Julie Hedlund and Emma Walton Hamilton are hosting a self-guided, online course on how to prepare a picture book query and manuscript for submission. The early bird price ends tonight at midnight (P.S. The deadline has been extended by a day, so tonight is the cut off for the early bird price), so I wanted to get this out while there's a few hours left: http://picturebooksubmissions.com The video above is a brief overview of the course, and the video below is a more in-depth explanation of the course and answers to many of the basic questions on how to prepare a query for submission. I took Emma's middle grade writing course and loved it and Julie is a power-house in marketing, so these two make a perfect teaching duo on how to put your best foot forward in submitting to agents or editors. Enjoy.
I first heard Emma critique queries through Julie Hedlund's 12x12 forum. Her insights impressed me enough to want to take her course. The video above is an excellent resource in how to write a query.
I recently completed Emma Walton Hamilton's Just Write for Middle Gradecourse. Sigh...I miss it. In 14 weeks I was able to accomplish something I'd been struggling to do for over a year: turn my middle grade novel idea into a workable draft. Oh I still have lots to go, but an idea-that-wouldn't-let-me-go-until-I-had-to-write-it is finally getting it's own legs. Emma's class was an easily digestible, 14-week, online course set at your own pace. The topics included: Plotting, Characters, Theme, Dialogue, Revision, Setting and more.
Many of the ideas she taught seem instinctive in successful writers, and perhaps they are for some, but the course helped me see that these "instincts" can also be learned. I feel like some of that happened for me. Ideas I'd read about started to solidify. The lesson on settings and world building was particularly helpful. It showed me how to create a setting as alive as my MC, something I hadn't considered before, even though the setting is integral to my MC's story. Here's a snippet from that lesson:
"Having your characters interact with the setting on a sensory level allows the readers to experience it more viscerally themselves. Revisit each section of your story where you interact with or describe your setting, and consider it from the point of view of all five senses. Is there a detail you can zero in on with respect to what a character can see, hear, smell, taste or feel?"
I enjoyed the exercises that went along with each lesson. Writing a jacket flap, listing each character's backstory and threading themes or symbols into the writing, were among some of the most rewarding. And best of all, Emma made her lesson easily accessible, print-outs or PDFs that you can take notes on and keep handy. I now have a binder with worksheets about my novel that I didn't have before taking the class. Each one added life to the idea I started with.
So now that my novel has legs, I'm ready to give it wings and I feel better prepared, after Emma's course, to do that. One other final note, we held another workshop with our regional group. This time Erin Cabatingan, author ofA is for Musk Ox, and Musk Ox Counts, talked to us about using humor, but that is for another post, which I hope to do soon. It's a busy time for my family, full of many good changes. Have a great week.
In a previous post, I mentioned that I'm taking Emma Walton Hamilton's middle grade writing class. I'm learning so much. One of my favorite lessons dealt with the plot device called the heroes journey. The video above explains it nicely. The video below will make you feel so much better if you are even slightly anti-social.
And finally, if you're planning to write a book for ancient Roman teenagers, the next video is for you. Okay, seriously though, it's a great look into the life of a teen--the differences and similarities over time. The stuff that many good modern novels are made of.
Have a great weekend. I'll have some fun news to post soon, so stay tuned.
I signed up for Julie Hedlund's 12x12 writing program this year. I've benefited immensely from all the resources Julie has offered, not the least of which was an opportunity to be selected as a beta student for award-winning author Emma Walton Hamilton's Middle Grade/Chapter Book course. I'm only one week into the 14-week course, but I feel like I've already had those light-bulb moments that I need to fix a languishing middle grade novel. Some of the tips that resonated with me were:
Each character needs to further the story. If not, the character needs to go or be combined.
Each chapter needs an ending hook to keep the reader wondering what's next.
Each page needs emotional or dramatic tension.
Don't preach. Let the story set up a scene that allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.
One of the exercise we were asked to do was to write down the dramatic question. What is it that the reader needs to learn or achieve by the end of the book? Keep that question in mind as you draft your plot. Emma also recommended a book on writing that intrigued me greatly: The Writer's Journey, by Christopher Vogler. Vogler uses the mythic structure explored by Joseph Campbell to outline an effective story-telling method. There's much more, but that was enough to get me going in a direction I needed. I'll update as the class goes on. Emma has a picture book class and now a middle grade and young adult class she offers through her site, http://justwriteforkids.com. She is a faculty member for Stony Brook Southampton's MFA in Creative Writing and Literature, which means I'm basically getting a college course on my computer at my own pace with an award-winning author to teach me. I'm so excited to have this opportunity and so is my poor novel. Have a great weekend. P.S. The video is Emma and her mother, Julie Andrews talking about writing and how it links up with other art forms. I love it. Perhaps because of my own acting background, but I thought if ever I do a school presentation, a reader's theater would be a great way to get children to interact with your book.
As a writer, I find the life stories of other writers extremely helpful in understanding how to use my own experiences to create my own stories. The following video interview of Eric Carle is a prime example of how his writing and art was influenced by the world around him. Full of juicy tidbits of writerly wisdom, it's well worth the 8 minutes:
One of my favorite courses in college was my legends, myths and folktales class. As I've traveled, I've tried to gather folktales from each place I've visited or lived in. All of these stories unfold in my mind at some point in generating ideas. Like Tolkein who used the myths he studied to formulate his own world, a study of literature from all parts of the globe enhances our ability to tell a timeless story. The following 4-minute video discusses a collection of vintage Australian children's literature that is available online. Can I just give a cheesy Aussie Awesome! And here's the link to the online collection: http://www.austlit.edu.au/CLDR
And finally, coming it at 42 minutes but worth each one (skip to minute 1:10 to get to the introductions) is a panel on children's literature hosted by Southampton's MFA in Writing and Literature. The authors on the panel are Emma Walton Hamilton, Peggy Kern and Tricia Rayburn. They discuss different genre's from picture books to young adult.
Part two (36 minutes) is here and goes into more depth about the construct of the books in their genre of choice:
