© 2019 Jean Matthew Hall

I’ve been writing for publication for…uh, a LOT of years. My goal is to produce beautiful, encouraging stories for young children to enjoy and share with the caring adults in their lives.

Here are a few of the things I’ve learned along the way.

DO:

• Write from universal themes. Figure out early in your writing process what the theme(s) of your story will be. Be able to express each theme in one or two words.
• Hyperbolize. Make characters, places, and events bigger or smaller, scarier or funnier, happier or sadder than they are in real life.
• Focus on places, people, and events that are familiar to a young child’s world.
• Make your main character a little older than your target audience.
• Appeal to both your readers’ emotions and physical senses.
• Write tight. Make every single word do double duty. Get rid of words that are not essential to telling your story.
• Use specific people, traits, and events. Create specific places, dialogue, and mannerisms. Give characters and places names.
• Give your story a definite beginning, middle, and end. Without these three elements, what you have written is not a story.
• Show how your main character changes because of the events of the story.
• Focus on one concept like numbers, letters, up and down, inside and outside, colors, family members if you are creating a concept book.

DON’T:

• Tack a lesson or moral onto the end of your story unless you are creating a fable. Let the lesson rise to the surface on its own so your readers can figure it out for themselves.
• “Teach” or “preach” if you are writing a story (not part of a curriculum plan). Allow the story and the characters pierce the reader’s heart with the truth of the lesson.
• Let an adult solve the main character’s problem or even help solve it too much.
• Use characters who are all-bad or all-good. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses.
• Follow trends. Write your story in your voice and style.
• Use stereotypes in characters, plots, situations, or dialogue. Throw in unexpected or unusual things and people.
• Rely on generalizations like everyone, over there, one day, one time, or people.
• Try to illustrate your own books unless you are a professional illustrator.

NOTE: Jean Matthew Hall will present a workshop on writing for children at the 2019 Mid-South Christian Writers Conference. She has this to say about her workshop: This workshop focuses on writing for toddlers, preschoolers, and children up to seven or eight years of age. We’ll look at fiction board books, picture books, and chapter books. We’ll discuss these DOs and DON’Ts in detail. Hope to see you there!
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Jean Matthew Hall lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Her premier picture book, It’s Spring!, is due to be released by Little Lamb Books in early 2019, to be followed by three more books in this Four Seasons series. Jean is a member of the SCBWI, Word Weavers International, and the Kentucky Christian Writers. She is also an AWSA Protégé. You can visit Jean on Facebook or Twitter and browse her blog posts on Pinterest.