Writing For Kids - Begin With Your Main Character

By Author: Ellie Dixon
Total Articles: 21
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There are are an enormous variety of ways in which � according to their own accounts � writers get to work. Some say that they never put pen to paper until they�ve worked out the total storyline beforehand. Some will have a indistinct idea of the outlines of their story and will �unearth� its complexities as they write. Yet other writers start with a character and allow the storyline to grow around that character�s development. Some will start with an incident and then find that other events continue naturally; or they may have discovered a pattern that can be repeated, with variations, to compose a book of short stories.

Often, by looking at the finished product, we can guess which of these different methods was used by a particular writer; but often we have to rely being informed by the writer themselves. It seems likely that Richmal Crompton embarking upon her first tale about �William, A A Milne with Christopher Robin and Pooh and Dorothy Edwards with her �Naughty Little Sister� stories were aware that they had found a recipe for enjoyable tales that ...
... with variations, could be used time and again with enormous success.

The successful formula or recipe in each of these examples depends upon a central character whose idiosyncrasies dominate any situation in which the writer decides to place him or her. William is the naughty schoolboy, manipulating his environment, when possible, to his own advantage; Pooh is a bear of very little brain, with a large stomach and a large heart; and the little sister�s behaviour goes against the conventions of polite society. An extra bonus is that in Richmal Crompton�s and Dorothy Edwards� books the disruptive behaviour with which the young reader can easily identify, is shown as amusing rather than unacceptable.

Sometimes the concept of a clearly defined character can bring about not repetitive scenarios but in a long tale with a beginning, a middle and an end. Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote: ��. One day I had an idea. I will write a story about him, I said, I will put him in a world quite new to him and see what he will do.� It was a good idea and, because she was already a great storyteller, Cedric Errol, the character based on her irresistible small son, gathers around him the other characters and happenings that make Little Lord Fauntleroy a great, if no longer popular read.

The above exerpt from Frances Burnett�s autobiography suggests that she was one of those authors who begin with a vague idea of the plot, but who have an idea of a situation which demands development. Without knowing exactly how the tale ends, the author must have thought of Sara Crewe, the generous young rich girl who is suddenly reduced to extreme poverty, but behaves throughout like �A Little Princess� or, in her best-known book, �The Secret Garden� of plain spoiled little girl Mary Lennox, transported from her luxurious life in India to silence and a harsher reality in chilly Yorkshire.