Where to Start When Writing a Children’s Book
- Decide on what you want to write: The first thing you will want to do is to think about what age group you would like to write for. If you want to write a few sentences ( no more than two), or one word per page, this age range would be for infants to three years old. This type of book would be a Board Book. Board Books focus on teaching skills or concepts such as colors, numbers, names of animals, and other basic life skills. If you want to write a book that has both text and illustrations, these are considered for ages three through seven. These types of books are called picture books. These are the types of books I am writing, so my Blog will be geared, of course, towards these. Other types of books are Early Readers for ages five through seven, Chapter Books, which range from seven to nine, and Middle Grades for eight to twelve years of age. These types of books will have fewer and fewer illustrations as the books go from Chapter Books to Middle School Books. Although I had always envisioned becoming an author of adult novels, my experiences from teaching and being a grandmother led me to writing “A Birthday Surprise In Triple Oaks Forest.”
- Research Your Category: Researching the category that you want to write about is important, whether you are familiar with the age group or not. What I mean by this is, if you want to write a Picture Book, for instance, go get some of those types of books from your local library, or spend some time in a bookstore and grab a handful of books. Spend some time looking at the illustrations. Do you like cartoon-type characters? Do you like illustrations that are more “real to life” looking? Do you like more whimsical? Next, READ the book. Is it funny? Sad? What type of “emotion” does it have? Research how they write the plot and the pace of the book. Also, note if the book has some sort of message. Does it rhyme and have a sort of “sing-song” pace? Make sure what you are writing about is current or relevant if it is something you want the children to learn. If it is make-believe, with animals who talk (like my book), make sure it sounds believable. Another thing you will want to do is take notes! I know what you’re thinking. It’s what we all think – those three words – I can remember! Don’t fall for it. There is so much that goes into doing this, you won’t remember! So, just take the notes! It will save you time later. Some notes you will want to take are: what types of illustrations are you drawn to? Do you like hard covers vs. soft covers? When I was writing my book, I immediately knew I wanted a hardcover. I won’t go into it in this Blog, but I will discuss my reasons in another Blog later. But this will be one of the decisions you will need to make. What font do you like? Trust me, it’s important. This is another item for a later discussion. Take notes of how many pages there are. A typical page count for a Picture Book is 32 pages. The word count is usually between 500-1,000 words because in these types of books, the illustrations do most of the storytelling. This little fact was a hard concept for me to grasp at first because, as a teacher, we teach our students when they are writing to be what? If you guessed descriptive, you are correct! In my book, I wanted to describe Grandpa Bear’s gruff face. I wanted to describe how William and Benjamin look. Just repeat after me: the illustrations do most of the storytelling. But this makes sense, right? Because how many three-year-olds can read? They look mostly at the illustrations. Look at the front cover. Look at ALL of the pages in between and look at the back cover. Take notes! What do you like? What don’t you like? Write it down.
- Develop Your Story Ideas & Your Characters: One thing that I have always LOVED to do is research. I know…weird. I was one of those who got excited about having to do a “research” paper when I was in school. We’d pick our topic, the teacher would give us instructions, and then we would be off doing our research on our topic. By now, (at this point in your writing process) you probably have a story in mind. If you do, look at books that are similar. Look at the characters of the books you like. You will want a main character, and then you will want a few others. When developing your characters, make sure that you give them different traits and personalities. In “A Birthday Surprise In Triple Oaks Forest”, Grandpa Bear is portrayed as being big and gruff, although you do see a soft side. Mother Deer is kind and friendly, William and Benjamin are full of energy and ornery. Skully is shy, but friendly; more reserved, and Mrs. Badger is bossy. Having different characters with different personalities makes the book interesting and more engaging. Remember, the traits and personalities are simple and mainly shown through the illustrations, so you don’t need a lot of description. Make a list of characters you would like to use and write some different character traits and personalities next to the character. Make the characters relatable. Next, write down ideas about what story you want to write, and then write out a rough draft. It should be noted that the story should have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Most children’s books also have a lesson or a message. However, you don’t want to come off as “preachy”. Rather, you want it to be subtle, but clear. For instance, in my book, the message is clear that everyone in the forest is accepted, and we have to show kindness to everyone, no matter what. Before doing a rough draft, some people like to make outlines. I prefer writing down every idea and then starting the first rough draft. Yes, I said first rough draft! Trust me, there will be many drafts and revisions. One of my grandchildren asked me, after the Pre-Launch Book Party, how many rough drafts I did. I said it was about five or so! I haven’t heard of any author whose first draft was their one and only. One thing to keep in mind is to write your story, keeping your illustrations in mind. For example, I got a blank artist sketchbook. I used this as my storyboard. This helped because I could actually plan what each page looked like. We will discuss this further in another Blog.
- Revise & Edit: Revise, revise, revise! After you have written your first and second drafts, you will want to read your book out loud. This allows you to “hear” the words. You will probably find that you have used the word ‘and’ several times, along with others. Change those sentences. Also, watch that you do not start sentences with the same word(s). For instance, using words like he, she, etc., to begin a sentence, after you have just used them in the sentence above it. Watch that you do not use ‘said’ after a quote, every time. Use a variety of different words to make the quote more interesting and to give a visual. For example, if Grandpa Bear does not like something and proclaims he does not like it, at the end of the quote, I could use grumbled. It makes the sentence much more interesting than “he said.” Perhaps investing in a Thesaurus (I prefer hard copy, physical books, as opposed to looking up words on the internet!) or finding a great site would be a good idea, for help. Then, get feedback! Feedback can come from family or friends. And, do not just get feedback from adults. After all, you are writing a children’s book, so get a child’s perspective and feedback. Trust me! They will be willing to help and brutally honest! Pay attention to what they tell you. If you think something is funny, but no one’s laughing at that particular part, change it. Be open to constructive criticism. And, once you finally have the last draft (which, in essence, is your manuscript), you will need someone to edit it. As much as you have had to look at your story and the words on those pages, you are going to miss things. Whether you want to go the traditional way or the self-publishing way, you will still want your manuscript to be “top-notch” before handing it over. I will talk about the different options of publishing in a later Blog. The important thing now, though, is to just start writing!
