by Marcia T. Jones and Debbie Dadey Between the Internet, Nintendo and the TV remote how can “boring” books compete? If you’ve never asked yourself a similar question, you’ve probably never written anything for children. Marcia T. Jones and Debbie Dadey explain what it takes to grab a kid’s attention and hold onto it from the…
Month: August 2020
Hook Your Readers With Tension
by Laura Backes Tension. Without it, life would be–let’s face it–boring. So would fiction. Tension works with conflict to raise the emotional level of the text to a boiling point. It forces the reader to become invested in the story. But many children’s book writersare afraid to apply too much tension to their plots. They…
9 Tips for Writing Stories
by Sid Fleishman Here are a few writing tips drawn from the pages of The Abracadabra Kid, A Writer’s Life. 1. It’s the job of the hero or heroine to solve the story problem: don’t leave it to a second-banana character like Uncle Harry. You’d know something was wrong if Watson solved the crime instead of Sherlock…