Jill Roman Lord – A Child’s Craft – Page 2

Author: Jill Roman Lord - A Child's Craft

When Jill's Creative writing teacher in 9th grade pulled her out of class at the end of the year to give her a blank journal and told her to keep writing, she did. Jill is an award winning author of over fifteen Christian Children's books. She loves celebrating Jesus in her writing. Jill is happily married to Bill, has three kids and a Golden Retriever running buddy. Jill also is a nurse anesthetist and absolutely loves both careers!

Strengthening Your Children’s Story

So, you’ve written your masterpiece of a story. You finally put your great idea onto the pages. What a fabulous accomplishment. Great job! However, it’s still not ready to submit to a publisher. Now it must be strengthened.

Rewriting is the next step where your great story becomes magnificent! Don’t dread this stage. The fun continues. You get to play with your words. First, check your word count. It doesn’t matter at this point how many words you have. Your job was just to get it on paper – to let it flow and hopefully you did. But the first part of rewriting is to know how many words you need to eliminate.

[bctt tweet=”Rewriting is the next step where your great story becomes magnificent! #rewrite #editgoal” via=”no”]

Keep in mind your target age group. Here are word count guidelines for each group. These may vary from publisher to publisher so check the Writers Market Guide for each publisher’s guidelines.

0-2 board books (less than 250 words)

2-4 toddler board books (500 words or less)

5-8 picture book (roughly up to 1000 words)

7-10 chapter books (up to 15,000 words)

9-12 tween (20,000-35,000 words)

13+ young adult (55,000-70,000 words)

If a publisher states they accept picture books up to 1200 words. Don’t send them a manuscript with 1500 words hoping they’ll make an exception. Send them what they publish.

Check to see if each sentence, thought, idea moves your story forward. Is it all necessary? Shave off a part and see if the story still flows. If it doesn’t, put that part back in and shave off a different part. Sometimes the shaving actually strengthens the story.

For picture books, circle all the verbs. That’s right. All of them. Picture books contain few words so choose them wisely. Try to eliminate the weak verbs: is, are, am, was, were, will, have, had, has, be, been. Then strengthen them. Check for synonyms and plug in other words. Play with it.

Next, underline your adjectives and adverbs. Try to eliminate ‘ly’ words and find stronger words.

Here is an example:

Sally ran quickly to get out of the rain. Suddenly she stopped when she saw a bright rainbow. Now she was happy.

22 words.

Circle the verbs: ran, get, stopped, saw, was.

Underline descriptors: quickly, suddenly, bright, happy.

All pretty weak. Let’s see if we can tighten it up a bit.

Sally raced from the rain but slowed when a sparkling rainbow appeared. She smiled.

14 words. Not an exciting story, but the same point is made with less but somewhat stronger words.

Now, highlight words you’ve used more than once. In the first example I used ‘she’ three times, which is too many. In the second example ‘she’ is used only once.

If you’re writing a story about a kitten, how many times did you use the word kitten? Unless repetition is your goal, can you replace it with another word while keeping the words age-appropriate? Kitty, cat, ball of fur, fluff ball.

Shorten, tighten, strengthen.

From Story to Book Part I

So you have this fabulous idea of a story for children. You’ve told bedtime stories to your children every night from this one story idea and they’ve loved it! It could sell millions of copies! You may never have to work again but will live off the royalties from your story idea.

The only problem is… ideas don’t sell. Books sell.

Let’s look at some things to consider as you begin moving your idea from story to book form.

For what age group do you wish to write? When you pitch to a publishing house, you shouldn’t say your book is for newborns up through young adults. Twelve year-olds don’t generally enjoy the same book as their two-year-old siblings. So, narrow your range. Here are some acceptable age brackets:

0-2 newborn – concept books

2-4 toddlers – board books

5-8 picture books

7-10 chapter books

9-12 tween books

13+ young adult

While these ages may vary a year either way between publishing houses, check the Writer’s Market book for the publishers you wish to submit to and market to one of their stated age ranges. Keep these ages in mind as your write.

Which point of view do you wish to use? Do you want the child to tell the story? This would be first person. If you use this, you can only write what the child would feel, see, think, and experience. The pronouns used would be I, my, me, we.

Do you want to write from a parent’s point of view or have a narrator tell the story? This is third person. Limited third person is when the narrator knows only the thoughts and feelings of one person. Omniscient third person is when the narrator gets inside each of the characters’ heads. Omniscient can be confusing for young children, so generally stick to a point of view from one person. The pronouns would be he, she, they. Figure out which POV you wish to use and stick with it.

Next, get writing! Don’t let your head get in your way by editing at this point. Just let the words flow and pare it down later. Write as if the story is ready to burst out of your head onto the page. Let it flow. Let it flow. Don’t hold it back anymore… (That should be a song.) We’ll look at editing and perfecting your story in future blogs. For now, pick an age group and point of view and write! Oh, and have fun. Play with it. Crafts should be fun!

[bctt tweet=”The only problem is… ideas don’t sell. Books sell. #picturebook #kidlit” via=”no”]