Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens in lots of weird genres like, fantasy (Blood of Kings trilogy), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). Find Jill on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or on her author website.
My project was called RoboTales. And I wrote it at the upper end of the chapter book spectrum. It is a series of eight fractured fairytales that take place in another universe. My agent felt it best that I write the first three books in the series, so that is what I did. And it was hard! I’m used to writing 120,000-word tomes, and these were each 12,000 words long. Here is a little more information from my book proposal:
“Recycle and create.” That’s Tinker’s motto. He’s an inventor, who lives with his uncle and cousins on planet Kitz. He finds out that the Invention Institute is having a Recycle Race to choose a new apprentice for their boarding school for young inventors. Tinker builds an airbike for the contest. When Tinker’s cruel cousins destroy it, Tinker gets some help from a robot dog and fixes his entry in time to compete.
And, of course, I made a map.
Also, just for fun, here is a video that me and my kids made to go with the proposal.
Okay, enough playing around. 🙂
So, how do you write for this age group? Here are a few tips.
1. Read.
Before I started writing, I went to the library and checked out the first book in about ten different chapter book series. I read them all, paying close attention to word choice, sentence structure, characters, character development, and plot. This taught me everything I needed to know. And it gave me a list of comparables for my book proposal.
2. Keep it simple.
I love complex plots. But for chapter books, you need to keep things simple. That doesn’t mean you can’t have mystery in your story, but try and keep it to one mystery per story. You also want to keep your cast of characters to a minimum. Many books in this genre have two protagonists, a boy and a girl, to appeal to all readers.
3. Avoid contractions.
This isn’t a hard and fast rule, and if you’re writing longer books (10,000-15,000) you can use a contraction here and there. But if you’re writing the short ones, the 5,000-word books, it’s best to keep them to a minimum—unless they’re in dialogue. This length book is the type that new readers will be reading. No longer are parents reading a picture book to the child. The child is reading on his own! Keep that in mind so that even very new readers can handle what you give them.
4. Avoid complex sentences.
This goes back to my last point. Use simple sentence structures. That doesn’t mean you can’t use any complex sentences. Just try and remember your target reader. Check out this sample from Magic Treehouse:
“Help! A monster!” said Annie.
“Yeah, sure,” said Jack. “A real monster in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania.”
“Run, Jack!” said Annie. She ran up the road.
Oh, brother.
This is what he got for spending time with his seven-year-old sister.
Annie loved pretend stuff. But Jack was eight and a half. He liked real things.
“Watch out, Jack! The monster’s coming! Race you!”
You might read this and think it feels halting and awkward. But these books are not written for you. They are written for new readers, and new readers need shorter sentences. If you’re writing the longer type of chapter books, you can get away with more than you can in the shorter ones.
5. Purposeful repetition is encouraged.
Find things in the story that you can bring back and repeat. Magic Treehouse does this each time the treehouse spins and travels through time. It’s the exact same words. The kids love it because they know what’s happening. I was able to use this in my books each time Robo spoke and when he needed fuel.
Keep in mind, I haven’t sold the RoboTales series. I only gave it to my agent to see if she could find a home for it. So I’m far from an expert on this genre. Do you write for younger kids? Anything I missed? Any questions?