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.

Enter to win

YA for Dummies and Prairie Storms

What sounds does a ground hog make? An earless lizard? A burrowing owl? Six months ago, I had no idea!

August, 2011 Release

Written by Deborah Halverson, founder of the writer’s advice website DearEditor.com, it has great advice on writing and publishing a teen novel. Deborah edited young adult and children’s fiction with Harcourt Children’s Books before picking up a pen to write the award-winning teen novels Honk If You Hate Me and Big Mouth.

The book is filled with great features, including:

• tips for targeting an audience, finding an angle that’ll make the story stand out, and writing a killer hook
• an extensive chapter on self-marketing to help writers move boldly into the realm of self-promotion–including book trailers
• techniques and exercises to shape plot, create teen-friendly characters, develop a convincingly youthful voice, write natural dialogue, and use setting to illuminate characters and plot
• 13 National Book Award winners and finalists, Newbery medalists and honorees, and other award-winning luminaries sharing their insights
• self-editing tools to transform a first draft into a strong submission-ready final draft
• insider tips for finding the right agent and/or editor and preparing a stand-out submission package
• answers to common book contract questions
• advice on self-publishing for YA writers

Read more at DearEditor.com

Finding Audio for a Book Trailer

To anticipate the release of Prairie Storms and celebrate the release of Writing Young Adult Fiction for Dummies, I’m debuting the Prairie Storms book trailer here today.

As the author of The Book Trailer Manual, I had some simple ideas on where to find public domain sounds and inexpensive audio tracks.

Sound Track. First, I knew that I wanted a sound track to back up the animal sounds. Jeremy Doss, my nephew, is a talented film composer with experience in creating the musical moods needed to accompany and enhance images. A graduate of Film Score program an University of Southern California, he also writes music for video games and other uses.

We talked about what sort of music I needed and Jeremy was fantastic to work with. Contact him at jersam1995@sbcglobal.net

Animal Sounds – FREE. Second, I needed audio of the sounds made by each animal. Any time I need audio or video for animals in the United States, I start at the Fish and Wildlife Multimedia Library. The government agency provides public domain multimedia, free for public use. Here, I found great audio for the American Bison and the Bald Eagle. However, none of the other animals had sound tracks.

Animal Sounds – Inexpensive. My next stop was www.SoundDogs.com, a site which has a wide variety of audio clips. Amazingly, they had every other sound I needed, except the ground hog. For these clips, I looked for short audio clips with clear sounds of the animal involved. You can sort by the length of a clip and I was looking for the shortest possible: I knew I wanted the whole video about one minute in length, so I would only need a 4-5 second sound clip for any one animal. I searched and listened to clips and made decisions. One disappointment was that the earless lizard had no sound; indeed, most lizards don’t make any sounds. I finally decided to go with a clip of a lizard running on wood as the most likely option.

After I put all the sounds into the shopping cart, I was a bit afraid to look at the total. It was a pleasant surprise to see that I had only spent about $20.

Ask Permission from Private Party. Then, there was that pesky ground hog. Fortunately, I found www.hoghaven.com, a site specifically about ground hogs, and they had a dozen sound clips of ground hogs. I wrote the site owner, explained the project and asked permission to use one of the sounds. They were gracious enough to give permission. That gave me the last sound that I needed.

Creating the Book Trailer for Prairie Storms

With Kathleen Rietz’s (www.kathleenrietz.com) watercolor images from the Prairie Storm book and the sounds, I set to work. I use Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum (http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiope) to edit my video. No, it’s not a free program like PhotoStory, it has lots of flexibility and options. I searched and searched for a program when I started doing book trailers, until I came to Vegas. Here’s what sold me on this program: they have extensive tutorials right at your fingertips, built into the main screen. The learning curve for this program was minimal compared to anything else I tried, an hour instead of four or five.

To create this trailer, I made some decisions:
The trailer would run about one minute.
With twelve animals that meant about 4 seconds per animal, with the remaining time going to the opening screen and credits.

I set up the program with markers every four seconds and added the images on one track, the animal sounds on a second and the sound track on a third. Then, I went through and added to a fourth track the text that appears on the video. Vegas has the capability to scan across an image or zoom in and out, so I adjusted this. Initially, the images were full page, but the text of the book interfered, so I zoomed in on each animal, then panned across to create movement. Static images are weaker than moving images in a trailer, you lose the viewer’s attention.

After previewing it a number of times and getting feedback, I took my husband’s suggestion to create a bit of a splash at the end with the book cover. After the American Bison at the end, there’s actually a half second of nothing except the music track. This is followed by a thunder clap and the front cover of the book. To find the right thunder clap, I went back to www.SoundDogs.com and searched through their extensive offering of storm sounds.

The video ends quickly with credits to the publisher, Sylvan Dell, the film composer Jeremy Doss and thanks to hoghaven.com for the groundhog sounds.

Working with a publisher, I was careful to run drafts of the video past the editor, publicity director and publisher. Jeremy Doss approved the trailer, as did Kathleen Rietz, the illustrator. When all approvals were in, I uploaded it to YouTube. And waited. It was ready early June, but I knew that I didn’t want to show it until after I spoke at the American Library Association, where the trailer would have its debut. And now, here’s the debut on this site:

*|YouTube:uaUirE0ed6Y|*

TEACHERS: If your school blocks video through your server, please email me (darcy at darcypattison dot com) for a copy of the file to show to your class.

AUTHORS: Need more on how-to create book trailers? See my sister site www.booktrailermanual.com

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Christina Mandelski Debuts with THE SWEETEST THING

• Class of 2008
• Class of 2009
• MORE 2k11

Revision: A Survivor’s Checklist

Guest post by Christina Mandelski
I’ve had many writers profess to me their love of revision, claiming that they get some sort of weird thrill from the process.

I think they’re lying.

I’m not saying that there’s absolutely no joy in revision. In fact, I love revision – when it’s over. Mostly, though, I think revision is hard.

When I’m pounding out that first draft, I throw caution to the wind – my goal is to get the story out. I do love that part. But revision means I have to sit down, pay attention, focus and make it work. This scares me.

Still, no one can argue that revision isn’t necessary, it IS. And certainly, after all the time, effort and love you’ve put into your story, you owe it to yourself to hone it until it sings.

But where to begin? Over the years I have developed a list of three things that I need to ensure a successful revision. They are:

• A plan.
• Someone/thing to make me accountable.
• Good walking shoes.

#1: A plan of revision.

I can’t go into revision willy-nilly. I make a list of all thoughts, notes, suggestions from other readers. Even if an idea sounds ridiculous, I write it down, just in case. Then I sit down and begin to re-type the manuscript, keeping one eye on my to-do list.

#2: Accountability

This leads to #2. I need something to keep me on task, to keep my butt in the revision chair. For me, that’s usually my critique group, who expect to read work from me every other week. Deadlines also help: before we leave for vacation, in time to submit for a conference critique, before my agent gives birth. In other words, something to keep me opening the document every day.

#3: Walking On

And finally, #3. Whether working on your tenth book or preparing for your very first submission, you need to ask and answer certain difficult questions: “Why is the main character doing such-and-such? What is their motivation? Is this plot twist believable? If not, what can I do to make it believable?”

Answering these questions can feel overwhelming and even impossible, but this step is crucial to the success of your manuscript. This is also the point where you may want to throw your laptop across the room.

That’s when I go to get my walking shoes. Usually, in the course of a thirty minute walk, my mind is able to focus on the problem at hand, and inevitably I come up with a solution. Is it always the right solution? No, but it’s a start – it is forward momentum.

Keep moving forward, this is key. Ask and answer the tough questions, meet real or imaginary deadlines, stick to the plan, and one day, you’ll be on the last page of your manuscript with a stronger story than when you began. You’ll be the last one on the island. A true revision survivor.

What about you? What is on your revision survival checklist?

Note: Christina Mandelski is one of four 2011 debut novelist coming out of Darcy Pattison’s Novel Revision Retreat. Read what Christina says about the retreat.

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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Amy Holder debuts with THE LIPSTICK LAWS

Introduced first in 2007, debut children’s authors have formed a cooperative effort to market their books. I featured Revision Stories from the Classes of 2k8 and 2k9 and this feature returns this year with the Class of 2k11.

• Class of 2008
• Class of 2009
• MORE 2k11

Guest post by Amy Holder

Black, white, gray, red–and a machete

Honor Your Process. The process of revising is not black and white, and its gray area is vast and subjective. What works for some won’t work for others, so it’s important to know what works best for you and your writing style. This comes with trial and error. Chocolate consumption may also help. For me, I’ve found that hibernation is an essential part of revising. I’m not talking about gorging myself on Thin Mint cookies before sleeping for months upon finishing a first draft (although that might be tempting)… I’m talking about putting away my finished draft for a couple weeks and detaching a bit from it before coming back to it with a red pen and machete. Revising a manuscript after some time away from it helps me read and revise it with more of an impartial editorial eye. It also allows me to cut unnecessary content without feeling like I’m cutting off my left arm.

Murder Your Characters. Another extremely helpful revision tip I use is about the characters. I believe that characters drive a story, and a great plot without compelling characters can fail miserably. One of the first things I do when revising is cut characters that don’t add anything to the plot and story scenes. If your storyline wouldn’t miss one of your characters, it’s time to give that character the axe. While revising The Lipstick Laws, I cut five characters at various points of revision. FIVE CHARACTERS! That’s like a semi-crowded elevator! The result was a cleaner storyline, less character confusion, and a more concise and manageable cast of personalities.

Focus on Remaining Characters. After I got rid of all the dead weight characters, I was able to focus more on the characters that I kept. I concentrated on their back stories, unique characteristics, patterns of speech, interactions, etc. I really tried to make each character’s voice recognizable, so that if all the names were erased from the manuscript, a reader would still be able to tell the characters apart.

Soften Evil Characters; Roughen Sweet Ones. Last but not least, I picked up a great character revision tip from James Scott Bell’s fabulous book (which I highly recommend): Revision & Self-Editing. His advice was to avoid making a villain/oppositional character all bad (and if a villain is mostly bad, give him/her a sympathetic reason), and never make a protagonist all good. Most “bad” people have at least one redeeming quality and a back story to their antagonistic characteristics, whereas all “good people” make mistakes at times and have flaws. I took this tip and ran with it, applying it to The Lipstick Laws during revision. With this pointer, I was able to make my protagonist and antagonist a lot more well-rounded, believable, interesting and less one-dimensional.

These are just a few of the things that have helped me with my own revisions. I hope you’ll find them useful when you revise as well!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Take a Reading Day

Standard advice: read what you want to write.
If you want to write a novel, then read mysteries or thrillers or teen or easy readers or whatever genre you want to write.

Last week, I took a reading day and had great fun. I often advise people to read 100 picture books (published within the last 5 years) in preparation for writing picture books. One way I accomplish this is to visit my local bookstore and read new books from their Picture Book Wall. However, this only gets the books that this large chain bookstore chooses to put on said wall. So, last week, I had a library day. I only read ten books, but it was interesting.

Picture Book Illustrations:

I liked 8 out of the ten illustrations. The two I disliked were watercolor that had turned muddy. They had nice details, good characterization, but the muddy watercolors made it a dark, uninviting book.

Picture Book Texts I Didn’t Like

I didn’t like four of the texts. A couple of these were from author/illustrators and the illustrations carried the book; of these, the poetry had ineffective rhyme just there to rhyme and the meaning was lost; another had text that would have been rejected if from an author as “too slight.” (It’s that maddening double-standard applied to texts from picture book authors and picture book author/illustrators.)

One text had a typo on the second page – it was a popular author, good company, someone just slipped up. Another had text WAY too long, lots of purple prose and lapses in the storyline. One nonfiction surprised me because the author’s note explained that she had created some of the dialogue; from another publisher, I might not have noticed, but I was shocked to see this from this author/publisher.

Picture Book Texts I Liked

Simple, yet effective was one of my notes on a text. Some texts were generally good, but some of the double-page spreads were less effective because of long-winded text on a particular page. The best texts were funny, age appropriate, simple-yet-effective.

These were just books that were in my library that day, set upright to entice readers. No attempt to be random or scientific, just “found” books. Here’s a different breakdown.

• 1 rhymed text
• 3 historical fiction
• 2 broken or twisted fairy tale
• 3 celebrations of art from author/illustrator
• 1 contemporary/multicultural set in Asia

Lessons from a Reading Day

What did I learn? I was reminded what I love and what I dislike about picture books. I still like short, but effective texts. I like bright, clear illustrations. I still like reading and writing picture book texts.
Plan for the week: Write a new picture book.

If you go to the library or bookstore for a reading day, give us a report!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

I’m going today to a high school English class and writing class to talk about my writing process. It may not come up, but I’ve been thinking about what advice I would give a teen about becoming a fiction writer.

Advice on Becoming a Fiction Writer

Essentials

First, be a reader. Read widely. Read everything you can get your hands on, regardless of genre. Put words, phrases, language into your head, banking it for the day you need it. Be voracious. Gulp down stories. Mystery, historical, sff, contemporary – genre almost doesn’t matter. In high school, I read a Harlequin romance a day. Trash reading, yes, but reading. And in between, I read everything else I could. Read.

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/danamarie593/3153514213/

Love story. Besides reading, learn to love storytelling and story. Learn the elements of story, enjoy stories, tell stories, listen to stories, write stories. Stories, they are the stuff of books.

Love language. Get the dictionary habit and don’t ever stop looking up words. Revel is an apt word or phrase. Read aloud whenever you can, so you develop an ear for a story well told.

Pencil and Paper. Buy a good pencil and a stack of paper and start writing.

Optional

Well, anything else is optional. However, I think these things are helpful, if you have the inclination, opportunity, funds, etc.

Computer skills. Today, almost everything in publishing is done on computer and the more comfortable you are with computers, the better. Word processing, those awful Adobe programs, video-editing, etc. Learn as much as you can.

Web skills. Likewise, any skills you can develop for the internet will help. Learn to do blogs, webpages, social media, upload pictures, upload videos, etc. Anything you can do will give you a way to boost marketing.

Accounting, marketing and basic business classes. Fiction writers are generally self-employed, so I’d recommend any business classes which will help you track income, market yourself and your work, negotiate contracts, etc.

Career-based training. Everyone has to eat. A job is a good thing, especially in the early years of your career. Get trained as a doctor (Michael Creighton), a lawyer (John Grisham), or a gemologist. Avoid teaching, because grading papers bleeds away your time to write.

Public speaking. Many writers earn a large portion of their income from public speaking. Take as many classes as you need to become comfortable in front of people.

OK, what skills or passions did I leave out? What else would you advise a teen who wants to be a successful fiction writer?

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Does Format change a story?

Format. Yes, it makes a difference. How you present information or how you present a story make a difference to the text. For example, I’ve been wanting to write a nonfiction book about a topic and tried writing a proposal for a middle grade book. It didn’t seem right. But then, I decided to try it as a non-fiction ABC book and it has worked well. That format – short snippets of information about 26 subjects – covers the topic very well. Yes, I could include much, much more information; isn’t that always true about a topic you’re passionate about? But this covers the right amount of information for the early elementary years. Just enough, but not overwhelming. The format is right.

Notice that this format change also meant a change in the age of the intended audience.

I’ve taken stories and tried them as a graphic novel, as a middle grade novel and as a YA novel. I’ve taken an early chapter book and divided it into six equal-length chapters, and then divided it again into multiple short, uneven-length chapters (such as Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little). The story doesn’t change, but it feels very different. There are books which I find I can’t read, (Heaven’s Eyes by David Almond) but when I listen to the audio version, I love it. I wonder if stories will feel different when read as an ebook?

Audience and format can change the content, the voice, the tone, or the overall feel of a story. What format do you envision for your story? How does that affect what/how you write?

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Introduced first in 2007, authors debuting children’s books have formed a cooperative effort to market their novels. Last year, I featured many of the stories of how the 2k8 Novels Were Revised. This is part of the ongoing stories from the Class of 2k9 authors and how they went about revising their novels.

After yesterday’s posting about when to stop revising and send in a story, J.T. Dutton’s story seemed especially appropriate. Darcy

Freaked: A Revision Story

Guest Post
by J.T. Dutton

My first book, Freaked, lept into the world three months ago. Since then, I’ve been trying to form ideas for a short blog on revision. I’ve seized on some good thoughts for the discussion, stuff I teach in my Composition classes, ways to revise to improve sentences or arguments through better examples. I am an intense devotee of the school of write and rewrite. “Nothing is so smooth it can’t be smoother” is one of my mantras.

But when I have to talk about the revising I did on Freaked, I feel shy. I read a lot and I can think of fifty or hundred novels that I see as perfect—every sentence, word, and scene. I’d like to be a “perfect” writer too, but the fact is, I’m not. I get muddled. I have reread Freaked at least three times since it came into print, each time cringing at the number of things I would change now that I’m older and wiser. This is after revising it hundreds of times over twelve years, with the last pass conducted by some of the smartest people in the writing business—the editors and copy editors at HarperCollins.

Surgeons Don’t Get “Do Overs”

My Dad reminded me recently, when I was expressing angst about my second book, Stranded, of a quote from Albert Einstein, “perfection is the enemy of good.” My Dad is a retired surgeon. In his field, he didn’t get do-overs. He had to believe in his skills, be courageous about them. He is always stopping to offer assistance at road-side accidents. He volunteers for an ambulance service and a local fire department despite the fact that he faces liability issues as the most prepared person on the scene if something goes wrong. (This is why some doctor’s don’t stop for emergencies.)

Dad has made it a lifetime practice to do what he can, when he can. He even “vacations” every couple of years at hospital in Haiti.

Revision is a great thing, but for people like me, it can lead to obsession and excuses not to share my work. At a certain point, I have to take my dad’s advice and admit that I can’t tuck every thread, that I’m flawed, that I make mistakes, but it’s better to offer the world what skills I have than to offer it nothing at all. In this way, I guess, the writing can be interesting, individual, and courageous, rather than perfect.

A pretty worthy goal.

Thanks Dad. You are my hero.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Introduced first in 2007, authors debuting children’s books have formed a cooperative effort to market their novels. Last year, I featured many of the stories of how the 2k8 Novels Were Revised. This is part of the ongoing stories from the Class of 2k9 authors and how they went about revising their novels.

Learning to Love Novel Revisions Takes Time

by Sydney Salter

My Big Nose And Other Natural Disasters (HM Harcourt/Graphia, April 6, 2009).

Nasty chore. I used to think of novel revision as a nasty chore, kind of like laundry or washing dishes. I vividly remember taking my first manuscript to my writing group. I knew they would love it. This was my first novel, and it was going to be snapped up by a publisher, win many glorious awards for novels, and I’d become rich and famous—in mere months (okay, you can stop laughing now).

Imagine my shock when I returned the next week—and learned that they had suggestions. For improvement! They thought my novel started out kind of slow. They thought one thread of the novel was amore interesting than the other. Heart pounding, cheeks flushed, I defended myself mightily, explaining why I didn’t really need to take their suggestions, didn’t need to revise. They just didn’t get my novel. And maybe they weren’t quite as intelligent as I’d thought they were?

I submitted the novel. I collected rejections—mostly form letters. On the fifth form letter an editor scrawled, “Promising, but Kat’s voice could be stronger.” I focused on the promising part, not knowing how to revise to make the voice stronger. I simply didn’t have the writing skills to do that yet.

I wrote new novels. I attended conferences and workshops; I learned that nothing in book publishing takes mere months. And I learned to take criticism on my novels. Sure my heart still pounded, my cheeks still flushed, but I took extensive notes and asked clarifying questions. I stopped defending myself and my book. I really listened to critiques.

I actually looked forward to using the advice to improve my novels. Was this [whispers] revision?

I wrote my fourth book during National Novel Writing Month, but before revising it, I decided to return to that first story. I finally understood voice. I even took another look at those initial revision comments made by my writing group. How I loved returning to those familiar characters! I finally knew how to make the book better.

My fourth novel, My Big Nose And Other Natural Disasters, caught an agent’s attention. But he had a few notes for revision. No problem—my patient (and did I mention intelligent?) writing group had taught me how to take criticism! I worked hard on the revisions.

Sale #1. And the book sold quickly.

Sale #2! A few months—and revisions—later, my agent also sold that very first novel, Jungle Crossing, but only because I had learned to appreciate, okay, maybe even love, revising. Now if only I could learn to love laundry and dishwashing . . .

Jungle Crossing (HM Harcourt, September 28, 2009)

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