Recently I attended an event on how to get your children's or young adult's books published. There were some points upon which all the speakers agreed:
* If you're writing a picture book, don't commission illustrations for it yourself and don't worry about suggesting who should illustrate it. Even more importantly, don't accompany it with drawings by your nephew, who is quite good at drawing for someone who is only twelve. The publishers will match your work with the artist they think is the best choice to illustrate it.
* Again for picture books, leave something for the illustrator to do. You can describe what the illustration should show when that's not obvious from the wording. For instance, your text might say, "The frog grew and grew." Your note in parenthesis might specify, The frog grows to the size of the house. That lets the picture tell part of the story--rather than writing "The frog grew and grew until he was the size of the house." Let both text and picture tell the story.
* Don't use current slang. It goes out of fashion quickly and by the time your book comes out that phrase every child is using today may be long gone.
* Don't write down to children. They can detect a patronising tone and they hate it.
* Don't be afraid to include a few words that may not yet be in their vocabulary. However, make sure it's easy to figure out the word's meaning from the context or the illustration.
* As with other kinds of writing, read extensively in the genre. This is not so you can try to fit in with a trend, but to get a general idea of what kids are reading, the vocabulary being used for your target age group, and so on. Also talk to kids about what they like to read.
Not adhering to these guidelines dooms a good fifty percent of submissions so if you do follow them you'll be ahead of the competition.
(Why not make writing a children's book your goal for the first half of next year? You can do it with guidance from my online Writing Breakthrough Strategy Program. To find out more, see http://WritingBreakthroughStrategy.com - if you have any problems with signing up there please email me at [email protected]).
