10 Most Important Writing Tips for Children‘s Authors in 2020

Writing a book, even a children’s book is not easy. There are so many factors that come into play, some of which you may not have even considered. Hopefully, these important writing tips will help you get started on that children’s book you have in mind.

Also, in addition to writing a children’s book, illustrating your book and choosing the right illustrations to match your story is perhaps one of the most complicated tasks when creating your own work. Illustrations work in the same way that your writing contributes for a distinction to your work and make you stand out from the rest of the books that exist in the market.

Following are a few Important Writing Tips to help you write children story books:

Age of the target group

The most important consideration is usually at the beginning. Which age group is the book aimed at? Because everything else depends on it. How complex the language may be, how long the text should be and how many pictures you need. The older the children, the more demanding the formulations may be, the more extensive the texts and the fewer pictures are necessary. And vice versa, of course.

Usually bookstores and publishers differentiate books for the following age groups:
• 0 – 2 years: picture books
• 3 – 5 years: picture books and reading books
• 6 – 7 years: reading books and first reading books
• 8 – 12 years: children’s novels

The language

One of the important writing tips to note is the prominence of language. Picture and illustrated books for children up to the age of 5 usually have a simple structure. The texts are short and the sentences simple. Rhymes, repetitions, onomatopoeia and word inventions are well received. Reading books for children from 6 years of age already contain extensive stories and the wording may be a little more difficult. As soon as the children read themselves, the language must be based on the knowledge and skills of the target group,

Scope

Picture books for the little ones often contain only a few words or sentences. Alternately, picture books for 3 to 5 year olds usually have 12 double pages and can contain up to 10,000 characters including spaces per book. Reading books usually have between 30 and 80 standard pages of text. Children’s novels are a bit longer: 100 to 150 standard pages are not uncommon, even thicker books are well received. Books for young people are similar in scope to books for adults.

The main character

Keeping an eye on your main character is also one of the important writing tips. If the main character in the story is a child, then it should be a year or two older than the target audience. Because children like to read stories in which older children appear. But stories with younger children are for babies.

Topics

Thematically, children’s books are based on the needs of the target group. Everyday experiences, fears or the family are important issues for smaller children, while friendships and school for larger children. Adventure stories, detective stories and secret societies are also very popular with the elder kids. Youth books hardly miss a topic, similar to books for adults. Topics that affect the youngsters are particularly common and effective: the circle of friends, growing up and love.

Fantastic worlds

Children like to be carried away into unknown worlds. That is why, in addition to everyday stories, imaginative stories and special characters are very popular. Talking animals, fantasy creatures, animated objects, children with supernatural abilities and much more. The more surprising the better.

Narrative structure

In picture books for the little ones, there is often a special figure in the center, which we accompany on their way through several stations. For example, the character asks a question at the beginning and we experience how she searches for the answer and, of course, also finds it.

Illustrations

The younger the children, the more pictures are in the books and the less text. In the first reading books, the pictures take up a lot of space; the older the children, the more the pictures take a back seat and the texts become more important. There are still a lot of pictures in children’s novels from 8 years of age, and hardly any more in books for over twelve year olds.
In addition, adding good pictures and illustration is quite important. If you don’t know how to illustrate a book, you can then look for children’s books illustrators for hire.

Illustrator

If you want to offer your book to a publisher, you don’t have to worry about illustrations. Because publishers provide pictures themselves and also regulate the payment of illustrators. That is why a publisher generally only looks at the text of the manuscript.

Find a publisher

Once the manuscript is ready, you can apply to children’s book publishers. But first you should check their website to see whether your book fits the program at the publisher of your choice. The website also shows whether and how a publisher would like to get offered manuscripts.

These are some important writing tips that should help you get started on that children’s book you have been thinking about writing, but not getting to. Do you have any tips that you think we missed? Did these tips help you? Let us know in the comments below. We look forward to reading your book! Keep eyes on such latest designing & technology tips with us.