Writing for a Difficult Audience—Young Readers

A major challenge that writers for young readers face is having one’s work taken seriously. And I don’t mean just the response to the published book/piece, but the actual work of writing for a young audience. A sure-fire way to make a kind, unassuming children’s author foam at the mouth, or go for the jugular is to comment:

“Well, that must have been easy to write, it’s only nine words long.”

Or, “That must not have taken long to write.”

Or, “I’ve got an idea for a kid’s book, I just haven’t gotten around to jotting it down. You can use it, if you want.”

Little do they know that writing for young readers is writing for the toughest audience around.

Looking at it the wrong way . . .

At a book signing I once had a lovely college student tell me she wanted to be an author. Her plan at the university was to “Start writing children’s books and then work her way up to writing for adults.” I managed to keep my cool — she was, after all, uninitiated. Then I kindly suggested that she might want to reverse that order. Not because writing for adults is easier, but because what an adult reader will stick with, be willing to experiment with, and be willing to invest time in is so much broader than what little time a young reader will give you.

I’ve heard lots of these kinds of crazy comments. There are so many clueless folks who have no idea about the difficulty of writing for an audience whose attention span is barely seconds long. Nor do they know of the mounds of rejection letters most children’s book writers get before they makes a first sale. (I got over 300 — on a variety of projects — before I got my first acceptance.) And now, after eighteen traditionally published children’s books and two books of poetry, I still get rejected. It is quite difficult to get a picture book accepted. Partly because publishers sink a lot of money into them. The cost of illustrating, and printing in color on heavy paper is quite high and recouping that cost will often price a thin book out of reach for many families.

Advocating for children’s book writers …

I find part of my job as a children’s author is to be an advocate for others who create books for young readers. These are writers I so admire. They have the guts, talent, and simple stubbornness to write for the most difficult audience — and to fight for the respect they deserve from an often-uncomprehending public.

Yes, a book for a very young reader may only have 9, 70, or 500 words in it — but those must be precisely the right 9, 70, or 500 words to carry the weight of plot, characterization, setting and mood. True, in picture books the illustrations help to do some of that. But here’s the catch … first, the manuscript must sell on its own merits. And many times (unless the writer is also an illustrator) without the pictures, as the illustrator is engaged later. So those 9, 70, or 500 must be the absolutely best 9, 70 or 500 words, and not a word extra.

When I teach beginning writers I often ask them, “What do the 23^rd Psalms, the Gettysburg Address, Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” and Maurice Sendaks’ Where the Wild Things Are? have in common?” Usually, I get a puzzled look. Then I explain that they are all:

• short
• elegant
• emotionally moving
• full of imagery
• and full of things happening.

All of the above are required of the finest of picture books for young children.

It’s not easy …

It’s not easy writing short — as poets know. There are many quotes about that subject. I love the one often attributed to Mark Twain: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” And here’s a wonderful line overheard at a writing conference: “Writing a really fine picture book is like writing War and Peace in haiku.”

This is not to poo-poo writing long. I am a novelist, too. Writing long must also have its tight scenes of elegance and amassed emotion. But when I’m writing a novel I have more wiggle room. I can take paragraphs or whole chapters to bring my reader to a critical point in the story. I may have to do that very same thing in only half a page for a picture book.

It doesn’t mean that one kind of writing is easier to do than another — it’s just different. The way I compare these two kinds of writing is to say that, for me, writing a novel is like swimming across a lake and not knowing if I’m going to make it, or what I’ll find on the other side. While writing a picture book is like playing in a cold sprinkler on a hot day. The novel is a long steady haul and the picture book, while fun, is an exercise in precision — that is, in timing that leap over the sprinkler head to avoid as much of the freezing water as one can.

It’s all good …

All the writing we do is fretted over, ripped apart, yanked out of us again and again, bled upon the page. It’s all good. And when non-writers say clueless things, I do try to restrain myself from going for their jugulars. To the comment, “Wow! That probably didn’t take long to write.” I answer truthfully, “Only about 6 months, and then another few months of editing.” I usually get raised eyebrows at that.

The idea that what one does is not of value—simply because one does it for kids, is uninformed and insulting. But it’s not worth prison time. And so, I behave. I remind myself that as long as I keep putting love into what I do — some of that love will find a place to root in the young minds of generations to come.

Finally, let me share this quote from C.S. Lewis: “No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally — and often far more — worth reading at the age of fifty.”

Resources:

• Writing Picture Books: Revised and Expanded Edition
• How to Write a Children’s Picture Book
• The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Children’s Books