29 Wednesday Sep 2021
Posted in Author's Perspective, Tips and Tools
By Colleen McAllister
Has your writing become generic without your permission? The habits and routines that help us write with regularity and consistency can take us down stale story paths without us realizing.
Here are some ways to break out of your comfort zone and breathe new life and specificity to your work.
Character Backstory Challenge
27 Wednesday May 2020
Posted in Author's Perspective, Tips and Tools
by Sherry Shahan
While cleaning out my office I unearthed a shoebox filled with letters from a friend who served in Vietnam during the tumultuous 1960s. I spent hours poring through his astonishingly truthful accounts of this war. I knew I had to do something with his letters; after all, I’d kept them nearly 50 years.
Since letters inspired me to write Purple Daze: A Far Out Trip, 1965 (Authors Guild Back-in-Print Edition, 2020), it made sense to incorporate journal entries, notes, and letters into the narrative. I then began writing sketches about other high school friends and some of our more histrionic experiences. Once I began scribbling, memories assaulted me twenty-four-seven. Continue reading
01 Wednesday Apr 2020
Posted in #KTWriteOn
Welcome to the Kite Tales Writing Prompt: #KTWriteOn. Each writing challenge is crafted by a kid-lit publishing professional to help spark ideas, creative energy, and get your work moving out into the world. If you don’t have the time or headspace right now for sustained or long-form writing, don’t worry or feel guilty! Instead, try these fun, QUICK exercises to lift your creative spirits and keep those writing muscles strong.
This #KTWriteOn was created by Deborah Underwood, author of numerous picture books, including the upcoming Outside In (illustrated by Cindy Derby), Ducks! (illustrated by T.L. McBeth), and the New York Times bestsellers The Quiet Book (illustrated by Renata Liwska) and Here Comes the Easter Cat (illustrated by Claudia Rueda). She lives in the Bay Area with her feline muse, Bella, and today we’re all talking about using limits to heighten your creativity. For real. No April fools here! Read on for Deborah’s excellent exercises!
Message from the author: I wrote the following post before Our Current Situation developed. As I sit here now, sheltered in place in San Francisco, a blog post about limits seems a little too on-the-nose—we’re limited in where we can go, what we can do, who we can see. Writing limits too?
But. Children’s authors and illustrators do tremendously important work, as you know. And I do hope that the exercise below, in some small way, will help you do that work.
So let’s plunge ahead. Know that I am sending my very best to you and yours during this strange and unnerving time. I’m hoping that these limitations on the way we live will help us find new and unexpected ways to connect with each other. Be well. – Deborah Underwood Continue reading
18 Wednesday Mar 2020
Posted in #KTChat, Tips and Tools
Tags
Author Tips, Calvin Gets The Last Word, Danger Canyon, Margo Sorenson, Secrets in Translation, writing exercise, writing prompt, writing tips
by Margo Sorenson
Editor’s Note: Award-winning author Margo Sorenson, who has published more than 30 books for young readers and has been an SCBWI member for over 30 years, will be available to chat with you on Twitter this Friday (March 20) from 12 pm to 1 pm (Pacific Time). Keep on reading for her tips on how to write what you know without oversharing, and get your questions ready for this Friday’s live Twitter chat!
We’ve all heard the maxim, “write what you know,” but how can we leverage our true-life personal experiences in our writing without making our manuscripts shameless (blush!) tell-alls? In our upcoming live Twitter chat this Friday, March 20, we’ll explore some ways to use our past histories without incurring the possible wrath of family and friends or the excruciating embarrassment of having all our “deepest secrets” aired to (gasp!) young readers—but still keep our artistic integrity and creativity intact.
Acclaimed author Virginia Hamilton once wrote, “Writing is what you know, what you remember, and what you imagine.” Feelings and emotions are integral in writing, and when we stop and reflect, we really do know our emotions. Creating a main character that will resonate with young readers is often jump-started by tapping into these feelings. Those emotions we remember as kids—joy, fear, shame, love, and betrayal, among many others—will make our characters seem real and true to readers. However, it is key to separate “our real selves” from those strong, self-revelatory feelings that make us so vulnerable. That way, we can avoid turning our manuscripts into cringe-worthy “oversharing.”
How do we do that? Continue reading
02 Wednesday Oct 2019
Posted in #KTWriteOn
Tags
fiction, Fran Wilde, geography, language, names, Riverland, Updraft, world building, worldbuilding, writing exercise, writing prompt
Welcome to the Kite Tales Writing Prompt: #KTWriteOn. Each writing challenge is crafted by a kid-lit publishing professional to help spark ideas and creative energy. This prompt was created by author and director of the Genre MFA Program at Colorado University, Fran Wilde. She’s sharing a part of her master-level lecture on worldbuilding, for all genres from literary to historical to fantasy and sci-fi, with us today! Dig in!
Hello SCBWI! Thanks so much for having me here.
As I’m writing this, it’s that liminal back-to-school moment when everything seems new and teetering on the edge of discovery. I love it, AND I remember how my nerves kind of went scrunch every year because I was so excited and maybe a little anxious all at once.
Naming, categorizing, and timelines are part of what school’s all about. When we walk into Maurice Sendak Elementary or Ursula K. LeGuin Middle School, we’re tasked with sorting things into different containers. That’s because names — category names, place names, object names — have so much power.
Valley Green Inn
One of my favorite worldbuilding and brainstorming exercises (it can work as either or both) has to do with place-names, the feelings they invoke, and the deeply layered stories they can tell.
When considering a setting for a story, or creating a new one, sometimes place names get left for last. With this exercise, we’re going to unpack the stories these names can tell, either as layering details or as historical timelines all their own. Continue reading
18 Wednesday Sep 2019
Posted in #KTChat, Author's Perspective, Tips and Tools
by Henry Lien
Unique story concepts are some of the rarest and most powerful tools in a writer’s arsenal. As an author, I’ve focused my career on unique concepts. For example, my Peasprout Chen series is an Asian middle grade fantasy about a boarding school that teaches a sport combining figure skating with kung fu. The New York Times described Peasprout Chen as “Hermione Granger meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon meets the Ice Capades meets Mean Girls.”
Below are seven exercises that I use in my own writing, as well as in courses I teach for the UCLA Extension Writers Program and Clarion West Writers Workshop, to generate original story concepts. These exercises are intended to shock your subconscious out of learned behaviors, lead you into unmapped territories of your own creativity, and help you generate story concepts that only you could have come up with. Continue reading
03 Wednesday Jul 2019
Posted in #KTWriteOn, Tips and Tools
Tags
character exercise, Debbie Ridpath Ohi, exercise, voice, voice exercise, writing exercise, writing prompt
Welcome to the Kite Tales Writing Prompt: #KTWriteOn. Each writing challenge is crafted by a kid-lit publishing professional to help spark ideas and creative energy. This prompt was created by author and illustrator Debbie Ridpath Ohi.
By Debbie Ridpath Ohi
I’ve always been a fan of sequential art – art forms that use images for the purpose of graphic storytelling. Back in childhood, the first comic I created was about a baby named Boppy, and I shared it with my family. Sadly, I didn’t keep any samples. I kept working on different comics over the years, just for the fun of it. I loved the challenge of trying to distill the essence of a story or story scene in just a few panels. My focus was on the story, not the art, and connecting with readers. You can see samples of my early webcomics at Waiting For Frodo, Will Write For Chocolate, and My Life In A Nutshell.
When I read sequential art nowadays, I read more graphic novels than regular comics – I like the longer form. I may work on my own someday. Who knows? But meanwhile, I have found sequential art is also a wonderful way to brainstorm ideas for character, plot, and dialog.
Here is a writing prompt for you all. Take a look at the following:
02 Wednesday Jan 2019
Posted in #KTWriteOn, Author's Perspective
The year’s first #KTWriteOn writing prompt is brought to you by Andrea J. Loney, author of Bunnybear and Take a Picture of Me, James Van Der Zee! Andrea was a SCBWI-LA PAL mentor for 2018. Follow her on Twitter, @AndreaJLoney, or at AndreaJLoney.com.
By Andrea J. Loney, author
Happy New Year, SCBWI writers! 2019 has given us a fresh new page to start scribbling down our creative plans. One of my favorite January activities is brainstorming new story ideas. I use several different techniques, but like New Year’s resolutions, this technique is based on lists.
04 Wednesday Jul 2018
Posted in #KTWriteOn
Tags
As you celebrate Independence Day, why not free yourself from the agony of the query letter with the third installment of the Kite Tales Writing Prompt: #KTWriteOn? Each writing challenge is crafted by a kid-lit publishing professional to help spark ideas and creative energy. This prompt was created by Bridget Smith, an agent at Dunham Literary, Inc., where she represents middle grade, YA, and adult novels, including contemporary fiction, historical fiction, and science fiction & fantasy. She is also the co-host of the podcast Shipping & Handling, and you can follow her on Twitter @bredalot.
By Bridget Smith
As an agent, I very often hear complaints from writers about how hard it is to write a good query. And I sympathize! I have written many pitches myself, after all. But unfortunately, it’s a necessary skill – and it doesn’t stop once you get an agent, either.
Luckily, with all the pitches I’ve written, I’ve figured out a formula that can give me a workable draft quickly. This isn’t necessarily the form your final pitch needs to take: I’m always delighted to see a pitch that breaks out in interesting ways, whether it’s hauntingly minimal or a clever inversion. And, of course, there is LOTS of room here for adding flavor: voice! Jokes your characters would make! Emotion! Tension!
But if you have absolutely no idea where to start, here’s a handy map:
04 Wednesday Apr 2018
Posted in #KTWriteOn
Welcome to the second installment of the Kite Tales Writing Prompt: #KTWriteOn. Each writing challenge is crafted by a kid-lit publishing professional to help spark ideas and creative energy. This prompt was created by author and SCBWI volunteer Marilyn Cram Donahue whose latest middle grade novel, When Crickets Stopped Singing (Boyds Mills/Calkins Creek), will be published on March 20.
By Marilyn Cram Donahue
Are you looking for a boost of creativity? All you need is a pile of old magazines, some tape, and a sheet of 11”x17” paper. This is the ideal size, but you can also tape two sheets of regular typing paper together.
Step 1: Open the magazines and choose pictures that speak to you. Don’t analyze. Just think “AHA! I like that.”
Step 2: Rip out the pages you like and use your fingers to tear around the edges of whatever part of the picture speaks to you. Why are you tearing?
Kite Tales 