Has anyone here tried writing a children's story? My main interest is fantasy, but I have a two year old daughter who loves books, and I try to encourage her reading as much as possible. I am interested in possibly writing something for her when she gets a bit older, could anyone perhaps point me in the direction of some handy resources to get me started? Thanks
Read children's books. Awesome children's books, and awful children's books. A whole lot of them. And read up on child psychology, not just one theory but a bunch of different theory and see what aspects that interest you.
Whoa what happened? I asked for some advice, went out, came back and half the thread has been deleted lol confused.com
It's better this way, lmao. Going back to my original advice - if you wanna write something for your kids, then I guess they're your best critics. But if I was to offer advice on how to get started/get better so you can look into publishing later, then I'd suggest sending some stuff off and seeing how you go, and what feedback you can get. In the mean time, I'm sure there are some great books on writing for children, which you can probably get cheap on amazon. Also, of course, bedtimes are prime opportunities...write a 500 word story and see if your kids enjoy it, and want to know more. If they do, then chances are other kids will too. Btw, I think this is such a cute idea. I'm so doing this for my kids when I have them.
I tried writing for kids and I'm terrible at it, but I can give some advice based on what I liked and didn't like as a kid. Include lots of adventure and action. Obviously you don't want hardcore violence or anything, but don't dumb it down, either. Don't be afraid to include monsters and stuff. Kids like being scared (the fun kind of scared I mean). When I was little I loved the Goosebumps books and stuff. Also, go with what your kids love. When I was a kid I was obsessed with cats, so I liked stories about cats that went on adventures. Find out what excites your kid and max out on it in the story.
all you need do is check out the current best-selling and award-winning children's books and see how they're written... you don't need to study child psychology to learn how to do this... there are some good websites for children's writers that will have all the advice you need... and make use of amazon's 'look inside this book' title listings, that allow you to read some beginning pages... plus, study the 'text stats' and 'concordance' info you'll find down below the reviews, in many of the listings, to see how to tailor your vocabulary, sentence structure, etc. to the age range you're targeting... besides being a mom of 7, grandma to 19, who's bought books for them since before they were born, and the fact that i run a free books program that keeps most of the kids on the island supplied with books, i also mentor many children's book writers and am currently writing some pb texts for green sugar press, so feel free to email me for help, if you need it... love and hugs, maia maia3maia@hotmail.com
Thanks a lot, this was very helpful. My daughter is still a little young too appreciate anything past lift the flap books with no more than two sentences per page, but she has started trying to say some of the words, particularly in her colours and numbers books. I really hope she enjoys reading and writing as much as I did as a child and still do now, I will e-mail you my first draft =]
I used to teach a children's literature course and there are some wonderful books designed to teach exactly what children's lit is. "A critical guide to children's lit" was a good one and so is "Through the Eyes of A child." These kinds of books give you a good view into the components of solid children's lit. And yes, of course, reading lots of it (which you probably already are!)
When telling a story to young children, there are five key things to remember:- 1) Repetition 2) Non-complex punctuation & sentence structure 3) Repetition 4) Larger-than-life characters 5) ...Repetition.
I have just written my first draft of a children's short chapter book (it's under 50 pages in this first version). It's called "Frances and the Magic Beans" and is sort of a re-telling of "Jack and the Beanstalk". Can we swap stories? =)
