Nancy I. Sanders's Blog, page 45

Faith-Building Friday

Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us,

but unto thy name give glory.

-Psalm 115:1, KJV

Feel the wind beneath our sails when God calls us to write for His purposes! And the reason we write? Not for our fame, not for our honor, but for the name of Jesus Christ to be praised!

Dear Lord, please help us keep our purpose for writing solely focused on our goal to bring glory to your name. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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For more faith-building encouragement as a writer, visit my site, Scribes.

The pocket edition of Scribes: Devotions for Christian Writers is available at Amazon. What a great gift of encouragement to give to your critique group buddies and writer friends!

Filed under: Inspiration

Chapter Book: Take Your Universal Theme Up a Notch

Saturday my hubby Jeff and I visited the beautiful Huntington Library with our son and daughter-in-law. Sigh…it was so beautiful and such a nice day! We almost stepped on this mama duck keeping a sleepy eye on her babies. So cute!!!

In our last few posts, we’ve been exploring how to brainstorm ideas for a story for a chapter book. We’ve talked about brainstorming ideas for our character. We’ve talked about brainstorming ideas for our setting. Today we’re going to talk about our universal theme.

If you’ve been following along by now you should have a sentence that looks something like this:

THE MAIN CHARACTER who lives in SETTING does his UNIVERSAL THEME.

Or more specifically:

The wannabe popular girl who lives next door to a famous kid-idol does her universal theme.

Let’s just say you have chosen the universal theme: goes to first day of school.

Now, let’s brainstorm ideas on how to take that up a notch in kid-appeal and overall pizzaz.

Of course, you want to have a problem in here. So brainstorm what kinds of problems your main character could be having with this universal them.

Make a list of ideas about potential problems she might have.

For example, she might not want to go to her first day of school. This is a very typical problem for this universal them and it’s perfectly fine to use it! You can always choose a typical problem for a universal theme to get started. For example, for the universal theme of getting a new babysitter, the MC doesn’t want to meet them and is worried about what they’ll be like or who it will be.

But then you want to take it up a notch.

Ask yourself why? Why is your MC dreading attending her first day of school, for example.

Spend time thinking about ideas and list them down.

Here are some ideas:

She doesn’t want to attend her first day of school because it’s public school and she wishes her teen idol went there, too. (A fun twist could be that he has to attend public school for a month while they register him for private school…so she meets him anyhow!)

She doesn’t want to attend her first day of school because she’ll miss being home and talking with the mail lady every morning who is the daily gossip that fills her in on everything going on at the teen idol’s house.

Along with that, you can also brainstorm ideas specifically about the universal theme itself. How can you take your universal theme up a notch?

Say I was writing a story about the baby ducks I saw (in the photograph). Instead of having them be worried about starting their first day of school where they learn to read and write, I could make it be the first day of SWIMMING school.

When I wrote a story about Dudley the dog, who appears once a year in Clubhouse Jr magazine, one time I used the universal theme of worried about going to school and made it be DOGGIE OBEDIENCE SCHOOL where he had to learn how to sit.

If we were choosing the universal theme of going to the first day of school for our wannabe popular girl, she could be worried about going to the first day of GUITAR SCHOOL or DANCE SCHOOL or MANNERS SCHOOL.

Think of how you can spin a unique angle on your age-old universal theme and that will help you come up with a fresh, new, and even commercial idea all on your own!

Once you get that idea, plug it into your sentence, along with the problem you came up with. Here’s what that might look like:

The wannabe popular girl who lives next door to a famous kid-idol is worried about going to her first day of DANCE SCHOOL because it’s a co-ed school and she’s heard rumors that her kid-idol will be going too (and she’s a klutz).

After you reach this point, just play around with what you’ve come up with and let your brain have fun with it. Walk around with it for a couple of days and see if there’s any other way you want to tweak it to take it up a notch in the pizzazz and kid-appeal factors.

Then keep an eye out for an upcoming post as we discuss what we’ll do next with our chapter book idea!

Filed under: Chapter Books

Faith-Building Friday

My purpose in writing is to encourage you and assure you that the grace of God is with you no matter what happens.

-1 Peter 5:12, NLT

Why do we write? What is our purpose? Let���s make it our purpose to speak God���s grace into lost and lonely lives through the manuscripts we are working on. Whether we write for children or adults, in the secular or the Christian market, for magazine publishers or book publishers, our readers will be encouraged and reassured. God cares and God gives grace. Let���s extend it through the words we write as well.

Dear Father, please show me clearly how to communicate Your grace through the manuscripts I write. Encourage me each day as Your scribe so that I may encourage others. In Jesus��� name. Amen.

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For more faith-building encouragement as a writer, visit my site, Scribes.

The pocket edition of Scribes: Devotions for Christian Writers is available at Amazon. What a great gift of encouragement to give to your critique group buddies and writer friends!

Filed under: Inspiration

Chapter Book: Brainstorm Your Setting

Ready for another fun exercise to help you brainstorm ideas for a chapter book?

Today we’re gonna explore SETTING and get our creative juices going to come up with a setting that is highly commercial and pops with kid-appeal.

When I brainstorm for setting, I use a certain process that I put together into a handy-dandy sheet for you to download, print out, and write on.

CLICK HERE to get the brainstorming sheet, WHERE IN THE WORLD IS YOUR SETTING?

The way to use this worksheet is to write down IDEAS for each of the different setting options. Then look over the list and choose your favorite.

I ended up choosing a combination of 3!

I chose my main setting to be a FAMILIAR PLACE: my neighborhood here in sunny California. (I live near Los Angeles.) But I have his best friend be from an EXOTIC REGION of the world and together they’re going to visit a UNIQUE SPOT for one of their adventures.

Then, for the exercise at the bottom of the sheet, I brainstormed ideas to add various elements into my setting.

For example, for a dangerous place in your setting, you could include a cliff that the Main Character’s (MC) parents warn not to go near. Here are some other ideas:

Silly: A toilet used as a planter in the back yard. (My friend has one!)

Mysterious: A house in the woods where an old hermit lives and everyone wonders what goes on there.

Rock-star: A nearby neighborhood where famous people live, particularly a child rock-star the MC adores.

Scary: An area in the classroom where a teacher keeps a pet tarantula and boa constrictor and the MC is afraid of both.

Expensive: A top-end fashion mall where the MC loves to window shop.

Sports: A sports arena where the MC’s dad works and take her for birthday parties with her friends.

Frilly: A spa where the MC gets her nails and hair done every week. (Think Fancy Nancy.)

There you have it! I hope you have fun generating new and exciting ideas for the setting for you chapter book.

Now plug that new setting idea into the sentence you’re working on for your story idea:

The MAIN CHARACTER who lives in SETTING does his universal theme.

Here’s an example of what your sentence might look like now:

The wannabe popstar girl who lives next door to a famous kid-idol does her universal theme.

In an upcoming post we’ll talk about how to take your universal theme up a notch, too.

So stay tuned!

Filed under: Chapter Books

This Week’s Teleclass

What is Reader’s Theater?

It’s where you write a play with script for kids to read aloud. For example, you can write a reader’s theater play with parts for all the kids to be turtles and teach them about life at a pond.

Do you like Reader’s Theater?

I love writing Reader’s Theater plays. I use them is such a variety of ways.

As freebies on my own sites. CLICK HERE to see an example.

To earn money on sites where I sell them such as my TeachersPayTeachers store. CLICK HERE to see an example.

To land book contracts with publishers big and small such as Scholastic and Libraries Unlimited. CLICK HERE to see an example.

If you want to learn more about how to write Readers Theater plays so you can tap into this amazing market, too, join me live this week (Thursday) in a class I’ll be teaching over the phone for the Working Writers Club!

Here’s what to do:

Send an e-mail to Suzanne Lieurance at suzannelieurance@hotmail.com

In the subject line type “Readers Theater Workshop – Part 2″

Mention in the e-mail if you are a member or non-member. (Members pay double for the teleclasses, so take a minute and register before you sign up and SAVE. Registration is free!)

Then Suzanne will send you directions for payment.

After you pay she’ll e-mail you the handouts for the class.

(If you can’t make it live for tomorrow, you can still sign up and get the audio replay.)

I know lots of writer friends are sad at this time of year because they can’t afford the big bucks or the chunks of time to attend the upcoming conferences that are being advertised right now…my hour-long audio workshops are affordable and you can listen to them at your own pace. It’s a win-win situation!

For a listing of more of my past workshops you can still get, CLICK HERE.

Filed under: Writer Workshops, Writing Skills

Orange County Christian Writers Conference: See You There!

I hope to see you at the Orange County Christian Writers Conference next week! There’s still time to sign-up!

What a great place to network, meet professionals in the business, and get super-charged up and equipped to follow the calling God has placed on your life to write.

I want to meet YOU! So I hope you’ll be there. Check out all the great things that will be happening and the awesome line-up of faculty.

So whether you’re local or flying in from far away, I hope to see you there!

Filed under: Writer Workshops

Chapter Book: Brainstorming Exercise

Okay, now we have enough material to do an exercise. Not the hike-up-the-hill exercise I’m about to do in this photograph. We’re going to do a fun story-generating brainstorming exercise.

This exercise is similar to the exercise I share in Section 7.1 Fresh and Original in my book, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Beginning Readers and Chapter Books. This exercise is guaranteed to help you come up with a fresh and original idea you can choose to write about.

Do you already have an idea for a story for your early chapter book? If so, write it down in one single sentence. Make your sentence look like this:

The MAIN CHARACTER who lives in SETTING does his universal theme.

If you don’t yet have an idea, choose either a boy or a girl for your main character. Choose a general setting such as a town or a city. Choose your universal theme.

Write it all down in a sentence.

The MAIN CHARACTER who lives in SETTING does his universal theme.

For example:

The boy who lives in a town starts his first day of school.

Now, let’s play with this sentence. Our goal is to brainstorm a fresh and original idea to write about in a story.

First, let’s brainstorm a main character that pops and sizzles and can even be commercial.

I like to ask myself questions at this stage of the game.

Instead of just an ordinary main character, what would make my main character fresh and original?



Could he be super smart at something or really good at something?

Like a math whiz or a soccer star or already a popstar musician.

Try plugging in different ideas you have for a main character who’s ultra-talented for a kid in kindergarten through second grade (this is our target age).

Could there be something funny about him?

Like he has the world’s largest collection of toilet paper rolls or he always wins watermelon seed spitting contests?

Try plugging in different ideas you have for a main character with a funny trait.

Could there be something very unique about him?

Like his mom is President of the US and he’s living in the White House or he’s the great-great-great-great-great grandson of William Penn?

Try plugging in different ideas you have for the main character with a unique quirk.

Have fun playing with main character ideas like this! In an upcoming post, we’ll play around with the sentence even more as we brainstorm ideas for a setting that zings.

Filed under: Beginning Readers, Chapter Books

Chapter Book: Let’s Brainstorm for a Universal Theme

The second thing I did to brainstorm for an idea for a new chapter book was to brainstorm for a universal theme I wanted to write about.

What’s a universal theme? It’s something every kid experiences. Like losing their first tooth or getting a pet. Every story needs a universal theme to pull the reader in and keep him reading until the end.

To help you brainstorm for a universal theme you’d like to write about, you can get a list I made up of universal themes.

CLICK HERE to visit the site of my cat writing buddies. Scroll down until you see UNIVERSAL THEMES AGES 4-7. (That’s the age of kids who read early chapter books.) Click on the file to download it and print it out.

If you think of a universal theme not listed, just write it on a blank line. Look over the list and choose one you’d like to write about for your chapter book. (It doesn’t have to be in cement…just give you something to aim for at this point.)

For example, you could pick:

“the first day of school.”

I’ll show you a fun exercise to do with this in an upcoming post.

Filed under: Beginning Readers, Chapter Books

Chapter Book: Let’s Brainstorm for Ideas!

In the early years of my writing career, I didn’t know about brainstorming.

I thought as writers we were supposed to show up at our computer in the morning, flex our fingers, and start to type.

That’s what a lot of people say, right?

Well it didn’t work for me. I spent countless frustrating mornings wondering WHAT I was supposed to type.

And then I discovered brainstorming.

Now brainstorming is one of my favorite things to do as a writer. Why? Because it gives me gobs of gooey and delicious ideas so that I’m itching to write and can’t stop from typing!

How do I brainstorm, you may ask?

ClICK HERE to read a funny article about the process.

Do I stare into space and wait for the “muse” to strike me? (Personally I think lightning has more of a chance to strike a writer than the muse.)

No, I get busy and look at things.

So to start our very first brainstorming session to think of an idea for the chapter book you want to work on, I’ll share exactly the very first thing I did when I got my idea.

I looked at other current early chapter books and just enjoyed reading through the opening pages of a variety of titles on Amazon. I jotted down any ideas that popped into my head without committing to any of them.

So here’s a list of current early chapter books you can browse through, too. Click on the LOOK INSIDE feature and read through the pages that pop up or listen to the audio preview. Get your notebook and jot down any idea that comes to you for your own potential chapter book even if you think it stinks right now. You never know. Have fun browsing!

Early Chapter Books with a similar word count to our mentor text, Stink #1:

Anna Hibiscus: 7577 words

Happy Birthday Bad Kitty: 4097 words

Ivy and Bean: 7828 words

Jake Drake Bully Buster: 8844 words

The Stories Julian Tells: 6268 words

Longer chapter books to look up if you’re interested:

Encyclopedia Brown By Detective: 10392 words

Frankly Frannie: 11400 words

Magic Tree House High Time for Heroes: 15045 Words

Nancy Clancy and the Secret of the Silver Key: 13618 words

Secrets According to Humphrey: 27000+ words

Filed under: Beginning Readers, Chapter Books

Chapter Book: Our Mentor Text

Thanks for your patience as I picked the mentor text I’m going to use for writing my next chapter book and that you can use, too, as your mentor text for following along.

Here’s how it happened.

Somewhere while I was brainstorming last month for CHABOOCHA and making lists of ideas that might be fun to write and submit to Kaeden Books, I noticed that on my list I had a highly commercial idea with lots of potential.

When I stumble across one of those gold nugget ideas now and then, I do not…I repeat…I DO NOT…submit it for a work-for-hire project. I save it for submitting to a publisher who offers royalty contracts and since I now work with an agent, I save it for submitting to my agent who then submits it to publishers.

So I saved it. For now. And now I’ll show you step-by-step the journey and the process I take when I write a brand new chapter book. And if you want to follow along and write your own chapter book, I can guarantee it’s going to be lots of fun!

I’m in the middle of another project right now, a nonfiction deadline for teens that’s under contract, so I’ll be taking this new chapter book at a leisurely pace. You can, too!

So first I wanted to find a mentor text. (In an upcoming post I’ll share with you how to brainstorm an idea you can write about.)

For awhile I was thinking about using Barbara Park’s Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus. Here’s why I wanted to use it as my mentor text:

1. The voice is AWESOME. I’ve even seen junior high girls reading this series because the voice of Junie B. Jones is so strong. It’s a great example of how to write with a fantastic voice.

2. It’s about a real girl in a real world. Kids this age LOVE to read about school and friends and teachers and real life.

3. It is the right length and reading level. It’s just 6570 words with a 2.9 book level. It’s got 10 chapters and 69 pages. That’s an early chapter book.

But in the end, I turned it down. Why? Because it didn’t have one important criteria I like to use for a mentor text. It was written in 1992.

Ouch.

There are just so many subtle little details in a book that old that I might try to learn from that editors today might not be looking for. I try to use a mentor text that’s more current than that…rarely over 10 years old.

So I continued my search for a mentor text we could use.

I searched on amazon and in my local library and on my bookshelves.

I came really close to choosing Secrets According to Humphrey or Nancy Clancy and the Secret of the Silver Key. But even though it’s an AWESOME book and won tons of awards, Secrets According to Humphrey was over 27,000 words, much to much for the early chapter book we’re going to write while following along here on this blog. And Nancy Clancy was a mystery…that’s a whole other learning curve I didn’t want to tackle right now.

So I kept looking. Until I found it. Are you ready?

Drum roll please.

Our mentor text is:

Stink (Book #1) The Incredible Shrinking Kid by Megan McDonald.

Here’s why I chose it:

1. The voice is AWESOME. I haven’t read the whole book yet, but just the opening pages on Amazon had me laughing out loud.

2. It’s about a real boy in a real world with family and school and real problems. (He’s short.) Plus it’s a boy book. Publishers are always looking for boy books. (Hint: if you can brainstorm an idea for a boy book during our upcoming brainstorming session, that’s a big plus!)

3. It’s the right word length and reading level. How do I know? You can check it out on RENAISSANCE LEARNING. Just type in the title on the tab marked “Quiz Store” and you’ll see all the stats. 5502 words and a book level 3.0.

4. It was published in 2013. That’s really current so it will be full of current stuff editors are looking for.

5. And the super-duper extra bonus is this: It’s the first book in the series! Since we’ll be writing the first book with our brand new character we’re going to brainstorm together in an upcoming post, it will really help us introduce a character and learn how to start a brand new chapter book of our very own with series potential.

So if you want to join along in our upcoming adventure of how-to-write a chapter book from beginning to end (along with tips on where and how to submit it to a royalty-based publisher when we’re done) go ahead and buy your own copy of this book. It’s only $2.99 for Kindle or $4.99 for paperback. I prefer paperback because I like to mark key elements on the pages, but if you prefer digital, go for it. The important thing is to make the investment with a few bucks because it will pay off quickly!

Filed under: Beginning Readers, Chapter Books