"Reading Time" by Patrick Creative Commons — "Reading Time" by Patrick Creative Commons

Who do you write for when you’re thinking of your reader? Is it yourself as a child? Or your own children? Or perhaps an imaginary reader? Whoever it is, it makes a huge difference to your writing if you know them clearly in your own mind. How old are they? What are their interests? What do they do with their friends? Most importantly – what else are they reading? When you feel you know your prospective readers well, your own writing voice (see previous blog post) is more consistent and honest as a result.

So often we are sent manuscripts by authors who have felt inspired to write for children but have little familiarity with what is already being read by their potential audience. We can’t emphasise enough how helpful it is to read contemporary books for children as well as remembering the classics of your own childhood. If you are aware of what is on the market at the moment, you will have a much stronger chance of appealing, not only to your readers, but also to the people who stand between you and them – the agents, the publishers, the booksellers and the librarians.

The quality of children’s fiction in today’s market is exceptionally high so it will help your writing enormously if you understand what else is out there and what is selling well. Even if you don’t like some of it, at least you’ll know what sort of stories your potential readers are enjoying and what they choose to have on their bookshelves.

So if you’re serious about wanting to write and be published in the Children’s or YA arena, then the best advice we can give is to read, read, read what is currently popular with your target readership. It will only ever make you a better – or at least, more successful – writer.

Photo credit: Pieter Lanser from The Netherlands — Photo credit: Pieter Lanser from The Netherlands

Series or Stand Alone?

Book publishing and bookselling, like many things in life, seems to go in cycles. Not so long ago, everyone was looking for YA vampire love stories or novels with a dystopian setting. Now, the market has been flooded and both areas have fallen temporarily out of favour – so if you’re writing in these genres right now, you need to be doing something spectacularly new and exciting! However, the key word here is ‘temporarily’, because you can bet your bottom dollar that in a few years both these genres will be in vogue again with publishers and retailers clamouring for them. The only thing in doubt is whether we’re talking two years, five years or ten years.

As it goes with genre, so it goes with series, trilogies and stand-alone novels. Some years ago now a series very dear to my heart (because I brainstormed storylines and edited some 100 titles) Rainbow Magic, took the children’s fiction world by storm. As a result, retailers wanted more of these bestselling series and publishers all wanted their own version of Rainbow Magic – not necessarily with fairies, just the ‘bestselling series’ part would do! For a while, the first question any agent or publisher asked an author when presented with a stand-alone novel was, ‘Do you have any ideas for the sequel?’.

Times have changed, more recently the market – having been flooded with series and in particular trilogies in the YA arena – has suffered a backlash against these forms. Too often the early books in a series or trilogy have read like the early books in a series or trilogy – i.e. too much building of the adventure sometimes without enough actual adventure and, crucially, without resolution of the adventure. Readers, particularly younger ones, like closure and the satisfaction of having embarked on a journey at the start of a story, only to have the adventure safely and successfully concluded by the end of the story.

So, as an author – particularly one with an abundance of ideas for what will happen to their characters next – what to do? Well, the best answer is of course – do both! Write a full, fantastic and entirely satisfying novel in the first instance but leave the door open for further adventures. Series where each individual book is a complete story in itself tend to be more successful than those where you have to have read book one in order to understand what’s happening in book two, etc. Remember that young readers – not to mention many adults, actually – want a feeling of satisfaction and resolution at the end of the book, even if that resolution is at times sad or challenging.

In the series or stand-alone debate, both forms have their merits but for an author writing for young people in a crowded and competitive marketplace, offering an agent or publisher both options will only improve your chances.