David Farland’s Daily Kick in the Pants: The Second Rule in Writing for Children

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Category: David Farland Newsletter

Published on Friday, 30 December 2011 09:53

Written by David Farland

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Understand what it is that children want. Do they want glorious metaphors and similes? Probably not. Most kids have a hard enough time reading a book without having to try to figure out your symbolism and metaphors.

What kids really crave most are a few emotions that we used to quantify in Hollywood when we did out green-lighting of movies. I’ve talked about these key emotions in other kicks—wonder, adventure, horror, humor, mystery. They’re powerful draws.

What kids crave changes as they age, and according to their gender.

But if you learn how to please their tastes, you can make millions. R.L. Stine did it with his Goosebumps series. At one time he’d captured about 45% of the middle-grade market, and in doing so he literally put hundreds (if not thousands) of other writers out of jobs.

It was easy. All he did was write the kinds of stories that kids would want to read. Other authors have made it huge that way, too.

Back in 1998 I was asked to write some Star Wars tie-ins for Scholastic, for a middle-grade audience. I wrote my first one and turned it in, and got a phone call from my editor, David Levithan. He said that his boss had loved it so much, she had said that it was "the best thing we’ve published in some thirty years." I felt gratified and turned in another book a few days later, and soon after got a call once again. David said that his boss was trying to figure out which book to push big for the next year. They wanted something that could be a major franchise, and she wanted to know if I would be willing to look at the year’s lineup.

Well, that was an odd request. However, at the time I was the lead judge for one of the world’s largest writing contests, and I also worked as a book editor, so I shrugged and said, "Sure."

A couple of days later I got two boxes of books in the mail. I spread them out on the floor and looked them over. I found the one that most interested me, and at about that time my wife came into the room. I asked her opinion. "Which book here most grabs your attention?" She picked the same one that I had, and then carried it off to read it.

Now, I was looking for a book that appealed to a wide audience. So I was very interested to see what an adult woman would think. My wife began reading the book, and she loved it. In fact, she talked about it at dinner. So my 10-year-old daughter snatched it and began to read it first.

The protagonist on the cover was a young boy, so getting the opinions of an older woman and a child was very valuable. Both of them read the book in a couple of days, and both loved the book. So I read it, too, and realized immediately that this was a perfectly balanced book, with wonder, adventure, horror, mystery, and a little humor.

It had problems. It was longer than most middle-grade books, its intended audience, and the writing level was a bit high

—6th and 7th grade. Still, it was obvious to me that the author was a genius at audience analysis.

I called the editor and gave her my pick. When I told her the title, she said, "That’s what I thought, but the Marketing Department won’t go for it." I assured her that the book was a hit, and left it at that.

Now, the book hadn’t gotten a push immediately. As another author and a publisher friend both pointed out a few weeks ago, this book seemed to "come out of nowhere" after it got published. The book of course was HARRY POTTER, and quickly became the bestselling book of all time.

Other authors out there are better stylists than Rowling. I heard one author, a multiple award winner at the time, complaining bitterly about Rowling’s prose. Rowling is not bad at all, but there are authors who are better. But here’s the important point: most of them write books that don’t appeal to their readers at an emotional level.

If you look at any list of books up for awards for kids, many of them will be historical novels, often dramas. Do you know how well kids respond to "drama" as an emotional draw? It’s like trying to feed them sauerkraut. At that age, kids have too much drama in their lives as it is, just trying to figure out what the rules to life are. They don’t want to read stories where that is the primary draw.

So write for your readers!

Dave will be teaching a writing workshop on Writing for Young Readers in March. To learn more about it, go to

www.davidfarland.com.

Just in time for Christmas: C.K. Edwards, one of our readers, has put out a collection of Six Christmas Stories. Check it out at

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106039

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