There are a lot of misconceptions about writing for children, some amusing and some surprising. In order to create appealing works for both young readers and editors, writers need to be able to separate truth from fiction. Last week, we covered the first five myths about writing for kids. This week, we'll round out that top ten list of some of the most prevalent myths: 

6. A kid's story must always have a little kid in it.

While young protagonists are now mainstays in children's literature, kids won't read a story with a main character younger than they are. Write older. If your target audience is seven, make your hero nine, if your audience is fourteen, make your heroine seventeen. When in doubt, err on the side of older, more mature, and more sophisticated. 

7. I should make my children's story rhyme. 

Rhyming, alliteration, and rhythmic sentence structures are indeed appealing to young children, but it's a bad idea for beginning authors to try it.  

Telling a story using verse is harder than telling one with prose. In addition to incorporating all the other elements of good writing, you must be able to maintain a consistent rhyming scheme without compromising the story and/or making awkward slips in tone and meter. This results in a disproportionate number of really bad compositions, and most editors will pointblank refuse to consider rhyming submissions.  

If that doesn't deter you and you're convinced you have a Seussian knack for fresh, inventive rhyme and a sixth sense for meter, editors seeking verse (i.e., mass market publishers) don't normally get their material from submissions; they commission them. 

8. I must illustrate/get an illustrator for my picture book manuscript. 

Publishers usually assign illustrations either from their own in-house stable of artists or from a pool of freelancers that they've established a partnership with.

Unless you're also a professional artist with a stack of credentials, including artwork with a story submission is considered the brand of a rank amateur. And even if you are a pro illustrator, your technique may not be a suitable fit with a publisher's house style.  

It's hard enough to write a good children's story; if you provide yet another element to be weighed and evaluated, you're essentially giving an editor another excuse to reject you. 

9. I'm a parent, so I know how to write for kids. 

Uh huh. Just like I've got a spinal cord, so that qualifies me to be a neurosurgeon. See #10. 

10. Writing for kids is easy and a good way to get rich quick. 

We've all heard it, the guy at the convention/party/PTA meeting who comments in an offhand way that sure, he could've written that best-selling picture book. Or the earnest young mother who plans to do a J.K. Rowling because, well, how hard can it be? 

If anything, writing for kids is harder than writing for adults. It requires a confident and evocative style, expert pacing instincts, and a ruthless willingness to cut out any superfluous verbiage. Stringent length requirements-- typically fifteen hundred words or less-- mandate that prose be tight tight tight, yet the story must still have a rich setting, appealing characters, legitimate conflict, exciting action, and a plot arc that results in a rewarding climax and resolution. In short, all the storytelling elements essential for compelling adult fiction at a fraction the length.

What's worse, competition is fiercer because of the prevalent belief that writing for kids is easy; everyone and their brother thinks they can do it. Consequently, more publishing houses, overcome by a groundswell of slush, are closing their doors to unsolicited submissions. This not only makes it that much harder for new writers, but it also puts greater pressure on the few publishers left who still accept manuscripts over the transom.

For the fortunate writers who have the talent, luck, or sheer cussedness to break into print, they will discover that publishing is an industry characterized by slow progress, mercurial tastes, and minimal pay. Magazines pay a few hundred dollars per story, sometimes with a several year lead-time between sale and payment. Picture book advances average between $2,000-$5,000, and advances for novels from first-time authors are not much more.  

This is not the profession to get into if you're looking for an easy, lucrative, reliable income. Most writers have day jobs that pay the bills whether they write for kids or adults.

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After debunking all those myths, it seems appropriate to offer up a bona fide truth in closing.

Fact:  All writers are insane. If we didn't start out that way, the biz turns us into twitching, neurotic wrecks. 

You might want to tell that to the next joker who insists writing for kids is easy.

Eugie Foster calls home a mildly haunted, fey-infested house in Metro Atlanta that she shares with her husband, Matthew, and her pet skunk, Hobkin. Her fiction has been translated into Greek, Hungarian, Polish, and French, received the Phobos Award, and been nominated for the British Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and Pushcart awards. She has sold a dozen stories to the Cricket Magazine Group, including Spider, Cricket and Cicada, as well as to an assortment of other publications for young readers including Story Station, Shiny, and the young adult anthology Magic in the Mirrorstone (Mirrorstone Books). She holds an M.A. in developmental psychology, has co-authored a textbook on child development, and is a frequent speaker at Dragon*Con's Young Adult Literature Track. She also pens a monthly column, Writing for Young Readers, and is the managing editor of Tangent. Visit her online at www.eugiefoster.com.

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