Writing for children is said to be the hardest kind of writing you can choose.
Children are the most direct, honest critics you will find. If they don’t like it, they’ll tell you. Worse still, they’ll simply walk away. Your feelings aren’t a concern.
Quite rightly, it’s all about them.
The pleasure from writing for children though, that’s something else again. There is more pleasure to be derived out of creating a story that children love than any other kind of writing.
Find your voice, get in the zone, and you’re unstoppable.
But writers often begin writing with the aim of not only getting published, but making money as well. Lots of money. They see J. K. Rowling and the staggering success she has enjoyed and say, ‘That’s for me!’
What got them into writing in the first place is lost, or at least pushed away. The love of writing, the feeling that there isn’t anything else you’d rather be doing than sitting at a keyboard letting the words pour onto the screen.
Anyone can write. Really they can. Most choose not to of course, because a world full of writers would be painful, but those who do are among the luckiest people here. They will live forever, because their stories will live on and entertain generations of people, young and old.
Don’t write for money, and the chances are increased that money will come. Not because some magic fairy will come along, wave her little finger and present you with pots full of gold, but because that pressure has been taken away. The pressure that comes with ‘Is it good enough’, ‘Will people want to buy it’, ‘What if they don’t like it?’. All that disappears.
Write for the very reason you began writing; because you enjoy it. Then, when something comes out you like and think other people will enjoy too, submit it and let it go. Then send thanks to whomever you thank for the good things that come along in life, and forget about it.
After all, you only produced that piece of writing for your own pleasure, so it doesn’t matter a jot if no one else appreciates it.
And don’t take this as ‘the truth.’ Try it on. If these suggestions fit, if they strike a chord and help with the creative process, great. If they don’t, leave them behind. What works for one will not work for everyone.
Tips in writing for children:
• Find something you love talking or writing about. Then write about it as though you are talking about it. There is no secret about writing. Everyone can talk. Get the words you would say out loud and get them down on paper. Write about what you love, and that passion will come out.
• Take a favourite childhood moment. For example and from the top of my head, I remember walking downstairs on Christmas morning and finding a realistic plastic dalek suit wrapped up in Christmas paper. The first thing I did was put it together, get inside still in my pyjamas, go down the road and knock at my friend Michaels door.
He scrambled down the stairs and flung the door open, to find a dalek standing their screaming ‘Exterminate Exterminate.”
Michael disappeared up those stairs again so fast he flew up, and it took several minutes before he was coaxed down again with promises of mince pies for breakfast and ‘It was only Rob being an idiot.’ Now in my defence I was very young, and the intention was never to terrify Michael. However that memory gives me so much raw material for a story I could write a whole novel.
We forget just how impressionable children’s imaginations are, and how they live much of their younger years in such a state of fantasy that what they imagine and what they actually see are often mixed up. When writing for children, remember this. Delve back into your own childhood memories, and don’t just analyse them from afar, get in there and re-experience what it felt like. It’s a different world.
Rob Daniel is a children's author, creative writing, memory and self-esteem teacher. He lives in beautiful Albany on the south west corner of Western Australia, has a passion for mangos, the Greek Islands and bringing the best out of young people. He has been booked to go on a creative writing tour of primary schools around the south-west in September, and is very excited about the adventures he's about to have!
Rob creates 'turn the page' children's e-books with illustrators from around the world. You can check out and buy these books instantly from http://www.chocmint.com You'll also find an opportunity to join the chocmint adventure yourself, if you have a passion for writing and illustrating for children.
LATEST book published 'A Tail's Tale', illustrated by UK artist Elizabeth Stringer. Part proceeds from these books go towards sponsoring children at the Bear-Care orphanage in Kitgum, Uganda run by the extraordinary Murray Kidd
