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Writing for Children

Do you want to learn how to write a children's book? Make money writing for children's magazines? Since 1969, The Institute of Children's Literature has taught over 470,205 aspiring writers. Listen to the director of both The Institute for Writers and The Institute of Children's Literature and bestselling children's author Katie Davis host the show as she focuses on the craft of writing for children. She talks about how to write a children’s book, how to write for children’s magazines, how to get paid for your writing, and how to get published in the world of kidlit. There are hard-to-find resources, tips, and links included in every week's show notes. And, don't forget to check out the Institute of Children's Literature where you can be paired with a one-on-one mentor and learned to create polished and engaging projects that publishers are looking for in today's children's market.
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Now displaying: Page 6
Oct 5, 2018

AN INTERVIEW WITH ANNE R. ALLEN

Anne R. Allen writes funny mysteries and how-to-books for writers. She also writes poetry and short stories on occasion. Oh, yes, and she blogs. She's a contributor to Writer's Digest and the Novel and Short Story Writer's Market.

In this episode, Anne shares how keeping a writer's blog may be easier than you think!

 

Let a one-on-one mentor help you get that book out of your head and onto the page. Get started here!

Sep 28, 2018

TIPS FOR YOUR WRITER WEBSITE

Every author needs a website—yes, even if you're not published yet. In the Internet age, your website acts as your online business card for readers and even prospective agents and editors.

Today we discuss tips for keeping your website user friendly and keep them coming back for more.

 

Join the Institute of Children's Literature Community! Get our free weekly newsletter with articles on the craft of writing, hot markets looking for your work, and cool resources for your writer toolbox: www.instituteforwriters.com/icl-news

Sep 21, 2018

5 TIPS FOR YOUR AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE

Amazon is the largest bookstore out there. Not only that, but did you realize it’s a search engine, just like Google? Not only that, it’s a search engine that people go to intending to buy things. Buy things like your books.

If you publish on Amazon, whether as a Kindle author, Create Space author, or with a traditional publishing house, you’re entitled to an “Author Page.” But so many authors simply don’t take the time to make the most out of their author page, and they’re missing out—not only on an opportunity to make a great impression, but on the chance to earn more money as well. Today, we talk about how to get the most of your Amazon Author Page.

 

Join the Institute of Children's Literature Community! Get our free weekly newsletter with articles on the craft of writing, hot markets looking for your work, and cool resources for your writer toolbox: www.instituteforwriters.com/icl-news

 

Sep 14, 2018

TIPS FOR CREATING QUALITY DIALOGUE

A while ago on the Institute's Facebook page, someone was asking about dialogue, which made me think again about this important writing tool. And if you’re writing to self-publish you really need to know about how to write dialogue. Readers love dialogue because it makes a scene and a character come to life. Dialogue puts us into a specific moment within a story and that's a powerful thing for readers. But many writers struggle with dialogue and with making it feel lively, purposeful, and real. So what should you do first in the pursuit of good dialogue?

 

Join the Institute of Children's Literature Community! Get our free weekly newsletter with articles on the craft of writing, hot markets looking for your work, and cool resources for your writer toolbox: www.instituteforwriters.com/icl-news

Sep 7, 2018

AN INTERVIEW WITH A SELF-PUBLISHING EXPERT

In this episode you’ll meet Dave Chesson, my friend otherwise known as The Kindlepreneur. He’s an expert on anything Amazon/Kindle related. Check out his podcast if you’re thinking about self-publishing.

 

Join the Institute of Children's Literature Community! Get our free weekly newsletter with articles on the craft of writing, hot markets looking for your work, and cool resources for your writer toolbox: www.instituteforwriters.com/icl-news

Aug 31, 2018

Nesting usually involves the spot where you find immediate (or first) success, but there will always be walls around you if you give in to staying in your first nest.

You'll grow until you fill up that specific nesting spot and no more, not unless you're willing to peek out of your particular niche and considering dashing into a spot you know nothing whatsoever about. Growth, change, learning, and challenge makes us better writers. Nesting holds us at whatever spot we've grown accustom.

Let's talk about getting out of our nests today and finding success in new writing areas.

 

Join the Institute of Children's Literature Community! Get our free weekly newsletter with articles on the craft of writing, hot markets looking for your work, and cool resources for your writer toolbox: www.instituteforwriters.com/icl-news

Aug 24, 2018

WHERE SHOULD YOU SPEND YOUR DOLLARS?

Last week we talked about classes, conferences, and critiques and self-publishing. Let’s get going with Part 2 with…agents and submission services and promotion services.

There are a lot of "services" that have grown up around writing. Some, like agents, are vital to working in specific areas of publishing. Some are simply good ways to extract the cash from your wallet. Let's look at agents.

 

Join the Institute of Children's Literature Community! Get our free weekly newsletter with articles on the craft of writing, hot markets looking for your work, and cool resources for your writer toolbox: www.instituteforwriters.com/icl-news

Aug 17, 2018

WHERE SHOULD YOUR MONEY GO?

Whenever you have a large group of people with a dream and a desperation to fulfill it, you're also going to see people quick to take advantage of that. Helpful writers (many of whom began their careers a while ago) say helpful things like, "The only place you should sign on a check is on the back" and "money flows toward the writer." And those truisms can be useful as long as you use them to make you pause and consider, rather than letting them slam the brakes on your choices.

Let's consider what kinds of things might a writer spend money on? Time to dig into the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

 

Join the Institute of Children's Literature Community! Get our free weekly newsletter with articles on the craft of writing, hot markets looking for your work, and cool resources for your writer toolbox: www.instituteforwriters.com/icl-news

 

 

Aug 10, 2018

YOUR FIRST STEP TO FANTASTIC WRITING

"Wait ... what do you mean I'm not done?!"

It's a common refrain among new writers as they realize their first draft is only the beginning. In truth, revision is the step that takes your writing from so-so to sold.

So, revision is a necessary part of the writing process, but how do you go about doing it?

Different techniques work better for different stories and different authors. With the help of IFW contributor Rita Reali, we dig into a few examples.

 

START WRITING YOUR BOOK. Learn how to write publishable manuscripts with your own one-on-one mentor, an experienced professional author. Get started here!

Aug 3, 2018

THE KEY TO REVISION

As most writers know, it's much easier to find the flaws in someone else's work than to find the flaws in your own. Part of the reason for this is distance. When you're reading work by another author, you aren't caught up in all the personal things that went into the creation of the story. You are actually judging the story based on the merits of what you read on the page. So to be able to revise your own work successfully, you need to get the same kind of distance that you have when you're reading someone else's work. That's not always easy, but there are some tips that can help.

START WRITING YOUR BOOK. Learn how to write publishable manuscripts with your own one-on-one mentor, an experienced professional author. Get started here!

Jul 27, 2018

CREATING A REVISION PLAN

Some writers love revision. In fact, for many, the rough draft is something to be rushed through to get to the real "fun," the revision. Some writers don't like the revision part at all, but they know it's necessary if their book has a chance of getting a contract. Our contributor Jan Fields is one of those writers. Jan admits revision might be something she would skimp on if she didn't enter into revision with a plan. Here's how to create your own plan.

START WRITING YOUR BOOK. Learn how to write publishable manuscripts with your own one-on-one mentor, an experienced professional author.

Get started here!

Jul 13, 2018

HOW GOOD IS YOUR TITLE?

Sometimes I find great fodder to share in the ICL archives. I loved this one, inspired by an article by Veda Boyd Jones. Have you ever played The Landlord’s Game? Come on. I bet you have. You know, the game that was created in the Depression? Oh, wait. That was the original title given to the game…it uses real estate as the theme. Does… Monopoly sound familiar? The Landlord’s Game was renamed Monopoly, and history was made.

Often, working titles can generally be dull and simply name the topic. Before you submit, you need to give them the zap that will make the reader pull a book off a bookstore shelf. And although editors often change the titles of an article, story, or book, as a writer you want the first reader––which could be an editor––to find your title engaging. The best way to learn how to title a piece is to study successful titles.

 

Get a one-on-one mentor to help you write publishable work that agents and publishers are looking for! Get started here!

Jul 6, 2018

GUEST EXPERT DEBORAH HEILIGMAN

Deborah Heiligman is the author of 31 books for children and teens. Her most recent book is Vincent And Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers. It has received six starred reviews and has won the Boston Globe Horn Book Award for Nonfiction as well as the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award and a Printz Honor Award at the 2018 ALA Youth Media Awards. Her other recent books include: The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life Of Paul Erdos and Snow Dog, Go Dog. Charles And Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith was a National Book Award Finalist, A Printz Honor, the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction winner, and a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize.

We discuss:
- What to do if you receive edits from an editor/agent/critique partner you don’t agree with.
- How to eliminate dates or places or details/facts that get in the way of story if you feel like the reader should know that stuff?
- Not writing “on the nose.”
- AND MORE!

START WRITING YOUR BOOK. Learn how to write publishable manuscripts with your own one-on-one mentor, an experienced professional author. Get started here!

Jun 29, 2018

HOW TO WRITE AN INTERVIEW

Last week, we talked about how to conduct an interview—what to do beforehand, how to act during the interview, and what to do afterward and how to follow-up with your subject. This week we go one step further —how to write the article.

Plus, we touch on how to pick the perfect subject for your article.

START WRITING YOUR BOOK. Learn how to write publishable manuscripts with your own one-on-one mentor, an experienced professional author. Get started here!

Jun 22, 2018

HOW TO CONDUCT AN INTERVIEW

One way to break into nonfiction is with a profile piece. What better way to learn more about a subject than to interview them directly? In this episode, we cover how to conduct an interview professionally including how to prepare, what to do during the interview, and how to follow-up afterward.

START WRITING YOUR BOOK. Learn how to write publishable manuscripts with your own one-on-one mentor, an experienced professional author. Get started here!

Jun 15, 2018

NONFICTION ARTICLES YOU CAN WRITE, PART 2

Last week, we talked about how many magazines are looking for nonfiction articles. We covered four types of nonfiction articles including the how-to, the fact piece, sports, and the arts. This week we offer up five more nonfiction topics for magazine articles, including biography, profiles, self-help, history, and personal experience.

Remember you also want to check a magazine’s website, previous issues, and even a market guide like the one in our bookstore so you can direct your articles to the publishers most likely
to buy them.

START WRITING YOUR BOOK. Learn how to write publishable manuscripts with your own one-on-one mentor, an experienced professional author. Get started here!

Jun 8, 2018

NONFICTION ARTICLES YOU CAN WRITE, PART 1

Magazine articles can be a great way to get your foot in the door in the publishing industry while giving you professional credits for your query letters. And, since most magazines pay, it can be a nice opportunity to supplement your income.

Magazines are commonly looking for nonfiction articles. The categories of nonfiction are not hard-and-fast classifications, since a given article may contain elements of several types. Over the next two episodes we’ll give you a rough breakdown of article categories according to market terminology. We’ll describe the main features of each type and give you some tips on how to make the most of your material for an editor’s eye.

This week we talk about writing nonfiction articles with these themes: how-tos, fact pieces, sports, and the arts

START WRITING YOUR BOOK. Learn how to write publishable manuscripts with your own one-on-one mentor, an experienced professional author. Get started here!

Jun 1, 2018

AN INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR CHRISTINE TAYLOR-BUTLER

Christine Taylor-Butler is the author of over 75 books for kids. Before writing for kids, Christine earned two degrees from MIT and worked for the likes of Harvard University and Hallmark Cards. She has contributed to numerous nonfiction series for Scholastic writing about planets, states, our founding fathers, how our government works, and more. Her YA series Lost Tribes is now available.

WE DISCUSS…
• Best practices for research
• How to research
• Traveling for research
• Organizational issues
• Confirming veracity when doing nonfiction research
• Researching for fiction…and more!

START WRITING YOUR BOOK. Learn how to write publishable manuscripts with your own one-on-one mentor, an experienced professional author. Get started here!

May 26, 2018

ANSWERS TO YOUR BURNING QUESTIONS

It's a whole episode of your listener questions! Editor and Publisher Eileen Robinson is back answering your questions and giving it to you straight. We discuss:

  • How many and what kinds of errors are okay in a submitted manuscript?
  • Does punctuation really matter?
  • How long should an ending be?
  • What makes for an interesting/well-developed character?
  • What makes a character unlikable?
  • How do you create an unreliable narrator?
  • How does dialogue shape character?
  • In picture books, how do you shape a character in just 32 pages?

START WRITING YOUR BOOK. Learn how to write publishable manuscripts with your own one-on-one mentor, an experienced professional author. Get started here!

May 18, 2018

WE CELEBRATE WITH OUR MOST POPULAR EPISODES

To celebrate our 100th episode, we’ve edited together
some of our most popular episodes, all in one easy-to-listen to package:

002-Three Keys to Writing Nonfiction for Children
004-Don't Tell Us a Story
005-Picture-Books-101
032-How Submissions Work

START WRITING YOUR BOOK. Learn how to write publishable manuscripts with your own one-on-one mentor, an experienced professional author. Get started here!

May 12, 2018

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

In this episode, Katie interviews Editor and Publisher Eileen Robinson. Editor/Publisher Eileen Robinson loves the power of stories and helping authors revise.  She feels once the draft is done, the revision process is where an author’s skill, inventiveness, and individuality begins to shine through. She has worked in children’s publishing as an editor for over 20 years, in-house and independently at both Scholastic and Harcourt — in educational publishing, school and library, with has trade, magazines, book fairs and clubs. She now owns  f1rstpages.com, partners with Harold Underdown in Kid’s Book Revisions, and publishes book through Move Books Children’s Publishing.

 

START WRITING YOUR BOOK. Learn how to write publishable manuscripts with your own one-on-one mentor, an experienced professional author. Get started here!

May 4, 2018

4 TIPS TO TAKE YOU TO THE WINNERS' CIRCLE

If you want to know how to win a writing contest, take it from someone who has judged a lot of writing contests. Here are four things that will almost automatically get you past the first few rounds of judging. They seem like simple things, but it is amazing how many folks don't do them.

1. DON'T ENTER SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T FIT THE CONTEST

Honestly. You just cannot win if it doesn't fit the contest parameters.

If it's a picture book contest and you send the first chapter of your novel, you simply cannot win.

If it is a contest for children's mysteries and you send a mystery with an all-adult cast, you're not going to win.

If it is a children's poetry contest and your poem is about the frustrations of retirement or the pain of your divorce, winning is not going to happen.

Even if your work is brilliant, can you imagine the firestorm of protest if the winner of their contest didn't match the theme of the contest? So, save your time (and the judge's) for contests where your entry fits.

For three more tips, listen to the full episode!

 

What's your question?

Tell us and we'll answer your writing questions on the podcast. Go to this link and leave your question: http://www.writingforchildren.com/speak.

 

START WRITING YOUR BOOK.

Learn how to write publishable manuscripts with your own one-on-one mentor, an experienced professional author. To see if you qualify, go to writingforchildren.com/iamready

Apr 27, 2018

DECIDE THE TURNING POINT

A good mystery becomes clear and is solved only when the main character employs a new way of looking at the problem or discovers his own pre-existing weaknesses that have been pushing him in the wrong direction. For most mysteries, solutions come by some kind of change—a change in how we look at the problem, or a change in the main character's beliefs.

Listen to the full episode for examples on how to make this work and don't miss part 1 in episode 096.

What's your question?

Tell us and we'll answer your writing questions on the podcast. Go to this link and leave your question: http://www.writingforchildren.com/speak.

IFW Critique Service
Don't waste your chance! Before you send your work to an editor, get professional feedback to make sure your manuscript is the best it can be. Get a full critique of your manuscript whether it's a picture book, middle grade chapter book, YA, Memoir, Fantasy, or Adult Fiction. Go to https://www.instituteforwriters.com/critique-service/

Apr 21, 2018

TO BUILD A GOOD MYSTERY JUST ASK THE RIGHT QUESTION

This episode is based on a post from Jan Fields, a ICL regular contributor. The experiences I refer to are hers, not mine.

At this point, Jan has sold well over two dozen mystery novels for adults and has written and sold mysteries for children, both as short stories and chapter books. In fact, many of her adventure stories have a strong mystery structure along with the adventure. This is because

  • mysteries are puzzling and kids love puzzles
  • a good puzzle has a clear question and a "right" answer that requires careful thought
  • good puzzles are challenging but not frustrating
  • good puzzles are fun.

But your first mystery story can feel overwhelming to plan and write so today's episode reveals how Jan does it, using a method she’s honed through all these published books and stories.

What's your question?

Tell us and we'll answer your writing questions on the podcast. Go to this link and leave your question: http://www.writingforchildren.com/speak.

IFW Critique Service
Don't waste your chance! Before you send your work to an editor, get professional feedback to make sure your manuscript is the best it can be. Get a full critique of your manuscript whether it's a picture book, middle grade chapter book, YA, Memoir, Fantasy, or Adult Fiction. Go to https://www.instituteforwriters.com/critique-service/

Apr 14, 2018

INTERVIEW WITH A CONTEST JUDGE

In this episode I interview frequent ICL contest judge and longtime instructor Nancy Coffelt. As well as being a multi-published picture book author and illustrator, Nancy is a fine artist and has been showing in galleries across the country since 1984. Her work is included in personal, public and corporate collections around the world. She works in both 2D and 3D, primarily in oil pastel and in paper mosaic. Animals are her main subject matter and Nancy welcomes custom orders! 

Nancy also writes and illustrates books for children. Her books include Catch That Baby, Fred Stays with Me, and The Big Eclipse

 

What's your question?

Tell us and we'll answer your writing questions on the podcast. Go to this link and leave your question: http://www.writingforchildren.com/speak.

IFW Critique Service
Don't waste your chance! Before you send your work to an editor, get professional feedback to make sure your manuscript is the best it can be. Get a full critique of your manuscript whether it's a picture book, middle grade chapter book, YA, Memoir, Fantasy, or Adult Fiction. Go to https://www.instituteforwriters.com/critique-service/

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