Now for our final mistake.

No Suspense

Misconception – Kids' books don’t need suspense and tension! The Cat in The Hat and The Tales of Peter Rabbit didn’t!

They sure did! And that is why kids of today are still reading those books now. Take The Tales of Peter Rabbit – the suspense comes from wondering if Peter is going to be caught when he steals from the farmer and in The Cat in The Hat, it comes from the total havoc the cat wreaks on the home and whether the mess can be cleaned up in time.

Regardless of age, readers need to have a character to care about and a reason to worry. That’s what keeps the pages turning. Your characters need a problem that gets them into some trouble and then a way of solving it.

With kids' books, your readers need to be hooked right from the start and the way to do that is introduce conflict; you keep them reading by having your character struggle before they solve the problem. You also need to avoid having an adult step in to solve it – it has to be the main character, even if it’s a mouse!

It isn’t easy to come up with a book that works for kids. You need the right voice, a great plot, suspense, conflict, everything that goes into an adult’s book. It isn’t an easy journey, nor will it be a short one, but the best result is when the kids love your book and want more.

 Tips to Follow:

If you want to be that awesome kids' book writer, you need to follow these tips:

Choose your age level and format and get reading before you even think about writing.

Spend some time with children in the age group you want to write for. Talk to them, learn about them, their families, their hopes and dreams. What frustrates them? What have they accomplished?

To try to work out your point of view; try doing this – write one scene that has at least two child characters and uses first or third-person point of view. Now write the same scene from the point of view of the other character.

Twist an old story by using an antagonist as the viewpoint rather than the protagonist.

For a picture book, you need to be a visual thinker. You don’t need to be able to draw, your publisher can find you an artist, but you need to be able to plan the story so that the pictures and text work together.

 There you have it. Five common mistakes, bad ones at that, made by people who think they can write a child’s book easily. People who think that it is, quite literally, child’s play. It isn’t. It is probably the hardest genre to break into and most who do are rarely successful because they have fallen prey to one or more of these mistakes and misconceptions. Don’t let that happen to you!