The stinky fish guide to choosing and using big words in your children’s story.

What’s your favourite condiment?  What do you love to squirt onto your burgers, your dogs, your sandwiches?

(I’ll tell you what America’s current favourite is in a minute – and why it’s important to you as a writer.)

Know what condiment the ancient Romans loved best?  It’s called garum, a putrid blend made of stinky rotten fish.  The Roman writer Seneca called it an “expensive bloody mass of decayed fish [which] consumes the stomach with its salted putrefaction.”

Yum, right?  (OMG, no.)

Know why the Romans loved the stuff?  Because their food was so, so stinky that they needed a condiment strong enough to cover it up.  Ew.

The perfect condiment for stinky writing

Some people’s writing is like this, too.  Stinky stuff.  Their writing isn’t clear, their ideas are shallow – but they use big, fancy words, splashing them around like garum to cover up the stench.  They hope you won’t notice.

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Are your books too babyish? The grown-up way to write kids’ books, with 3 easy fixes.

Writing for kids keeps us young at heart.  How great is that?

(Very!!!!)

But maybe you’ve made the mistake of thinking that “young at heart” means writing in a childish way.  Are you underestimating your readers’ intelligence?  Is your children's book TOO childlike? 

Sure, we’re writing for kids.  Sure, I feel like a kid when I write.  But we shouldn’t make the mistake of creating books that sound like they’re written by kids – or worse, babies. 

Here are three common problems, and quick fixes to make sure you don’t fall into these traps.

1.  Baby talk

Language development experts say parents should try to speak normally to even the youngest kids.  Some “goo goo” is fine if we’re playing around, but when you’re talking to a baby, you should make an effort to use real words.

Same thing if you’re writing for kids, even babies.  Use real words.  A grown-up is going to be reading the story, so you don’t have to worry that your words are too hard for kids to read.

And whatever you do, don’t make spelling or grammar mistakes – especially on purpose.  Don’t spell fruit as “froot” just because you think it will appeal to kids, or emphasize how hard something was by spelling it “harrrrrrd.” 

Would writers REALLY do this?  I assure you, they would.  I’ve seen some horrors out there.  But you’re the one I care about: don’t you do it.

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Character names that fly - or flop: 5 rules to live (or die) by when you’re writing children’s books

What should you name your characters?  As much as we writers might like to think that story is all about plot, usually it comes down to character instead.  This is especially true in a children's book, when you sometimes have less than 500 words to impress your reader. 

Have you met Ian Falconer's spunky pig Olivia? 

Would she have been just as quirky and charismatic with a name like Patty Pig?

You'll want to avoid these 5 critical mistakes to make sure you're creating a character kids can get into.  Without a character we love, the greatest plot in the world is worthless.

1.  Avoid alliteration

Patty Pig, Danny Dog, Ronald Robot, Big Bad Bertha, Eddie the Engine... with very few exceptions, alliterative names are terrible names, and editors tend to cringe when they see them.  If there's one thing that's the mark of an amateur, this is it.

2.  Don’t fear strange, ethnic or regional names

Remember the story of Tikki Tikki Tembo-no Sa Rembo-chari Bari Ruchi-pip Peri Pembo?  Certainly, if you have read it, you'll never forget his name!
That said, check to make sure the name you're using is authentic.  Tikki Tikki Tembo author Arlene Mosel neglected to do this, whether intentionally or not.  There is no such Chinese name, and apparently, many other "Chinese" details in the story are actually Japanese.  The tale itself may come from a Japanese folktale.

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Are you racist – and you don’t even know it? 3 easy ways to fix it.

You know you’re not racist.  But do your readers know it?

Check your writing for signs of these 3 mistakes.  They’re probably there unintentionally, but rest assured that readers will find them – and take it personally, even if you didn’t mean any harm.

Be prepared to root out these problems wherever you find them.  Let’s try to create books that accurately reflect children’s reality, regardless of their skin colour or socioeconomic status.

Only one, or Tokenism

I’m sure you’ve seen this one before:  all the characters in a story are white… except one.  You can see the one black, or Asian, or East Indian, character hanging out in all the illustrations.  Maybe it’s one character in a wheelchair, or a girl in a hijab.  Or one character with some other type of difference, whatever it may be.

Yes, diversity is important.  But that doesn’t mean throwing in a single character of a particular “type,” simply to serve the goal of diversity.

QUICK FIX:

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Why picking the right age category for your book is so important (and how not to mess it up). GUEST POST by Laurisa White Reyes

If you are as avid a reader as I am, you are probably familiar with the terms Middle Grade, Young Adult, and Adult fiction. Recently, a new category has popped up: New Adult.

What exactly determines if a book fits into one category or another? This may not be important for people who just want to read good books, (Who cares if the protagonist is sixteen or thirty-six as long as it’s a great read!) but understanding the difference is vital when you are writing books and marketing them.

Middle Grade Books

Let’s start with Middle Grade. This category is for younger readers, generally between the ages of 8 to 12, or if the subject matter is a little more mature, ages 10 to 14.

The protagonist’s age should fall into one of these ranges, and the story should be told from a child’s point of view (1^st or 3^rd person doesn’t matter). Adults may be present in the story, but the kids are the stars of the show.

Some “no-no’s” for writing for this age group include books told from an adult perspective reminiscing about when they were young and stories told from a kid’s POV but where the subject matter could be considered mature.

Middle Grade = Young Adult?  (nope)

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5 illustrated ways to overcome the “self-published” curse (and make your picture book look great).

Are you cursed?

Lots of writers would swear they are.

It’s sort of true.  There’s a “self-published” curse that makes many, many independent, print-on-demand and Kindle books look… bad.  Stinky.  Rotten.

Is yours one of them?

I don’t believe in curses, I believe in bootstraps.  I hope you do, too.

I believe that today every writer has a chance to succeed in publishing a kids’ book… by following these five tips (illustrated for your amusement) to help ensure that yours succeed.

Before you go on, here’s my confession:  I have made mistakes in all of the following areas.  Might be making them at this very moment.  Who hasn’t? 

That’s how we learn.

Let’s sit down and learn these five easy lessons (with illustrated examples by me!) together.

1.  Fonts – get serious.

There is a special place in purgatory for those who rely on Comic Sans to make their story seem childlike / innocent / fun.  Your book is made for reading… so make it readable. 

Script fonts can be hard to read, especially in large doses where there’s not enough whitespace around them.  Similarly, novelty fonts like this sawed-off-boards font make it difficult to read more than a little text at a time.  Finally, don’t mix more than three into your book.  I think the experts say four, per page… but I say three per book, so there.

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Are editors and agents sick of YOUR book? 11 things they don’t want to see.

Is your story perfect?

Wait! 

Don’t hit the send button just yet.

Before you email (or snail mail) that manuscript, make sure you aren’t sending an editor (or agent) a book she’s already sick of seeing.

It’s not like it’s tough to read their minds.  Editors, agents and other publishing professionals are out there giving interviews.  They are sitting down with bloggers and newspaper / magazine writers, mostly begging us (as writers) to please not send them certain books.

Which books?

Let’s listen to what they’re saying for a minute.  Can you hear them all?

Straight from the horses’ mouths, here’s what all those editors and agents are utterly, completely, and totally sick of…

Books that rhyme.

1.  Rhyme.  “I am SICK of seeing rhyming picture books with bad meter and rhyme. Ugh. Is there anything worse? No. No, there’s not.” – editor Josh Plattner, via Writers’ Rumpus.

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8 mistakes to avoid while writing for children.

(guest post by Megha Mukherjee)

On my niece's seventh birthday, I wondered what would be an ideal gift for her. I decided to gift her something which would be beneficial for her in future. Seeing her inclination towards story books and comics, I thought it would be much ideal to gift a story book. And what could be a better gift than a book written by me?

With full throttle, I started jotting down a set of stories for her, all well thought on the present situations and issues, stories of high values and morals. Finally, I got the book bind from a local bookbinding shop and gifted it to her.

Three years have passed since then, needless to mention that my book is a history now.All because the next time I visited my sister, I saw my book carelessly turned over the floor by the side of the kennel. Apparently, my niece was using it as a sleeping tent for her doll. My sister told me she had discarded the book, announcing it was boring. That really broke my heart and I wondered what went wrong.

Anyways, that experience was a lesson. I still want to gift a personalized storybook to my daughter and I know exactly how to go about it. Here are eight reasons to why some children's books are so popular while others never get off the rack.

 

1. A book without pictures

The first step to draw a child's attention to a book is to make it look good. Pictures attract all of us; many of us still drift the pages of a magazine without actually paying much attention to the text.

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Book Trailers for Dummies: does your children’s book need one?

No, I’m not a dummy. 

And neither are you.

And we’re not suckers, either.

So why does everybody make book trailers seem so complicated?  Why is everybody trying to sell us fancy-pants services that will help us sell our kids’ books with the help of video trailers?

The first and most important thing to know about book trailers is this:  nobody really knows whether a book trailer ever, in the history of the universe, made anybody buy a book.

Still, I’m a sucker for new ideas, and thought it would be cute to try doing a few for my new books. 

And it turns out they’re quick and easy.

Granted, mine don’t look totally professional (bit of an understatement).  But given the fact that each of the three I’ve made so far took under an hour and cost exactly $0 to create, upload and promote, I think this is an effort well-spent.  They’re hopefully not going to hurt sales, right?

Also, the more of them you make, the quicker you’ll probably get at it.

You’ll need a few things before you start.

1. A free video editing program.  I used Windows Live Movie Maker.  The new one won’t run on my cheesy computer, so I downloaded an older version.  I think it’s 2.6-something.  You need something that can add titles; MovieMaker does this, but just barely.  (I’m sure there’s some built-in free equivalent if you’re a Mac.)
2. A piece of music you like and are allowed to use free.  My go-to spot for this is Kevin McLeod’s site, incompetech.com, where you can find any type of music you care to use.  Remember to give him credit in your video!
3. Still images from your book.
4. Video shots (optional), either of you reading the book, kids reading it, etc.  I haven’t done this yet, but you can, and it would probably make the end result more interesting.

Take a look at my own trailers.

So how did my own trailers come out?  I’m going to let you judge. 

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Three mistakes when you’re writing history for kids… and how to turn them around.

(a guest post by Amanda)

Yawn. Is that your reaction when you think about history books?

Now think about the challenge of writing it. How can you make important facts into an interesting read?

This may be easier to do in the much adored genre of historical fiction where a writer is free to fill in some gaps and develop lovable characters, but don’t worry – even in non-fiction, you can still create great stories.

While you’ll still need to be creative in writing non-fiction history books for kids that make them want to read and learn, here are some things you should avoid.

1. Anachronisms

You wouldn’t have a Biblical character glance at his wristwatch… but what about Ben Franklin?

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Self-publishing? Why you MUST proof a hard copy of your book!

Such a rush to hold your book in your hands.  It’s ready!  Or is it???  These books all look great – right?  Maybe from the outside.  On the inside, there’s serious work to be done.  And you can’t, can’t, can’t do it all on your screen or online.

On-screen proofing is not the answer

That’s a shame, because at least it you’re self-publishing with CreateSpace, Lulu, the two most popular self-publishing sites, they make it super-easy to upload your book’s interior and check everything online.

Createspace even offers a “Digital Proofer”… doesn’t that sound like a cool alternative to paying for a proof copy plus delivery, and then waiting the weeks and weeks (and weeks!) for delivery???  (We live in Israel; your shipping time may be less if you live closer to what Createspace considers the real world.)

Just say NO!  To online proofing.  Well, you don’t have to say no… it can be a valuable tool to find simple problems.  But don’t use it as a substitute for actual proofing, with a hard copy.

Having learned from experience, I now order a hard-copy proof every single time.  These three new books all arrived yesterday:  Penguin Rosh Hashana, Yossi and the Monkeys, and Baby!  Life before birth.

Why would you need a hard copy if you check it all very carefully on the screen?

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Why “write what you know” produces terrible books: putting a spin on reality.

Some of the lamest writing advice is “write what you know.”  It’s lame because it doesn’t go far enough.  It doesn’t show you how to take what you know and make it exotic, exciting, delicious and fun.

These advice-givers fear that, like Shakespeare, we will set our stories in some exotic locale like Denmark or Venice (where Shakespeare himself never actually visited). That used to be acceptable, back when travel was rare and you might never meet an English-speaking person who had visited “darkest Africa.”  These days, when you can hop on a plane and be anywhere, and back in a week to tell the tale, you can’t just make it up.

Fair enough. I think we all have this urge to make our writing exotic and interesting. Indeed, we may even confuse ourselves into believing they are one and the same.

Why?

Because most of us lead lives that FEEL as boring as paste.

We get up, go to work, take our children to soccer practice or dance class… and when we get home and sit down to write, we think, “why would anybody want to read about all of this?”

So we spice it up a bit, in an unnatural way: set our story in a more interesting city or make the characters wildly different from ourselves. Before we know it, we have written a terrible story about people we don’t know or understand.

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Photo picture books: good, bad, UGLY.

I’ve taken some heat over the last couple days for this post, which suggests that writers can choose free photos from Wikimedia and other websites and use them in their books as an alternative to hiring an illustrator. 

(Photo credit:  Albert Kok, Wikimedia)

Yet photo-based picture books are a long tradition, going almost back to the beginning of both.  And we cannot all dive to the bottom of the seas to take our own pictures of sharks… nor is there any need to, with good-quality stock photos and (high-quality!  read my post!) internet photos.

So I decided to search through Amazon to find out exactly what’s out there these days:  the good, bad, and ugly in kids’ picture books that are based around photos.  But not in that order!

Books illustrated with photos tend to come from the non-fiction end of the spectrum… but not entirely, as we’ll see in a couple of the examples below.  They can be found both in slick professionally-published versions and some good, bad and loathsome self-pubbed editions.

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Three pitfalls of using online photos in your self-published kids’ book.

You may have noticed that there are lots and lots and LOTS of photos out there on the Internet… lots of which are free for the taking.  One source for beautiful free photos is Wikimedia Commons, so let’s start there, looking at how to find pictures and legally reuse them in your own project.

(top photo credit:  Nicolás García, Wikimedia)

Whatever you’re looking for, you can find it on Wikimedia.  Here’s a sample search I did, looking for pictures of fruit that I could use for this post (click to see all the great results!):

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikimedia.org+fruit&source=lnms&tbm=isch

Click to take a look and see the vast wealth that’s out there – all of it totally, absolutely free.  (And click here for Part 2, in which I round up the Good, the Bad and the UGLY of the types of kids’ books you can create using photos…)

But there’s a catch!  Well, 3, at least. 

You might see the wealth of free photos out there and start thinking, “hey, online photos are a promising way to avoid paying an illustrator.”  But “free” often has a price, so hold your horses for a minute. 

Let’s look at 3 of the most common pitfalls of using Wikimedia art… and then I’ll show you how you can avoid them, to take your book to the next level!

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‘Tis the season – write holiday books that don’t spell HUMBUG (Part 1 of 2)

What the heck is a holiday-books post doing here in April? And not just any post – this is Part 1 of a 2-part series. (Click here to read Part 2.)

Well, for one thing, not all of us celebrate our main holiday in December. Plus, if you’re thinking of writing or wrapping up a book aimed at the December holiday season, April is actually a great time to be planning it.

Certainly, when you’re in the thick of holiday excitement is NOT the time to think you can take time out to write your best work.

Since I myself have a major holiday coming up in 2 days, I have been procrastinating – big time. And you, my friends, are the big, big winners.

Here, in Part 1 of this 2-part series on “Writing Kids’ Holiday Books,” are some quick Do’s and Don’ts to help you get those holiday kids’-book juices flowing.

DO get fired up with holiday excitement

Figure out what you love the most about the holiday you’re writing about… and then capture that excitement on paper. (Well, monitor – but you know what I mean.)

Frankly, I’ve seen a lot of bad kids’ holiday books out there, many of them self-published (hint:

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Do talking animals make our kids dumb?

In case you don’t feel like reading on, the answer is no.

But the question has been raking up headlines all week anyway, thanks to a University of Toronto (my alma mater !  so proud !) study proving that they do. 

Or at least, kind of proving they do. 

As it turns out, what they’ve done says very little about children’s books – in particular, not much we have to pay attention to as writers or as parents.

But along the way we can have a bit of a laugh looking at the samples of the stories they used, and looking at examples of talking animals who help our kids learn… so keep right on reading!

The Claim:  Talking Animals Hinder Learning

These results indicate that anthropomorphized animals in books may not only lead to less learning but also influence children’s conceptual knowledge of animals. (read the full study here)

This kind of sensationalistic stuff adapts really well to headlines!

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The worst advice about writing: “a writer writes.”

In the movie Throw Momma from the Train, Billy Crystal’s memorable character, a frustrated writing teacher, used to intone wisely, “a writer writes… always.”

Probably the most common advice given to writers:  “writers write.”  It’s also balderdash.

Which you realize if you consider the flip side of the equation:  if you have written anything – an email, an excuse note for your kid’s teacher, a “Lost Kitten” poster – you’re automatically a writer.

Sometimes, even the best advice is wrong.  Like when you have a baby and everybody says, “sleep when the baby sleeps.”  Of course, it’s great advice in a universe where you have nothing else to do but look after the baby.

Better advice:  a writer writes… sometimes.

When I first saw the title of this QuickSprout blog post, A Simple Plan for Writing a Powerful Blog Post in Less Than 2 Hours (yeah, I read blogs about blogging, and QuickSprout is among the best!), I was horrified. 

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Two tips for older writers that Keith Richards will probably ignore – but you shouldn’t.

Keith Richards is writing a kids’ book, and frankly, I’m not all that excited.

Certainly, all the headlines make it seem like he’s performing brain surgery:  at 70, the Stones guitarist is a five-time grandfather himself already!  Stop the presses!  Bring in the Dalai Lama or the Nobel committee!

But no, I’m not excited, and it’s not because he’s 70, either.  I think you can write as good a kids’ book at 60, or 70, or 80, as anyone can in their 20s or 30s.  So that’s not the reason I’m not digging Keith’s new project – as I’ll explain below.

It’s true – you can write a great kids’ book at any age, if you keep these two key tips in mind to make sure you come up with something great.  Keith would do well to read these, but I honestly don’t think he will (hint: he’s not really planning to write the book himself).

Two tips for writers of a certain age

Here’s my open letter to Keith Richards, or any older writer:

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To snot or not to snot? (help me out here!)

This is a little more of a personal question than I usually share here, but I figure, what’s a community for, if not learning and growing together.

So here’s the thing:  I wrote a book.

Yay, me!  Right?

Thing #2:  It’s a rhyming book.

Thing #3:  The rhymes are good.  Yeah, I’m sure.  I’d be mighty proud of them, except for…

Thing #4:  The book is about… snot.

I made it up one day while fantasizing with my 6-year-old, who has allergies and also gets colds a LOT of the time.  He sniffles a LOT.  And I thought out loud – what if you could take a pill and just get rid of all that snot at once?

So I sat down and in a particularly boring Hebrew class, I dreamed up and wrote out the entire story – in verse.

Like I said, it’s good.  But also like I said, it’s about snot.

The trouble with snot, farts, etc

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Should you write a kids’ book? Take this 5-question Yes/No quiz!

Five questions:  that’s all it takes to figure out if you’re cut out for writing kids’ books.  Yes?  No?  Maybe so? 

Let’s get started!

1.  Do you have a billion brilliant story ideas and can’t wait to find a ghostwriter so you can hand them over (upon receipt of a signed non-disclosure and a promise of a share of the royalties) and get them back as fully-conceived stories ready to publish?

2.  Did you love a book you read as a kid so much that you want to write the exact same story, only way better than the original author ever could?  Except updated, with computers?  Or robots?  In set in the future, in outer space?  “It’ll be Little House on the Prairie – on Mars, with a robot butler, and hoverboards, like The Jetsons!”

3.  Does your kid love to draw so much

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