Although most of my books are for adults, I have written a few children’s books in the past. If you think they must be much easier to write than for adults, you are wrong. You need to employ the same principles of good writing.

Here are a few tips pm beginning your children’s book. Open the book with your empathetic main character child involved with an event, where something is happening.

Give him/her an important goal – something to achieve; something at stake; or something to overcome.

As quickly as posible, introduce some dialogue and interaction with another character. There should be a friend to share events with the main character.

Wherever you can, inject some humor. Kids love to laugh.

Keep your words age-appropriate, mostly short, simple declarative sentences, and as much dialogue as you can manage.

Remember that kids are not small adults.They don’t have the life experiences, schooling or more fully developed vocabularies adults can draw upon in their reading. On the other hand, don’t try to be too cute – children are quick to spot affectation. Put yourself into the minds and hearts of your character children as you write. The child should have a good character, but maybe a few small failings. Draw upon your own childhood experiences and watch how other children in the age group you are writing for behave in their daily lives. Then readers will connect also with you , who breathed life into their new friends. They will think of them as real people, and want to read more about them – in your next book!

My e-book novella, “Autumn Blessings” is garnering some wonderful reviews. You can order it from Prism Book Group, Amazon or Smashwords. You can also find the rest of my books here.