How to Make a Children's Book Come Alive

You've taken the plunge and written a children's fiction book for the first time. But the results are leaving you with a feeling that's less than thrilling. Your book seems just like everyone else's, and you're concerned no publisher would ever want to print it and no child would ever want to read it. How do you make your book stand out from the crowd? Read on for some tips.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Journal(s)
• Manuscript Draft
• Notepad
• Photographs

1. Forget about all the other books out there. Writers often compare what they've written to what is currently popular among children or what has been popular or prestigious in the past. All of those books have been written already, though, so it's best to put them out of mind and focus on creating something new.
2. Review your manuscript and note those parts that you like and why. These are the parts that you should try to maintain after you edit your work the next time.
3. Review your manuscript again and note those parts that you don't like and why. These are the parts that need more work to make them unique and interesting.
4. Read through your old journals and flip through your old photo albums, both times paying special attention to events that were especially meaningful to you. Those situations form the storybook of your life, and they underlie the kind of individual experiences that make you different from other people.
5. Focus on one or two defining experiences in your life as a child and try to recall the details--who was with you, where you went, what you did, when this happened and how it all turned out. Write down the information you can remember in a notepad, including names, places and dates.
6. Compare the information from your memories of your childhood with the parts of your manuscript that need more work. Try to weave them together at points of similarity. For instance, if a character is bothering you because he seems too wooden and too fake, try giving him several personality traits from two different people that were part of an important memory from your past.
7. Continue weaving small parts of your own childhood into the disappointing parts of your manuscript until the narrative becomes more realistic, lively, and unique.

Tips & Warnings

• This process works even if you think your life is uneventful or ordinary. The trick is to include your memories of other people, as well as how you remember or imagine their lives were in order to have more personalities and situations to choose from.
• Take care not to model any one character on one person alone. If the person the character is based on reads the book, she might recognize herself and fail to appreciate the flattery in the portrayal.