Children's Stories – the EssentialsWritten by Ann Harth
There is no specific formula for children's fiction. There are, however, some necessities. Whether you are writing a humorous picture book or a coming-of-age novel for young adults, you will need: a main character, a setting, a problem or goal and a satisfying ending.*Main character Develop protagonists that your readers will care about. Create characters that are same age or a little older than your target audience. Make them real and believable. Allow your characters to make mistakes and have embarrassing moments. Children aren't perfect. They can't identify with a protagonist who is. Give Molly Squinch an obsession with worms or inability to complete anything. Make Henry Steed stumble and turn red when a certain teacher comes near. Develop a character who is real enough to be living next door. *Setting Your setting has to be clear, but incidental. This is where show, don't tell comes into play. Weave an awareness of setting through action and dialogue. Don't allow description to put brakes on your pace. Children's eyes tend to glaze over when faced with blocks of description. You may have written an award-winning paragraph about a mountain backdrop – save it. Most ten-year-olds will not be interested. Use it for your next adult novel. *Problem or goal This is your plot. Give your character a problem, or a wish. Push him gently toward solution to his problem or fulfillment of his goal. Then toss in an obstacle. He must overcome it using his own ingenuity and/or skill. When he's succeeded, throw him another one and then maybe a third. You can make things really interesting by making each hurdle a little higher than last. The most important thing here is to allow protagonist to conquer his own problems or achieve his own goals. Try not to depend on coincidences and avoid allowing an adult or older brother to swoop in and save day.
| | Your article headlines will make or break your businessWritten by Chris K.
Most people with an online presence will have to regularly deal with issue of coming up with an appropriate headline. The problem is that most people do not take it seriously enough. Many do not realize that headline is so important that no matter how good content is, it will never get read if headline does not beckon surfers to it. The power of a headline In offline world of tabloid press, one headline can sell a few hundred copies while another in same publication, can sell several million copies. Online headlines are even more important as quite often somebody will not have an opportunity to leaf through, like they do in a print publication. Quite often, even a summary will not be available and all prospective reader has to go on, is headline. Most of us forget that we are motivated to read almost everything that we read online through headline. Open any news page and you will only click on headlines that you find interesting. Even on a page of search engine results, you will tend to go for a lower ranked page with a better headline. What this clearly means is that every little tiny headline that you place on every small piece of content is important and will have an impact on how often that item gets read. Ultimately every little headline will contribute towards success or failure of your site.
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