Writing for Young People: The Business of Creativity

By Hazel Edwards

Writing for Young People offers insight and advice to aspiring writers and educators on how to set up a writing business and the process of crafting projects centred around young readers.

Delving into important aspects such as workspace organisation, time and money management, and overcoming procrastination, 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amba Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781922607874

Hazel Edwards

Educator-author Hazel Edwards OAM has written books for children, teachers and adults. Her best-known publication is the children's picture book classic There's a Hippopotamus on Our Roof Eating Cake (1980), now a series of picture books, classroom play scripts, a musical stage production and a short movie.

Book preview

9781922607867.jpg

HAZEL EDWARDS

Writing

for Young

People

Second Edition

Acknowledgement

Goldie Alexander contributed to the first edition. She wrote historical fiction such as My Australian Story: Surviving Sydney Cove and her Mentoring Your Memoir was used by many family historians as a ‘how-to write’ text.

Published in 2023 by Amba Press, Melbourne, Australia.

www.ambapress.com.au

© Hazel Edwards 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was first published in 1998 by Hale & Iremonger Pty Ltd.

Cover design: Tess McCabe

Proofreader: Jason Chandra

ISBN: 9781922607867 (pbk)

ISBN: 9781922607874 (ebk)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Preparing to be a writer

Writing for the children’s book market

Keep contact with potential reader’s interests

Monitor literary trends

Research the market

Set up a home office and time to write

Take ideas from different mediums

Sequence of writing a book

Value of children’s bookshops

Exercises

Checklist

Chapter 2: Starting up a business

Establishing your audience

Stay informed with relevant topics

Use existing areas of expertise

Creating stories from real life experiences

Keep a writer’s notebook

Clip files and research

Networking for writers

Helpful hints

Exercises

Checklist

Chapter 3: Selling a manuscript

Research the market

Writing book proposals

Writing synopses

Organising a series

Exercises

Checklist

Chapter 4: Genres

Definitions

Differing kinds of genres

Writing romance

Exercise

Checklist

Chapter 5: Business plans

Attitude: Amateur or professional

Establish a timetable

Projected income

General stages of writing as a career

Handling different projects

Keep an open mind

Observe the opposition

Use the Internet

Handling stress

Relevant business services

Business basics

Networking

Hints

Exercises

Checklist

Chapter 6: Overcoming procrastination

Don’t start at chapter 1

Commit to a deadline

Switch between projects

Keeping relaxed

Writer-in-residency

Exercises

Checklist

Chapter 7: Working with multimedia

Definitions

Practitioners’ responses

Developing children’s games

Working in animation

Creating an author website

Edutainment

Children’s TV

Adaptation proposals: Picture book to stage production

How not to write for the latest medium

Exercises

Checklist

Chapter 8: Commercial scripting

Fostering interactivity with commercial scripting

TV scripting

FAQs of TV scripting

Other digital formats

Scripting for film

Scripting for puppet plays

Miming

Unusual scripting

Chapter 9: Educational scripting

Classroom scripts

Theatre in education

Scripting for audiobooks

Performance lyrics, rap and poetry

Shopping centres and street theatre

Hints for scripting plays

Scripting for documentaries

Novelisations

Fostering literacy with scripts

Exercise

Checklist

Chapter 10: Crafting a story

Crafting an intriguing plot

Structure

Creating your story’s characters

Creating a good opening

Voice and viewpoint

Language

Dialogue

Settings

Outlining chapters

Creating enticing endings

Word limit

Exercises

Checklist

Chapter 11: Non-fiction

Why write and cater to the non-fiction market?

Examples of non-fiction writing

Arranging a table of content

Examples of creating a table of contents

Exercises

Checklist

Chapter 12: A good title sells

Features of a good title

Exercises

Checklist

Chapter 13: Reworking and writing drafts

Clearing mental space

Redrafting

Helpful hints

Exercises

Checklist

Chapter 14: Marketing

Market research

Two types of marketing

Professional competence

Maintaining good practices

Marketing strategies

Creating a corporate image

Manuscript (MS) presentation

Exercises

Checklist

Chapter 15: Coping with rejection

Receiving rejection from publishers

Strategies for coping

Self-publishing

Join a writing group

Ethical dilemmas

Exercises

Checklist

Chapter 16: Collaborating and ghosting

Creating a successful collaboration

Aspects of unsuccessful collaborations

Collaborating online

Pointers for productive partnerships

Ghost writers

Exercise

Checklist

Chapter 17: Reviews, critics and the media

Dealing with reviews, listings and critics

Blurbs

Learning to become media worthy

Websites and social media

Fan letters

Writer-on-location

Exercises

Checklist

Chapter 18: Agents and international sales

Literary agents

International sales

Translations and foreign rights

Works which travel well

Merchandising

Electronic rights and IP

Professional help

Exercises

Checklist

Glossary: The A to Z of writing for young people

Appendix

Tips for school students writing their own books

A historical gift: Writing for children in your extended family

Introduction

Authors need a good story to share, but also be aware of the changing media world in which their readers live. That’s why educators who are working daily with youth of the age for which they want to write, are already researching. They know their potential readership. The challenge is to write well, in new formats, including visuals, with appropriate humour and NOT be earnestly boring.

Recently, formats have changed SO fast that even the words multimedia and multicultural have been superseded. AI has caused major disruption within the industry. Sensitivity readers are now required to make books more accessible. Cultural appropriation issues continue to occur.

Children’s books emphasise writing in a businesslike but creatively satisfying way for adolescent audiences as well as your target community. Project planning, time and energy management, and markets are all covered in this book.

Many adult creators are seeking literary self-employment so proposals, examples, strategies and checklists, are provided. But the writing techniques are also relevant to share with child writers and illustrators too.

This book features:

Relevant exercises

Checklists at the end of each chapter

Activities and lessons to be used by groups or individuals working in isolation

Relevant materials that are used within tertiary writing courses.

Creativity is the fun of putting together unexpected ideas. 

– Hazel Edwards

CHAPTER 1

Preparing to be a writer

Writing for the children’s book market

Writing for children is a technical challenge. Although the story should look easy to read, it has likely undergone countless revisions and drafts. Deceptive simplicity is the norm.

Being a children’s author is more difficult than writing for adults. A child’s response is immediate and honest. If the story is boring or fails to capture the child’s imagination, the prospective listener or reader will yawn and tune out.

Competition is keen. Book authors vie with TV, computer games, digital entertainment and smart devices. Of course, the alternative option is to write for these mediums too. Being multi-skilled and adaptable is essential to thrive in the children’s book business. Regardless of format, the ideas, visuals, and writing have to attract and retain the reader’s interest.

Many teachers have transitioned to part-time or even full-time authors because of their familiarity with children’s genuine interests.

So why do writers persist with their craft? Most writers write to be read, and they also write for themselves. Few writers earn a fortune, but the luxury of creativity can reap numerous rewards such as:

Making imaginary worlds

Presenting moral dilemmas

Developing and emphasising characterisation

Engaging the emotions

Inventing exciting plots and settings.

Much is written about ‘the book’ becoming redundant. In the future, the story’s means of presentation may alter – for example, digital readers in place of paper pages – but the content still needs to be created by authors and idea mongers, even in times of generative artificial intelligence (AI).

To help you focus on what sort of content works (and what doesn’t) consider the following:.

Do you have a favourite author? Think about any book you loved and read as a child. Why do you remember it?

Was it because you could identify with the character’s feelings?

Did the story explore a situation with which you could empathise?

Did it contain a heroic quest, standing up to bullies, talking to others, making friends?

Did it help you cope in some other way? Were there times when you wanted to lose yourself in another world?

Remember the reassurance felt from reading about others? The comfort of knowing you were not alone in an often-difficult world, knowing that you could gain vicarious experience from what you read, even if you didn’t know what the word ‘vicarious’ meant then!

Writing for children isn’t a licence to preach, nor is it bibliotherapy. If you intend your story to carry a heavy moral message, this is propaganda, not children’s literature.

Keep contact with potential reader’s interests

Unless you are planning to write historical fiction set in the period when you grew up, with a character of your own gender, interests and hobby (which will save time and effort but for one story only), you will need to do some research.

Find out what children are currently interested in. Your own children might not be interested in the same typical things as other children. If you don’t have any children, explore and do some investigation. Try to note down details about their lifestyles, hobbies, emotions, relationships, and dreams. All of these will be helpful in grasping a better understanding of your readers and what their needs are. Here are some tips to get you started:

Talk and get to know children, e.g., your friends’ children, not just your relatives.

Listen very carefully to phrasing and content.

Eavesdrop, but call it research.

Read what contemporary writers are publishing.

Find out what your target age