Tone is the overall feel of a story. Does this sound depressed, joyful, or hopeful?

Beyond that, though, tone can determine the audience for your story. One of the main differences between a middle grade and YA, or a YA and an adult story, is the tone of the piece. Tone reflects the author’s attitude toward the characters, the plot, the setting, and the theme of the story.

One of the easiest ways to signal tone and, as a result, audience is to control your sentence structure. A simplistic explanation would say that simple sentences are for younger audiences, while longer sentences are for older. But that’s too simplistic.

Tone of a Picture Book

It is true that picture book language is simpler, but it’s not necessarily simplistic.

Clarity is paramount. You can—I love to do this—interrupt a sentence with another sentence. When I was teaching college level courses and taught this sentence construction, one student came back to class and reported that her three year old daughter had done this. Even young kids talk in complex ways. But the connections from sentence to sentence must be absolutely clear. Using lots of introductory clauses, even when well used, can be confusing. Instead, be simple and direct. Make sure everything is clear.

Tone of a Middle Grade

The tone here is more complex and respectful. Never take the tone of talking down to a “little kid.” For sentence structures, you’ll still want to be clear, easy to understand. You can take more detours, for example, explaining a character’s motivations, or describing in more detail. But the tone is honest, open, fun, entertaining. Simple sentences are complemented by compound and complex sentences.

Tone of a Young Adult (YA)

The difference here is that, besides a full range of sentence structures, the attitude is more irreverent, questioning, “edgy.” This may mean experimentation with sentence fragments, POV, invented words, jargon—including cursing, lists, long sentences with plenty of semi-colons. The mandate here is freshness, in content and in presentation (your sentences).

A great book to shake up your grammar is Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guild to Bold, Contemporary Style by Arthur Plotnik.

Tone of an Adult Story or Novel

The adult story has sophistication, nuances and maturity as hallmarks of its tone, regardless of genre. The full range of sentence structures can and should be present and you may use whatever is appropriate for your story. For a brush-up on sentence structure possibilities, read this book.

This isn’t a call for simple sentences for picture books.
I write picture books.
I write easy picture books
I write boring picture books.

This is a call to make sure that in the tone—especially in how sentences affect tone—is a crucial part of your decision making as you write a story. Examine your typical sentence structures and shake it up some!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Over at Playing by the Books, the UK blogger (bilingual Dutch/English), is talking about picture books. The UK Secretary for Education, Michael Gove has suggested that kids read at least 50 books a year.

Playing by the Books took up the challenge:

I approached six brilliant UK-based illustrators and asked them to contribute towards a list of books every child should be read. Tim Hopgood, James Mayhew, Jan Pieńkowski, Katie Cleminson, Viviane Schwarz and Clara Vulliamy all very gamely accepted my challenge of producing a list of 10 or so books each that they love.

The result is this post:
50+ picture books every child should be read – a non-prescriptive list for inspiration

In a follow-up, though, Playing by the Books realized that many of the books on the list were classics. She wondered what a list might look like if the titles were restricted to the last five years.

To help me in this quest I turned to this year’s winners of the Booktrust New Best Illustrators Award. These illustrators “represent the best rising talent in the field of illustration today, [they] demonstrate remarkable creative flair, artistic skill and boundless imagination in their work“, so who better to ask for some suggestions as to the best, fresh picture books?

Here’s the list of 49 recent, recommended books:
49 brilliant picture books from the past 5 years as chosen by award winning illustrators

Yes, these are UK books, but what a visual feast both these lists are. The short descriptions are instructive, too, in how to pitch a picture book.

What books, published in the last five years in the US, would YOU recommend?

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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12 Updated Resources for 2011

1. State of the industry. First, a basic question: Are picture books dead? Not according to Karen Springen and PW.
   Don’t Write the Obit For Picture Books Yet, By Karen Springen, Dec 12, 2010
2. Writing Encouragement. Natl Pic Book Writing Week May 1-7, 2011

   National Picture Book Writing Week is a take off on the National Novel Writing Month and encourages writers to work on children’s picture book manuscripts.

Basic Resources for Writing Children’s Picture Books

3. 30 Days to a Stronger Picture Book. Children’s picture book author, Darcy Pattison has 30 posts about how-to write a children’s picture book. Answers questions like, where do I find an illustrator? (You don’t! See why.)
   This is also available as an ebook.
   
   
   
4. Getting Started: The Basics of Children’s Writing and Illustrating, by Harold Underdown
   Introductory information for people wanting to get published as a children’s book writer or illustrator in the United States, by former editor.
5. Picture Book Editing Checklist

Authors on How-to Write a Children’s Picture Book

6. So You Want to Write a Picture Book–advice from author Mem Fox.
7. Nancy Antle on Writing Children’s Literature: Interview about Dos and Don’ts of Writing Picture Books.

Philip Bell: Capturing Childhood Magic With Picture Books

Updated Information on Self Publishing a Picture Book

8. Why I’ve Switched to CreateSpace for Picture Books, by Aaron Shepard

   Long-time self-publisher has insider knowledge about various POD options and explains why he’s switching to Amazon’s CreateSpace.

How to Write a Rhyming Picture Book

9. How To Write a Rhyming Picture Book and Get it Published — Part 1: A Writer’s Perspective.
10. How To Write a Rhyming Picture Book and Get it Published — Part 2: A Publisher’s Perspective.
11. How To Write a Rhyming Picture Book and Get It Published — Part 3: A Reader’s Perspective.
12. 
    Write a Rhyming Picture Book blog article, by author Patricia Thomas

Other Posts about Picture Books on Fiction Notes

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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When you write kids’ books, there’s often a parent component. Duh. Kids have parents. So what?

Get Rid of Adults

One recommendation for dealing with parents is to get rid of them. Send them out of town for work; get rid of at least one parent through death, divorce or neglect; stick them in the background and barely mention them. There’s good reason to suggest getting rid of parents. After all, a main character MUST solve his/her own problems and a well-meaning parent could ruin your story.

Family Stories

But what if this is a family story? As I said last week, I’m reading through Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence, a book about the Briggs-Meyers types of personalities and Chapter 8 was an amazing revelation. It’s about Parenting!

Personality Type as a Child. It goes through an explanation of how a basic personality type would be played out as a child. An Idealist Child (NF, including INFT, INFP, ENFT, ENFP) would be soulful, emotional and self-examining.

Personality Type as a Parent. Likewise, the parenting style of the different types is explained. An Artisan Parent (SP, including ISPN, ESPN, ISPT, ESPT) has a hands-off style, letting kids learn lessons on their own.

Combination of Parent-Child. What happens when one personality style is in charge of another, like in the parent-child relationship? They might clash, or they might bring out the best in each other. For example an Artisan Parent (SP) and an Idealist (NF) kid is explained like this:

Although they can have some trouble understanding each other, Artisan parents can be valuable models for their Idealist children. NF kids tend to get lost in abstraction and a self-absorbed search for meanings and portents , and the SP’s warm embrace of immediacy can be an important lesson for them. p.277

You may not want to be so strict in figuring out what personality type the parents and kids actually are (though it does help with character development). But it’s interesting reading through the different types of interaction between kids/parents. Of course, this is the “nature” part of the equation and you’ll want to add the “nurture” part through your story.

Personally, I try to get rid of parents. I agree that’s best. But sometimes–often, for me–the story is partly ABOUT that parent-child relationship. Especially for middle grade novels, parents and a kid’s relationship to them is extremely important. In those cases, this is a good resource for figuring out where the conflicts might lie and how to exploit the conflict for an exciting story.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Critiques lead to Zine

Guest post by Anne Marie Pace

The members of our critique group, The Funky Ducklings, had known each other online for years, but July, 2008, was the first time most of us were able to meet in real-life. After a year of planning, we finally came together with some other writer friends at the Highlights Foundation’s facility in Boyds Mill, Pennsylvania. We came from all over the United States and Canada, and one member even came from Brazil.

As the week progressed, a schedule evolved in which we wrote on our own during the day, but at 4:00 each afternoon, we met to talk about our writing and about books. This sharing time became special to us, and even after our time in Pennsylvania had ended, we maintained contact through email and continued talking about books we love. All of us have kids, and sharing wonderful books with kids was something we did easily as parents and as writers (and for some of us, as teachers or homeschoolers).

Extending the Book Talk

In the spring of 2010, we embarked on a new adventure together–we began to publish our free email monthly newsletter, The 4:00 Book Hook. It was a logical step, both in terms of broadening our book conversation and sharing our writing with others (both our book talks and our own published books). We planned to provide quality content about quality books of all genres—picture books, chapter books, middle-grade and young adult novels, nonfiction for all ages, and poetry, as well as activities that extend the reading experience. Thus we launched our first issue in May, 2010, and we’ve published monthly since then.

You might ask why The 4:00 Book Hook is different from any other online review source. It’s true that each issue covers one of our own books. If a person reads that book as a result of learning about it from our newsletter, of course we are thrilled. But we don’t want the Book Hook to be an advertisement; rather, it’s a labor of love–an extension of our own book talk and our experiences with our kids and books.

Each issue contains:

• ARTICLES
  - For example, we’ve included an interview with fathers about reading to their children and an essay about choosing facts to be included and omitted in non fiction books
• REVIEWS
  - Each issue has a full page of book reviews, plus lengthier book review features linked to activities or websites of interest.
• LINKS
  - There are too many wonderful resources. We’ve done some of the work for you so you don’t have to face Google. We’ve linked to great sites about NASA, building submarines, animal enrichments, teacher guides–the list is as eclectic as our issues.
• EASY ACTIVITIES OR RECIPES
  - Honey dingies, Brazilian cheese bread, and nature bracelets are just the tip of the iceberg!

We’re aiming for the best of both worlds–both book talk and the fun reading brings to our lives.

We’ve been amazed at how quickly our readership has grown; our audience consists of parents, grandparents, teachers, librarians, homeschoolers and writers. And we’ve been thrilled at the response.

Sample Issues: Download sample issues of The 4:00 Book Hook, at http://www.annemariepace.com/Site/The_4_00_Book_Hook.html

Subscribe: Just send an email to thebookhook@gmail.com. No subject line or content required.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Brenda Sturgis reports on the top literary agents for selling picture books in this recent post. Let’s talk about this report.

Top Literary Agents for Picture Books

Self Reported Statistics. The statistics for Sturgis’s report was compiled from reported sales on Publisher’s Marketplace. This is a big caution because sales on PM self-reported. I know from talking to friends that their agents (some of those listed in the report) have had sales, but they weren’t reported on PM. In other words, agents select the sales to report and tend to report only the “hot” sales or the “big” sales. Sales to smaller houses or those without large advances tend to be under-reported.

Top Picture Book Agent. No surprise: Brenda Bowen, former editor and editorial director of various imprints during her time is the top selling agent of picture books with nineteen reported deals. (Read her blog; her agency.) She is very selective in her clients, because she can be. Her industry contacts makes her network amazing and she’s working it apparently.

19 down to 3. While Bowen has 19 reported deals, number 20 on the list, Stephen Chudney only reported 3 deals in the last year. If this holds true, then an agent who sells 2-3 picture book deals per year is doing a stellar job.

But again, remember, this is based on SELF-REPORTED DEALS. We really don’t know how valid these statistics are. And, overall the top twenty agents for picture book deals reported 119 total sales. Those will probably be some of the top picture books published in the nest few years.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Ebook: How to Write a Children’s Picture Book

It started out as 30 Days to a Stronger Picture Book. But now, (drum roll, please), it’s an Ebook. Expanded from it’s original format, it now includes new sections on writing rhymed verse for a picture book, and many examples of different types of texts.

How to Write a Children’s Picture Book includes 36 self-paced lessons on every aspect of writing, editing and selling your children’s picture book.

Basics of Writing a Children’s Picture Book

Start your journey toward publishing by studying the basics of children’s picture books: number of pages, word count, audience, setting, characters, words, messages, morals, themes, voice and more.

The Unique Writing Process for a Children’s Picture Book

Once you understand the basic structure of a children’s picture book, it’s time to choose a topic and write your first draft. Learn topics to avoid and perennial topics. Special techniques for editing your picture book manuscript are also covered.

Typical Picture Book Genres

If you want to write a specific type of children’s picture book, you’ll find tips here for humor, rhyming text, poetry collections, picture book mystery, picture book biography, creative non-fiction picture book, and the ABC picture book.

How to Submit Your Children’s Picture Book

Your story is done? Learn the biggest mistake people make when submitting to a children’s book publisher and how you can avoid it. How do you find the name of an editor? What about self-publishing?

Download your pdf immediately.
Order NOW!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Does Your Story Need a Tragic Death?

A friend was talking to me about stories in which a child dies. he asked, “Is a child’s death in a novel just a cheap narrative device?”

Well, it depends.

• Depth of Characterization. How well do we know the character? Do we know and care for the child? Does the story involve the child and his/her hopes dreams in any way? If we care for a character, we’ll be more likely to be emotionally affected by the death; and it will seem more like a part of the story and not just a cheap narrative device.
• Minor v. Major characters. If a minor child character dies, a throw-away character, the audience won’t care much, unless you’ve given the character big eyes with long eyelashes. But even that bit of specificity in the middle of a scene might not make the reader care. Because it’s a kid, it may be worth some shock value, and killing a kid simply for shock value does count as a cheap narrative trick.
• Suffering, jeopardy, suspense. Has the character suffered or does this come out of nowhere? Orson Scott Card talks about jeopardy, putting a character into a position where there is danger, and suspense, holding back only what happens next. It may be enough to put a child in increasing jeopardy, where things are dangerous, but the character must still act. Or, it may be enough to built a suspenseful scene where we worry about what happens next. Some death scenes could be replaced with either of these and still be effective
• Symbolism of a child’s death. Does the death of a child represent the loss of innocence and faith in the future? Depends. How did you set up the symbolism of THIS child? I don’t think you can generalize here, because the language used to describe the child, the actions of the plot – these can all affect symbolism. To say that a child’s death always equals loss of innocence is too glib an answer.
• Author’s Tolerance for Death. When Leslie dies in Bridge to Terabithia, it’s tragic and awful; I didn’t feel like the author had tried to manipulate my feelings, it was just a horrible accident. But I once went to a conference where an author was talking about the death of a child when it occurs in a story. The author said she hated going to schools, where kids would inevitably ask, “Why did so-and-so have to die?”

  Tired of the plaintive question, she decided to never write another story for kids in which a child died. She was in the process of writing a story where a baby was sick and in the hospital. With her decision made, she started working on the next chapter and wrote, “The baby opened her eyes.”

  Was she protecting herself from the questions? Was she protecting her audience from the emotional depths to which stories can take a reader? Was she protecting the baby? I don’t know.

In the end, you have to decide where you and your stories will fall: will you allow tragedies, even to the point of death; or will you hold back to protect yourself, your readers and your characters? What does the story tell you to do?

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

One main reason to attend a national conference is to meet editors, listen to how they describe their lists, and find out what they are looking for. Attendees are usually offered an opportunity to submit for a short period of time, even if the house policy is no unsolicited manuscripts.

Needs Contemporary, Upper Middle Grade and YA

Jennifer B. Greene, Senior Editor at Clarion Books (an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Children’s Books) talks fast and passionately about the books she has published.

Clarion’s submission policy: Open to unsolicited, but will not respond unless interested. Do not include an SASE. NO email submissions. Greene adds that personally, she’s not a fan of query letters, but would rather see the entire fiction manuscript. For nonfiction, she needs to see a detailed proposal with sample chapters. Be aware, though, that for a first contract with an author, Clarion wants to see a completed nonfiction manuscript.

She handed out a long list of books that she has edited, or wishes she has edited. Like many other editors, she looks for fresh, distinctive and original books.

Specific needs:

• Preschool Picture books. Quirky & subversive, with illustrations that have vintage appeal. No bedtime stories. Books shouldn’t be for adults for should reflect the early experience of preschool or early elementary kids.
• Multicultural. Only 2 % of books feature Latino characters, yet our population has many bilingual families. Asian folktales, especially if they affirm our shared humanity.
• Nonfiction picture books. These are often for upper elementary students. Would like to see something on the topics of art, food, architecture, design.
• Nonfiction for older readers. Wide variety of nonfiction topics and biographies.
• Fiction. For either middle grade or YA readers, Greene looks for character oriented stories. Emotionally true. Not fast-paced action. Would like to see something in an alternate universe, apocalyptic stories, life after death. By or about emigres, especially India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Something that includes the clash of cultures.

Does NOT want to see

• Rhymed picture books
• Picture books written for adults instead of kids
• No mass market ideas.
• For historical fiction, setting is secondary to characters. Make sure it’s a character driven, literary story.
• Chick-ick
• Romance
• Sports

There is MORE from the Conference coming this week! Subscribe to Revision Notes by Email.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

What does a career in writing look like?

Take these examples:

• Author A: Has served in a leadership role for a writing organization for many years and is an inspiration to many people. She has published three picture books with major publishers. But in the end, she hates the sales and marketing part of writing, the need to constantly push for attention. She now uses her hard-won skills to be a writing coach and is excited that she’s found a comfortable place to use her skills and help people, her real passion.
• Author B: Has written thirty non-fiction books for educational publishers and stays steadily busy with the education work. She supports herself with her work and while she hopes to break into bigger publishers, she’s happy with her steady stream of books.
• Author C: Has written about a dozen series work-for-hire books, has now moved on to writing her own novels for smaller publishers and is working to break into a major publisher. She hopes for a breakout novel sometime in the near future.
• Author D: Writes for local newspapers, company newsletters, and any other freelance work she can find. In her spare time (Ha! What spare time?), she has written a humorous YA novel and found an agent who sold it to a major publisher. She is trying to work on a second novel, but her family needs the income from the freelance work, so it’s hard to work in the time for fiction.
• Author E: Has sold four picturebooks to major publishers and they’ve done well. But her heart is in novels–she sold one which didn’t do well and now, she can’t sell to another to anyone. She spends lots of time writing novels which don’t sell and a little time writing picturebooks which do sell.
• Author F: Has two nonfiction books out with a major publisher and hopes to do more with them. She dabbles with picturebooks, but can’t get the voice right.
• Author G: Worked eight years for a major publisher as an editor. She has now sold two YA novels and quit work to spend more time with her growing family and on future novels.
• Author H: Has sold some non-fiction and a couple novels to a small publisher and, while she still submits to larger publishers now and then, she is happy to stay with the smaller publisher because they give her more attention.
• Author I: Has sold over 250 magazine articles to children’s magazines, taught writing, and worked with local authors. But she can’t sell that first book.
• Author JK: Her first book, about a boy wizard, hit big time and has become a world wide phenomenon, and many other books in the series. JK is a millionaire.

Well, as you probably can see, these are descriptions of people I know. Which career would you rather have? It may be easy to put down on paper what you want your career to look like, but the everyday pressures of family and other jobs may hamper how easily you can fulfill those dreams.
Add to that the realities of a crowded marketplace, where your writing has to shine. What is realistic?

How do you plan a career?

First, it is reasonable to write down your career goals. Don’t be shy about dreaming big or about being content with a smaller, slower career path. Then, decide what needs to happen for that career dream to become true? For example, let’s say you want to have a novel out in five years. Then, you’re on the One-Page-a-Day plan. For this plan, you write one page a day, five days a week (Saturday and Sunday off), fifty weeks a year (two-weeks vacation). At the end of a year, you should have 240 pages written, or a nice sized novel. Then another year for revisions and eighteen months to two years for marketing. What Plan will help you meet your goals?

Decide what help you need and plan ways to attend workshops or conferences where you can get help with characterization, plotting, setting a scene, etc. If a favorite editor will be at the conference and you can get a manuscript critique with them, do it. Find ways to do what it takes to make your dream-career come true.

Plan for success. But along the way, honor EVERY success: honor every decision of what direction to go next; honor every honest effort to write; honor each writer for finding a way to use their talents, whether in encouragement, teaching, writing work-for-hire, writing educational nonficiton, writing trade nonfiction, writing for magazines, writing fiction for any size publisher.
No two careers will ever look alike, of course. What will your career look like?

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win