characters that are “today’s children.”
2. Read
Whether a published picture book is your goal, or a magazine article, it is very important to see what is out there already. Choose a few favorites and study them closely. Find out what makes them your favorites and strive for those same qualities in your own work. And, you can study the ones that don’t appeal to you, so that you can avoid the mistakes that author made when writing your own stories or books.
3. Learn
Never stop learning. Find out what your weak spots are and fix them. If grammar is your downfall, work on that first. Good grammar is essential to good writing. If, on the other hand, you have more trouble with plotting, dialog, or character development, this may be where you need to start. Read books, take courses, and join a writing group, either in person or online, and soak it all up like a sponge.
4. Write
Remember, no matter what you learn, it is wasted if you never use it. So write, write, write! You will be surprised how much better your writing gets the more you practice. And remember, too, a first draft is just getting ideas down before you lose them. You will fix what you write later, so don’t worry if it doesn’t live up to the published standards you have studied. Even those authors’ work had to begin somewhere.
5. Revise
With your ideas down on paper, you now have something to work with. But, it’s best if you put it away for a few hours or days so that you can distance yourself from it. This helps you to see it more as something published that you would read somewhere else, and helps you to see where it needs work. You can tie up any loose ends in your story, add some clues that make sense of a mystery story, or go back and add that the boy had a dog if his best friend Fido saves his life at the end of your adventure story. With revision, you will see that your work can snap to life, and be something that children will enjoy reading. It doesn’t have to start out brilliant as long as it ends up close to it in the end.
Following these steps won’t necessarily make you an instant award winning author, but they will get you on the right road and before long you will be ready to submit your work for children around the world to enjoy.
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