In an article in the Sunday Times, London, successful children's author Giles Andreae reveals some of the secrets of writing children's books (my additional comments are in brackets).
The two most important elements, he says, are substance and charm. By 'substance' he means that the book has to have some kind of message that will grab attention--but not come off as a sermon or homily.
[Usually writers employ some kind of metaphor to get their point across, so instead of adults there might be giants, and instead of a naughty boy stealing cookies, it might be a naughty young chimp stealing bananas, etc.]
He points out, "verse is difficult because of translation issues, creating memorable characters is important because you can develop a series, and a narrative structure is crucial in order to play an emotional arc within the reader.
[Creating memorable characters means you have to go beyond the all-purpose Little Mouse or Kitty Kat you might use when making up bedtime stories for your children or grandchildren--publishers groan at the appearance of yet another little mouse.
A successful series is a goldmine for the publisher. Consider, for example, the 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' line of 13 books, augmented by puzzles, games, toys, the movie, etc. If your idea has series potential, you don't want to have your character grow up or transform or do anything else too permanent at the end of the first one!]
As for the narrative structure, Andreae says he discovered it in a how-to book and describes it this way:
1. Create a character with a fault that makes him likeable.
2. Give him something extremely hard to do but that he really wants to do.
3. Set him on the path to doing it, but throw more and more obstacles in his way.
4. Finally, let him do it in the most spectacular way possible.
As he points out, this is also the basic structure of a lot of movies. He also says, though, that his latest book, "More Pants" breaks the rules: it's in verse, there are no characters, and there's no narrative structure. Well, when you're as successful as he has been with books like "Rumble in the Jungle," and you're Britain's best-selling contemporary cartoonist-poet (in the guise of "Purple Ronnie" and "Edward Monkton") they let you break the rules.
If you're going to the Oxford Literary Festival, you can hear Giles Andreae and illustrator Nick Sharratt talk about "Pants" on Saturday, March 24 at 11.30 and 2pm.
