Of Chubby Crayons and Bees That Go Boo

chillibreeze writer — Dilnavaz Bamboat

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FAQs to children's publishing

Creating a script is the act of telling a story. So let’s begin by gathering the influences that work toward creating it. No matter what age the audience, the scriptwriter/storyteller’s first responsibility is to know the lay of the land. Read plenty of children’s stories with varying themes to crystallize how best to develop your own. Your script will benefit from choosing universal themes and easily identifiable emotions.

Values never go out of style, so feel free to add them to your story. Be wary of sermonizing, though. If there is a lesson, it must be implicit in the story and obvious to the child without having to spell it out. Address age-specific issues/interests and you already have the audience’s attention. Introduce the possibility of differences and acceptance of these, for example, with reference to gender, culture and disability. Avoid stereotypes, but be clear about specifics such as cultural setting, theme, genre and reading level. Keep the theme positive and let it emerge from the story rather than stating it outright at the beginning. Once you have a workable story, the challenge is to convert it into a script.

Think of scripts primarily in terms of dialog and action. Remove the he said/she said tags and create the story around the characters’ and narrator’s speeches. Add an identifier ahead of each character’s lines, but extraneous information is unnecessary. Keep the narrator’s parts short, usually no longer than one or two small paragraphs and focus on what the characters are saying. Children are usually most interested in what characters do, rather than background information. It also helps if they can easily relate to the character. One way to do this is to create a character around the same age as the target audience.

Delete excessive narrator dialog and/or move some characters’ lines to break it up into smaller chunks. A narrator’s role is to communicate what the characters are absolutely unable to. So give yourself a little test and ask whether a character can say those lines before assigning them to a narrator. Simple, direct sentences and easy to understand words are most effective. Typically, dialog should constitute a third of the story.

Plots usually revolve around some form of conflict faced by the protagonist/s. This can be given a miss if writing for preschoolers, but there must be another “hook” to substitute for the missing conflict. The number of conflicts and resolutions typically depends on the length of the script. Quantifiers such as ‘a lot’, ‘really’, ‘all’ and ‘many’ are avoidable, while providing a point of reference for the reader to infer from is preferable. Another way to eliminate what Laura Backes of the Children’s Book Insider calls ‘lazy writing’ is to show rather than tell. By providing definitive details of a character’s behavior/actions, the onus of interpreting the writer’s meanings doesn’t fall on the child. Structure the script simply, with a quick beginning and a prompt end. Constantly visualize the scene off the paper and check for too much action, too little action, pace and physical viability.

Use language that goes with the tone of the story. For younger children, devices such as rhythm, repetition and alliteration can be used to good effect. It is hard to be as successful with rhyming, though, so editors are usually wary of it. Whether told in first or third person, stick with a single character’s point of view, usually the protagonist’s. While it is necessary to know your characters thoroughly and highlight their unique personalities or mannerisms, an exhaustive description is unnecessary and could even detract from the story. Keep in mind that children have limited attention spans.

An alternative way to write scripts for children’s stories is to write the story as a script first. This would guarantee adequate dialog and action. Once these are in place, linkages can be added to form a coherent narrative.

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in November, 2009. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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—About our writer:

Dilnavaz,

When she isn't hugging babies and ranting to the world about the importance of accurate pronunciation, Dilnavaz Bamboat is a preschool educator. A mental health therapist by training, she also writes for a parenting magazine in the hope that education isn't limited to just children.

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