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Writing For Children Or Young Adults - Six Golden Rules
I've never been one for categorising, and what you will find is that as many
adult adults read Young Adult books as young adults; but you still need to bear in mind a few things if what you are setting out to write is going to be (effectively) a children's book.1. It's more crowded than a rush hour tube train.
Go into any bookshop with a decent children's section and you'll see. Far more than adult fiction (gosh that sounds a bit naughty doesn't it), children's books are competing with the weight of the past.
You're battling against E Nesbit, Roald Dahl, any of the classics that you remember from your childhood, as well as the latest multi-million selling series (and I don't just mean everyone's favourite wizard boy.) This means that even at submission stage your manuscript really has to stand out. So how can you do this?
2. Tick all the boxes / Don't tick all the boxes.
This is a tricky one. Your MS must have the recognisable elements of a children's book - depending on the genre, good vs. evil, emotional journey, and so on - but it's how you play with these elements that makes it stand out.
On the face of it Harry Potter is extremely derivative (wizard school, mythology, dark lords and so on) - and yet J K Rowling's originality and magic lay in how she mixed up all those things. So, effectively, you must tick all the boxes - but I suppose a useful analogy would be to say, cross all the boxes instead.
3. Don't talk down.
Children like nothing less than being patronised - this is something that even children's editors forget. There is a strange feeling amongst (even grown up) editors that things always need to be explained - ie complex words, or references. But part of the joy of being a child is that you can work it out for yourself.
Obviously the tone and style of your book must be suited to its age group - there's no point calling a woman "kallipygous" in a book aimed at over eights - but avoid a hectoring, professorial and didactic style. Aim for clarity of expression, anchored in the sensual experience of being a child, and you're half way there.
4. Be inventive.
Children like nothing more than strange, silly situations, so play with ideas and characters. Try to be surprising - it's much more fun for a child if the hero wizard turns out to be a slightly spotty adolescent with asthma.
5. Have a plot as hooking as an eagle's claws.
I can't emphasise this enough - remember what it was like to be a child and absolutely, desperately needing to know what happens next. Children are highly attuned to the shape of stories.
A lot of them will say things like "why can't the baddies win sometimes?" as they are so used to seeing the good guys "win" - but really, if they did read a story in which the bad guys won, they wouldn't be very happy. Your plot needs to be like an eagle's claws, with the child being an unsuspecting hare that has been swooped upon.
6. Write what is true.
Ultimately, this is the most important point of all. What you write comes from a very deep place inside your mind, rising up through all the layers of adult experience that have accumulated over the years, crushing it down to make a rich layer of oil that you can tap.
Don't be afraid to use your own memories - children find the world a very bewildering place, outside of their known paths, and half the battle about writing a children's book is making the safe, known world seem strange and unknown.
Children's books, after all, perform two functions - one, as simple entertainment; but two, and more pertinently perhaps, as preparation for the adult world into which we get thrown without ceremony.
So bear in mind all those things - and with any luck, your manuscript will come alive.
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