Category: Free Writing Tips for Christians Who Write for Children and Young Adults

Here’s an important tip for anyone writing a novel, (not just Christians writing for young people!):

You need to introduce your theme, your main characters, and your setting at the beginning of your story, so we know where the story is heading . . .

Most of us lead busy lives. We have to balance work and/or voluntary activities with family, church and other responsibilities. We can have so much on our minds that when we sit down to write our minds are so full we are unable to concentrate.

Here are some suggestions for making the most of your writing time:

For those of you who missed it, the Write for a Reason Challenge was to write a short story (3-5,000 words) for a specific child of your choice, on the theme of new beginnings. The challenge wasn’t just to write the story, but to give it to your chosen child to read. Writers had about ten weeks to write their story, get the children to review it, and send both to me.

The idea was . . .

A couple of weeks ago we took our grandson to the circus. He laughed himself silly at the clown, watched the acts with total amazement and drank up the atmosphere of being in the ‘Big Top’ – it was a pleasure to watch his pleasure! Plus, as a writer . . .

3 more common mistakes writers make with dialogue:

Issue: Chat between characters is banal.
Remedy: Cut all the boring stuff! If you need to have two characters meeting for the first time, just say they were introduced, then get on with the real meat of the story. Too much

The first time I made curtains I was a student in a rented bedsit. I had a massive bay window overlooking a fabulous garden, but the curtains were musty, old and a bit ragged around the edges. So I decided to make some new ones. Well, it’s a good thing there’s no such thing as curtain police! The finished result was . . .

Issue 1: Speeches that are too wordy.
Remedy: This is a very common mistake. Remove every word, phrase and sentence you don’t need. It’s hard to ditch a carefully worded phrase . . .

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find it difficult to get motivated to do anything creative in the winter months. The days are short and dark, wet, windy and cold, and at this point in the calendar it seems to have been like this forever. There’s no colour around in the gardens and everything seems so dull and grey.

Of course, winter will pass and spring will soon be here (anyone got any daffodils out yet?), but I just wanted to encourage you to keep going with your writing this month. (If you’re reading this in warmer climes, ah, enjoy!)

So here’s the idea to keep motivated . . .

Publishers want engaging protagonists – here’s a list of possible characteristics:

They are courageous, they have faults, they have at least one . . .

Children also have a very strong inbuilt sense of right and wrong. They know that David, with his faith and slingshot, should win over Goliath, that the downtrodden should overcome bullies, that those who abuse those weaker than themselves . . .