During
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo),
thousands of people work on writing a rough draft of a novel in a month of
November. For those of you who write for younger children, November is also Picture
Book Idea Month (PiBoIdMo). There
the goal is to come up with a new picture book idea every day. These challenges
may sound intimidating, but they are widely popular.
Why?
Well, taking on an intensive challenge for a month has several advantages. The
most obvious is that it very quickly gives you material to develop. You can get
a jump start on a new novel, or brainstorm a few dozen picture books ideas to
pursue (though not all will be worth developing).
The
time pressure forces you to put aside your editor and critic hats and instead
focus on getting words on paper. This helps some people avoid the insecurity
that can come with starting a new project, or the temptation to endlessly edit
the first few chapters instead of moving forward. For picture book writers,
having a lot of new ideas allows you to choose the best one, so you don’t waste
time on a mediocre idea.
It
encourages you to schedule writing time – plenty of it, every week. It’s easier
to give up TV, reading, and other hobbies for a single month. It’s also easier
to get family members to adjust their schedule to yours if you are requesting a
favor for a month, not forever. (You may even discover that your family, and
the world, can function with less of your attention than you thought. Even if
you can’t devote the same amount of time to writing after November, maybe you
can carve out some time every week.)
Finally,
both challenges have a strong sense of community. You can network with other
writers, encourage each other, and find inspiring blog posts or helpful tips to
keep you moving for your project.
Are
You in?
If
you want to be ready to write a novel in November, it’s best to start
brainstorming and planning in advance. My next few posts will discuss finding
and developing ideas. In November I'll have a couple of posts on PiBoIdMo. For NaNo writers, you can bookmark
this site and stop by to check out the writing tips on everything from
developing characters to building to a strong climax. (Scroll down to see the
labels on the right-hand side.) Then check back in March for editing tips
during National Novel Editing Month (NaNoEdMo).
The
following is excerpted from You Can Write for Children: How to Write Great Stories, Articles, and
Books for Kids and Teenagers. The book
is available for the Kindle,
in paperback,
or in Large
Print paperback. That book and Advanced Plotting will provide
lots of help as you write and edit.
Finding Ideas
Ideas are everywhere, including in our
own lives. Of course, even the most exciting events may lack important story
qualities such as character growth and strong plots. (Those qualities are
covered in detail in You Can Write for Children.) Still,
personal and family experiences can provide the raw material to be molded into
publishable stories and articles.
Amy Houts wrote Down on the Farm, about a girl on a farm vacation who wants to ride
a horse but must do chores first. Houts was
inspired by her own experiences, though not by a specific episode. “I was one
of those horse-crazy girls,” she says. “I knew how a girl could long to ride a
horse.”
Sometimes the smallest nugget can inspire
a story. Susan Uhlig says, “My teen daughters and friends went on a mission
trip to do a building project. The man overseeing the project was disappointed
that there were no boys. I played the writer game of ‘what if?’ What if the man
wouldn’t let the team stay because they were all girls? That developed into a
short story very easily – what he would say, my main character girl would do,
how the problem would be solved, etc.” The story sold to Brio.
Personally, I sold a story to Highlights based on the experience of
finding frogs all over my neighborhood after a rainstorm. They also bought a
historical story about the Mayan ballgame. That story, and my Mayan historical
novel The Well of Sacrifice, were inspired
by visiting Mayan ruins in Mexico and Central America.
Realistic,
Not Real
Sometimes real life translates well into
fiction – though a twist may make it more fun for children. Leslie Helakoski
says, “My picture book, Big Chickens,
is about all the things I was afraid of when young and I’d go into the woods with
my brothers and sisters. I just turned us all into chickens and played with the
language.”
Caroline Hatton drew on school and home
memories of growing up in Paris for her middle-grade novel, Véro and Philippe. Yet she did not
simply write a memoir. “I wanted to write about a pet snail because I kept one
in a shoebox in my family’s apartment in Paris. But in my real life, my big
brother left me and my pet snail alone – not much of a story, is it? So in the
book, I made the brother threaten to eat the snail, as escargot.”
Characters and outcomes may also change,
Hatton points out. “My brother rigged a thing to scare me in the middle of the
night. But in the book, I swapped roles, and it’s the little sister who does it
to her big brother. Sharing this with kids makes them howl with the pleasure of
revenge.”
Houts adds, “Most of the time I have to
twist the reality of an experience so my story can include all the elements of
good storytelling: a contrast of characters; a goal the main character strongly
desires to reach; and believable obstacles the main character needs to overcome
to reach her goal. Time needs to be cut down to a day or two [for a picture
book]. That condenses the action and makes the story more focused.”
Author Renee Heiss says, “Use your life
story as the skeleton, and then flesh it out with period details, colorful
dialogue, and tons of sensory imagery to place your young readers into the time
period and setting. It’s not enough to tell what happened; you must show your
readers your story and immerse them into your life as if they were a sibling
growing up with you.”
Asking friends and family members to
share stories can provide ideas, while allowing you to turn the story into your
own creation. Uhlig didn’t witness the mission trip firsthand. “That freed me
up to create problem, action, dialogue, etc. without being stuck on what really
happened,” she says.
You can “borrow” stories from history and
the news as well. I found an interesting tidbit in a history of Washington
State. A teenage boy had met bank robbers in the woods, and for some reason he
told nobody about them. Why? This question, and my imagined answers to it,
became my YA survival suspense Bandits Peak.
You
Can Write for Children: How to
Write Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers is available for the Kindle, in paperback,
or in Large
Print paperback.
AdvancedPlotting is available in print or ebook at Amazon and Barnes
& Noble, or in various ebook formats at Smashwords.
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