WRITING IN DIFFERENT CATEGORIES: BOARD BOOKS TO CHAPTER BOOKS 

(Speaker: Vicky Fang, hosted by SCBWI Mid-Atlantic Region)

I have been experimenting with writing in different genres recently, so when I saw this webinar, I knew it was one I wanted to join in on.

Vicky shared a wealth of information on the requirements for picture books, board books, early readers, graphic novels, chapter books and novels. She talked about her own journey trying to write for different forms of story.

As I have found with some of my ideas for stories, some ideas just don’t fit in the genre you think they will, and it’s well worth not throwing the baby out with the bathwater – rather, play around with writing the idea down in a different way. There are advantages to this – different genres use different parts of the brain, and it also means you can have multiple stories out on submission at once.

Vicky encouraged us to read a lot of mentor texts, and to purposefully study their structure, themes, characters and language – work out what works and what doesn’t for different types of book.

Sometimes we need to develop new skills when writing a different type of book – look at your strengths and weaknesses, and search out ways to learn new skills – courses, webinars, books, etc. Don’t think you can’t write in a certain genre just because you never have before. I, for one, never saw myself writing a junior fiction novel, but have been delighted to find I’ve loved the process. There are so many more words to play with than when writing picture books!

Thanks Vicky and SCBWI Mid-Atlantic!

Heather Haylock

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