Children's Writing BWR104

Learn to write stories that children will love! Children's writing is a specialised craft. It is a rewarding, inspirational, and often demanding, branch of writing. Very few people can easily recall their own childhood, and write in a manner that children can relate to. For most, it takes many hours, months, and possibly years, to write a unique and appealing story that children will want to read. This course is designed to set you on an appropriate course for more successful writing geared to the children's market. COURSE STRUCTURE

There are ten lessons in this unit, as follows:

1. Introduction: Understanding children, their thoughts, needs, development.
2. Overview of Children\'s Writing: Categories (fiction & non fiction), understanding the market place; analyse & understand what is needed for the different categories, etc.
3. Conceptualisation: Conceiving a concept,where & how to find inspiration/influence. Developing a concept, how to plan.
4. Children\'s Writing for Periodicals: Children\'s pages in magazines, newspapers, etc.
5. Short Stories
6. Non-Fiction: Texts: Writing to satisfy curriculum. Other (e.g. nature, history, biography, hobbies).
7. Fiction: settings, characterisation, fantasy, science fiction, adventure.
8. Picture Books and Story Books
9. Editing your work: Grammar, spelling & punctuation. Improving clarity. Cleaning out clutter; expansions.
10. Project - write a short story, picture book or kid\'s page for a (hypothetical) periodical.

AIMS

• Describe children\'s cognitive development and target writing to be appropriate to various developmental stages.
• Explain the nature and scope of writing for children.
• Describe the process of planning a written manuscript of children\'s writing.
• Describe the planning and processes involved in writing articles for children\'s magazines.
• Develop a short story for children to read.
• Discuss the specific requirements associated with writing children\'s non-fiction
• Describe the various categories of children\'s fiction and the writing processes involved.
• Explain the scope and nature of literature aimed at young children.
• Explain the scope and significance of editing skills and processes for children\'s writing.
• Plan, evaluate, edit and present a piece of writing for children

WHAT YOU WILL DO IN THIS COURSE

Here are just some of the things you will do:

• Develop lists of imaginary titles and brief descriptions of stories that would be appropriate in your society (or country) for children of different age groups.
• Analyse the page(s) in a text aimed at children in terms of language complexity and style, conciseness of the writing, content, graphic layout, etc
• Determine concepts for children\'s writing.
• Develop outlines that would help you to write about each concept.
• Develop a set of guidelines (or a plan), that a writer should follow irregular preparation of a children\'s page in a newspaper, and consider what, in your opinion, is the purpose of a children\'s page in a daily newspaper.
• Discuss how you would approach writing a comic, and why you think this would be the best approach for you?
• Write short articles or stories, suitable for situations such as: An educational magazine, A preschooler or infant school age magazine or a teenage boy or girl magazine
• Write a short story.
• Identify a non-fiction book for children which you would be suited to write.
• Write an outline for a proposed non-fiction book. In your outline, you would include a list of major subject areas (or chapters) that the book would cover and a brief description of the content of each chapter. Include a brief description of how the book would be illustrated (i.e. are photos appropriate, line drawings or paintings appropriate?). You would then write one or two pages for your non-fiction book.
• Write a fantasy, adventure or science fiction short story for a 7-8 year old, which fits specified criteria.
• Write a story for a 5-6 year old child.
• Edit some sample short articles.
• Plan, then write, a children\'s short story, a picture book or children\'s pages for a newspaper.

SCOPE OF THE COURSE

This course may be relevant to any or all of the following categories:

• Picture books 6 months - 5 years. Picture books for babies and toddlers are hardcover board books with a few basic words and lots of colourful illustrations. Usually designed to teach the child basic concepts, eg. farm animals, opposites, numbers. Picture books for older children are longer, more complex and written to entertain, as well as educate.
• Story books Short fiction stories for younger children. Colourful pictures are still important but plot and characters are also important features.
• Novels Longer fiction stories for older primary and high school children.
• Short Stories - Published in children\'s magazines, or in books (either as short story collections by one author or several authors).
• Activity books - Magazine-style publications with interactive activities, such as puzzles, colouring in, stickers, short stories. Highly visual, sometimes based on an educational theme (eg. wildlife) or on popular TV characters.
• School/text books - Either written specifically to fulfil a pre-determined school curriculum or as a supplementary text. Generally requires that the author has expert knowledge on the subject (and possibly, but is not an essential prerequisite, a teaching background).
• Comics - Sometimes written for educational purposes (eg. to explain traffic safety to a young reader), but usually written solely for entertainment. Highly visual, usually requires that the author is a skilled cartoonist and can write in a very concise, humorous (witty) manner.
• Poetry - Poetry written for children is published in children\'s magazines, or in anthologies (collections of poems by different authors).
• Children\'s Pages (in newspapers or magazines). These are a mix of things, including activities (such as a crosswords), poetry, colouring-in competitions, letters from children, etc.

Fire up a child\'s imagination through storytelling

Children\'s writing is a specialised craft. It is a rewarding, inspirational, and often demanding, branch of writing. Very few people can easily recall their own childhood, and write in a manner that children can relate to. For most, it takes many hours, months, and possibly years, to write a unique and appealing story that children will want to read. This course is designed to set you on an appropriate course for more successful writing geared to the children\'s market.