Did You Know You Can Write THIS for Children?!

There are SO MANY great things you can write for children–far beyond what you may realize at first. In this episode of the Writing Momentum podcast, Christopher and Gena Maselli talk about many of the great items you can write for children that can earn you a seat at the table.

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Episode 49 transcription:

[00:00:14].210] - Gena
Hi. Welcome back to the Writing Momentum podcast. I'm Gena Maselli and I'm here with my husband, Christopher Maselli.

[00:00:20].830] - Chris
Hey. Hey. Welcome to Writing Momentum.

[00:00:22].860] - Gena
We are here talking about out children's writing. And this is really something that's very close to our hearts because we've done quite a bit of children's writings over our career. Most of the books behind us are children's, young adults, middle grader, picture books, picture books, just all different kinds. Even a board book in there, coloring book. There's even some other crazy things that we've done. In fact, I'm going to ask, so we're here talking about, did you know you can write this for children?

[00:00:59].270] - Chris
We're going to talk about some of the cool things that you can write for children that may not have even crossed your mind. And I love talking about this because often when we think about writing for children, people think picture books, that's all they think. They think about the 32 page books that you flip through with the big beautiful pictures. And to them, that is the culmination of what we can write for kids. When they think, I've got something I want to write for kids, they think, I'm going to write it as a picture book. Not realizing that may not be the best format for what they want to share and there may be a much better format. And the surprising thing is there are a lot and you may not realize some of the things that you can write for children.

[00:01:41].460] - Gena
I would even add to that where you say maybe the format is not the same or is not quite right. I would even say the developmental level of the child based on what you're trying to talk about or what you're wanting to communicate, that may have a difference. If you're talking about something that really is more on a toddler level, you might be looking more for a board book, which is a different model than maybe a picture book or a middle grader book or why we're going to talk about it. But thinking about developmentally, what kids are or where they are developmentally is going to impact which type and which model you're going to follow.

[00:02:27].680] - Chris
That's exactly right. So let's start by talking about books, since you mentioned that the different kinds of books that you can write are largely set up based on age groups, grade groups, and developmental groups of where kids are at. And so while we're not going to get super into detail with all of these, because we could spend an entire podcast and more talking about any one of these, and maybe we'll do that in the future. But for now, we just wanted to give you a really good overview about each of these things. If you do want to dive deeper, I do have a system called the Children's Writing Super System. Go to WritingMomentum.com and click on courses, and you'll find it there. And I deep dive into all this stuff, and we talk about word counts and what subjects kids are interested in in each grade of these books and that sort of thing. A really good way to set up your books.

[00:03:20].010] - Gena
And even the pitfalls that people often fall into when they're trying to write for children, that's one of the ones. And even some of the subjects that children are looking for or that they are needing at different ages based on where they are developmentally or the things that are most important to them. So, yeah, check out Children's Writing Super System. Chris did a lot of study to prepare for that one. He really will help you be successful in that.

[00:03:47].800] - Chris
So the first kind of book that you might want to write, let's start at the very beginning, are board books. These are books for the littlest kids, right? They're the kind of books that little kids like to gnaw on, that they can't read themselves, but you sit and read and turn the pages for them because they're so young. Then the next step up from that.

[00:04:05].010] - Gena
Is what the next step up for? That is the well, it's the picture book.

[00:04:09].780] - Chris
Picture books?

[00:04:10].210] - Gena
Yes, 32 page picture books. And if you didn't know picture books are 32 pages, there are 16 spreads. We're going to get more into that maybe a little bit later or get Chris's system and he'll take you through it. But, yeah, these are the usually full color picture books that tell a story. And that's the thing about these that are so important, too, is that they follow the traditional story structure. So if you are wanting to write a children's picture book, understand what that story structure is. You don't want to all of a sudden lop off the end or not have a satisfying ending or satisfying beginning. You've got to have that story arc in there.

[00:04:56].100] - Chris
That's right. And that's where story arcs beginning. Those usually board books don't have any kind of arc. They're usually like counting or finding certain animals or that sort of thing. There are exceptions to all of this, but for the most part, that's what they are. After picture books, we usually get a little older, but it's still not quite about eight years old. Picture books might go up to ages five or six. Then we've got from about ages six to eight are what are called chapter books. These are the first books with actual chapters in them. Now, they're not real long. The words are usually really large on the page compared to books for adults, but they also might introduce maybe one subplot. And so you'll read things like the Box Car Children or chapter books, and those can be a lot of fun to write. I find those not only fun, but very challenging because you're trying to tell a story with a very limited amount of pages and words, and so they can be difficult. And aren't the American Girl books? Those are I would maybe consider a lot of those to be chapter books, and some of those go into middle grade books.

[00:05:58].780] - Gena
Yeah, I think they're a little bit on the high end of the chapter books because the chapter books can even be there's a few. You mentioned American Girl, which is on the high end. You talked about The Box Car Children, which I would also put on the high end of those. What are some? Captain Underpants? "I Can Read" books which is they have a level one, a level two, a level three, a level four. And these are the first books that you can kind of handle to hand to your early elementary age student, and they can sit there and read them by themselves. So, yeah, that's where I would start. And then as you start moving in, you get into the American Girl, which have longer chapters. Usually. Their chapters run about five chapters. You get into the Box Car Children, which are even more, I think, even kind of more complicated than that. They are upper elementary is what I would say. And then where do you go, Chris?

[00:07:03].490] - Chris
Well, then we go to the middle grade books, right, which are ages eight to twelve. These are books that might have several subplots that are a little more complicated. These are to me, these are the most fun books to write because I love this age group. You can do full mysteries in these and that sort of thing, but they still usually wrap up very nicely. There are some books, like Holes. They can get very deep, they can get very thick as far as books go, but they're definitely kept within that age range. And they don't usually address very difficult issues. Right. They don't get into some of those things like sex, drugs and rock and roll kind of thing. Whereas when you get to the next age group up, which is YA books for young adults, that's where you start to see those kind of issues take place.

[00:07:54].010] - Gena
Yes, there are, again, within these genres, there's kind of on the early end there's on the older end, there's also genres within here that are going to be mainstream versus clean. There's even the clean ones, the YA Clean, which really stays away from some of these more adult topics. Let me ask you, Chris, let's talk about I'm throwing this at Chris real quick here, but let's talk about Harry Potter. Where would Harry Potter fall in this?

[00:08:30].020] - Chris
So Harry Potter is really unique because it starts off remember where Harry's Young, right? He's about, what, eight or nine years old when it starts. So it really starts off as a middle grade book. And the main characters are about that age. It is written to that age group. But by the time you get to the final book in the series, it is definitely young adult. Right. The issues are more difficult. It's scarier. The kids are older, and so it tends to cover the spectrum. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone would be definitely more toward that ages 8, 9, 10. That's what it's geared toward. Now, we know that a lot of people read them, but even adults do, but that's what they're geared toward. But then by the time you get to the last book, it moves up there. And she did that on purpose so that she could go with kids as they grow. Right. It was very smart.

[00:09:17].660] - Gena
Okay, what about Hunger Games?

[00:09:22].610] - Chris
Well, Hunger Games is considered a middle grade book, but it's really upper middle grade. And you're talking about a lot of death. Right? There's death in those books. They cover some pretty heavy topics, so it really gets into young adult. I've seen it as portrayed as a middle grade book, but I would probably push it more toward Young Adult.

[00:09:43].630] - Gena
How about Twilight? Twilight. There you go. Let's do it for Twilight. Twilight.

[00:09:48].820] - Chris
Twilight is Young Adult for sure.

[00:09:50].420] - Gena
Young adult for sure. Really?

[00:09:52].370] - Chris
I think so, yes.

[00:09:55].020] - Gena
Okay. I'm thinking about the vampires. My mind is heavy. Blanking out a little bit here. But what about the one where the Maze Runner? Okay, Maze Runner is another one. What's that one?

[00:10:08].680] - Chris
Maze Runner. I'd have to look to see how they sell that. I think that's considered middle grade, even though that, again, deals with a lot of death and stuff. See, there's this whole there's a whole group of books, a lot of the ones that we just have talked about here that have kind of came out for that middle grade audience. And a lot of middle graders are reading them, but they are kind of considered a YA book. So I don't know. None of these things have hard and fast rules. What's important is that when you write books like this, that you know the audience you're writing to and that you're pitching for when you pitch it to an agent or an editor, you have to know who your audience is. But that doesn't mean that's necessarily who your audience is always going to be, especially if it blows up and catches on like a lot of these. But most of our books aren't going to become the next Maze Runner, right? They're going to be smaller than that. So we have to know the audience so that we can market to that.

[00:11:02].290] - Gena
Group, market to it, and write to it as well. Right. We have to understand who our writer and who our reader is. And we actually do have a forum on our website about understanding your ideal reader and finding your ideal reader so that when you're writing, you're understanding who it is you're speaking to knowing that I have read some of these books that we are talking about here. Absolutely love them. In fact, The Hunger Games is one of my favorite series that I just think it's masterful.

[00:11:32].010] - Chris
So good.

[00:11:32].690] - Gena
But I'm not the audience, but I still enjoy it. But when that author was writing that book, she was not thinking about me. She was not thinking about me. And that's okay. I can still appreciate it and still enjoy it. Okay. But let's get out of books. Let's get out of whole standalone books and let's talk about other types of writing that you can do for children.

[00:11:59].850] - Chris
So this may surprise you. This is where, okay, first of all, my in mind when I first started writing children's books was a little bit blown by things like board books, right, or even chapter books because most of us don't think of those. We just think of picture books and middle grade or YA books. That's all we think about. We forget about those ones in between. But then I learned about those and I was like cool. But then I learned about something that's really fun to write that I had no idea I could make money writing and be able to write on a regular basis. And that is activities. You can write activities, you can write mazes, you can write crossword puzzles, you can write word searches, you can write logic games, right? There's all kinds of things. If you can think it up, you can probably write it. Someone has to write all those. And you may say, yeah, but there's internet sites out there where you can punch in words and create a crossword puzzle. Yeah, that's true. But those aren't thought fully done, right? If you're writing for a magazine and you know that they're going to have a month where they're going to talk about patriotism, think of the kind of crossword puzzle you could create based on patriotism, right.

[00:13:11].570] - Chris
Using certain words that tie into that. You can't get that from these online puzzle makers. So definitely look at what you can add to that. And you can make money doing that. You can write did you knows, little quizzes, right? What else? And just all kinds of things.

[00:13:30].930] - Gena
The code breaker.

[00:13:32].230] - Chris
Oh my goodness, boys love those.

[00:13:34].170] - Gena
Yes, you've done a lot of code type books and code type puzzles and that kind of thing for kids. That has been a lot of fun.

[00:13:45].850] - Chris
Not to mention getting more into that writing. Again, you can write mysteries and short stories. I have made a career of writing mysteries and short stories. I've literally written hundreds now of solving yourself mysteries for magazines, for books, for all kinds of things because they're always looking for fresh content that is unique like that, that is really good. And so magazines look for those, book publishers want those. Think of the Encyclopedia Brown, that kind of thing they're looking for that all the time. So, yes, anything you can think in terms of activities that get kids involved in material, here's the key. Find, like, a children's magazine, find their guidelines, and find out what their subjects are for the year, and then write to that subject, okay? Don't just write whatever's on the top of your head. Find out what they're looking for, and write toward that.

[00:14:40].890] - Gena
Well, I do want to throw this in here, and this goes a little bit back towards the books, but I'm going to put it in there as well. A lot of times when we're talking about when people think about writing for kids, they're thinking about fiction. But I really want to encourage you to think about nonfiction, because even what chris is talking about here, about these logic puzzles that is speaking to what they call stem, or steam stem especially, which is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Steam is science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics. And these are areas that educationally, our country is very interested in, publishers are very interested in. So if you can write a nonfiction book, say you're somewhere and you live in, you know, someplace that maybe somebody doesn't understand or know about some of the special history of your area, you could write a book that is a nonfiction book about something that happened historically in your area. And that would be I mean, publishers would be more interested in that. And then you can combine that with some of these fun activities, like what chris is talking about. Even if you're writing for magazines, you want to write something about the gettysburg address, and then you want to have, say, oh, and by the way, I can do this fun activity at the end of it and have this puzzle that I've created for this.

[00:16:09].690] - Gena
And all of a sudden, you're filling a need that editors are looking for.

[00:16:14].520] - Chris
Publishers love that when you can add a plus one on to whatever they ask for, right? So often when I have a publisher who says, hey, I need a story about x, I will submit the story, plus a little sidebar that goes along with it, or plus a little activity that goes along with it, or plus, did you know that goes along with it? When you do that kind of thing, it really makes you more valuable and.

[00:16:36].770] - Gena
Helps you stand out as a writer.

[00:16:38].890] - Chris
So this nonfiction that you're talking about, that brings us right into the next thing we wanted to share that you can write for kids that you may not have ever thought about this, and that is curriculum. You can write school curriculum. You can write children's church curriculum. You can write curriculum for all kinds of different markets that are looking for it. And we're talking about lessons, object lessons, group games, individual games, skits, puppet skits, right, all kinds of things. And those are fun to write. They're short, and let me tell you, they are always needed. People are always looking for them.

[00:17:19].440] - Gena
And I would even challenge you to think about where you live. Think about the area where you live. Think about what is your library doing? What are some nonprofit organizations that work with kids? Do you have a camp near you? Think about these, what's kind of even just in your area, and then think about ways that maybe you could help write for that and what I'm saying. So, for example, if you go to your library and your library is looking for some kind of program for kids, you could end up writing that curriculum and even presenting it in such a way that maybe during the summer there's activities that they're doing for kids that they know that they can count on you, and you're writing that as you go. So think about that. Not just thinking about the national level or the super well known magazines or websites or things like that. Also think about what's just around you.

[00:18:26].720] - Chris
Yeah, exactly. Well, good. So in recap now, there's a lot more than this. In fact, if you're interested in more go writingmomentum.com, click on courses. You'll see, I have a Children's Writing Super System where one of the entire sessions is me talking for almost an hour about all the different kinds of things that you can write for children. I'll show you exactly what publishers are looking for, what you can write, what you should write for the different age groups. It's really good, intensive teaching. But for now, here are some of the things to think about. Books. We're talking about board books, chapter books, middle grade books, YA books, activities, mazes, crosswords, word searches, mind games, that sort of thing. Curriculum, main lessons, object lessons, group games, skits. All of those things put together can give you a good, healthy writing career. If you're looking for a good resource, check out the Children's Writers and Illustrator's Market. This is published every year by Writer's Digest. I will put a link in the show notes to the latest Writers, Children's Writers and Illustrator's Market on Amazon so that you can go ahead and grab that. If you're a children's writer or want to be a children's writer, this should be on your shelf for sure.

[00:19:39].600] - Gena
Now, what are they going to learn through that book?

[00:19:41].740] - Chris
That book is full of all the listings of publishers, editors, magazine editors. It shows what they're looking for, shows how to contact them, shows how to get your material to them. And really, that's the biggest thing, is it shows you what they're looking for and how to get your material to them. Plus, they have some good articles that are in book, too. But for the most part, people like to use it as a resource. As to what to find out there in the market.

[00:20:10].400] - Gena
Well, I don't know that we mentioned this at the beginning, but this series that we're doing, this is part of a series. So today we're talking about, did you know you could write this for children? Last time, if you missed episode one, we talked about, do you qualify to write for children?

[00:20:28].950] - Chris
Episode 48. That was the episode one of these. But that was episode 48.

[00:20:32].970] - Gena
Okay. And then we're going to continue this series. So be sure to check it out. Check out the first one in this series. Check out the next one. Don't miss an episode. And definitely, if you're interested in writing for children, be sure to check out Chris's book or his course on the Children's Writing Super System on our website.

[00:20:54].440] - Chris
That's right. And that's it. That's all we got. Because remember, together we have writing momentum. Bye bye.