Writing Tip | Cathy C. Hall Writes

So, yes, of course, you can find lots of tips from Mary Kole if you check out her Kidlit.com, “a place for people who love, read and write children’s literature.”

And I’m pretty sure you’ll get your money’s worth of tips if you sign up for her Picture Book Craft Intensive this week. Because not only will you get her tips, but you’ll get a critique of your picture book. That is HUGE.

(I attended the Harriette Austin Writers Conference in Athens this past weekend, and Mary Kole evaluated my manuscript. With a fine tooth comb. All I can say is that I’m glad she wrote stuff down, because seriously. That woman talks fast. But it was amazingly thorough and if I had a great picture book manuscript, I’d risk getting a creepster stalking reputation and send 90 bucks right this minute. )

Anyway, she said something during her talk at the conference that I hadn’t considered. Or if I’d heard this tip, it hadn’t connected. So here’s the tip: Your picture book should have multiple hooks. I’d never thought about it, but I suppose most picture books have more than one hook. Take Green Eggs and Ham, one of my kids’ absolute favorite books.

There’s the message hook, about trying new things. There’s a rhyming hook, and of course, there’s that unique Dr. Seuss zany humor hook. And really, there’s also the illustration hook. I’m not sure if Theodor Geisel consciously thought about all those hooks or if they grew organically out of his creation process. But somehow, he managed multiple hooks in every book.

Looks kinda simple, when you read Green Eggs and Ham. But I have a sneaky suspicion that it’s much harder than it looks.

(P.S. That’s Mary Kole, holding Cathy-on-a-Stick, with Donny Seagraves, another presenter, standing next to ’em. I’m not sure why the pic’s a little fuzzy. Maybe I was quaking in my boots around that threesome of talent.)

Am I the only one who thinks of conferences as gold-mining excursions? Because I felt as if I were panning for nuggets of wisdom as I sat in the Springmingle audience when Katie Carella, an editor from Grosset & Dunlap/ Penguin Young Readers and Price Stern Sloan! gave her presentation. And it was well worth the trip–I struck chapter book gold!

First of all, Katie Carella is young and engaging and very thorough. So if you ever have the chance to attend a conference where she’s speaking, you should pack your gear and go. That being said, I can’t possibly give you all the details. But I can give you a few sparkly highlights.

Chapter books can be anywhere from 1,000 words to 15,000 words, and they can be shelved in the library in a Chapter Book/Easy Reader section or in with the Juvenile or Middle Grade fiction. It’s all very confusing. What’s not confusing is that most chapter books stick to a tried-and-true format: short chapters, ending with cliffhangers. But if you read a lot of chapter books, you’ve already figured that out.

You probably also have figured out that chapter books are character-based. Find a great character that your audience will connect with and you’re golden. So if you know the technical side behind writing chapter books, why is it so hard to find a publisher for yours?

That’s where Katie’s glittery wisdom comes in. Here’s a question she offered that I think may be the most important one to ask yourself: Is there room in the marketplace for your story?

The only way you’re going to find that out is to research the marketplace. Investigate characters to find whether the character you’ve created has something special or different from what’s already out there. Read, read, and read some more. Know the hooks of the series that are available so that you’re not copying something that’s been done to death.

Basically, as Katie put it, you need to “think outside the box.” It’s a simple little nugget, but it can lead to a vein of chapter book gold!

P.S. That’s Katie Carella holding Cathy-on-a-Stick. She wanted Ashleigh Hally (a writer bud) to stand with her. Because two people standing with a pic-on-a-stick isn’t weird at all.