Writing for children is an easy way to break into the writing business. The market is less demanding than writing for adults and the work doesn't need to be as sharp.
If you chose TRUE, well, guess again. Writing children's short stories, especially fiction, is often more challenging than adult fiction. Children feel on a more intense level. Yes, their imagination is more open to nearly anything, but their attention to detail in the "make-believe" world is very astute. A good writer can take children to worlds unimaginable. A good writer can convince through storytelling that elephants can fly and the sky is purple. However, a writer who thinks children are easy to write for may find the story left unread out of sheer boredom or the content of the prose to have damaging effects. For, you see, writing for young children is a very serious responsibility. A writer must realize that their minds are very impressionable. What you say and how you say it can have lasting effects on the young reader for years to come. This is the real world of children's literature.
Look at pictures that children find interesting. Then let your writer's imagination flow. Think of a story about what is going on in the picture. In 1983, I was a winner in the Writer's Digest Fiction Writer's Contest. The story I submitted was titled "Stiffs at the Graystone Place". This story was written after I looked at a picture that some children were sharing. It was a picture of three kids with Halloween masks running through a yard. I studied the details in the picture, let my imagination flow and came up with "Stiffs at the Graystone Place". The story was about a club initiation that takes place at Halloween. One boy has to go to the scariest house in town (the Graystone place) and collect for the newspaper. All the kids in town believe Mr. Graystone is very strange.
Picture association is an excellent way to find good children's stories.
Some of the best children's story ideas come from your own childhood experiences. Think back to when you were a kid and the endless summers you shared with parents, brothers, or sisters. Keep in mind that modern children have issues and challenges much the same as all boys and girls go through, no matter what the period of time. Good short stories with carefully woven principles and morals can be very successful.
Characters need to be developed so that they fit the story instead of being so cardboard that they seem exactly like the kid next door. In short story telling, because of the limitations of words, characters must be flat. In this case, the character must only display a single or two personal traits. You will discover in marketing children's short stories that the average word length is usually 2,000 or less. This means you have to get into the story and get out fairly quick.
Children's short story characters need to have identity marks so that the young reader can feel bonded to them as they read. Use gestures, "She touched her nose that was cherry red from playing in the snow." Give the reader a visual idea of what the character looks like: "The blonde-haired Susan, a freckled-nosed third grader, had a slight gap between her two front teeth."
The best way to know what children would say today is to listen. Go to a park and hear how and what they talk. Sit in a chair at a child's birthday party in your family and observe how they respond to things. Study what they say, how they say it and all the motions or gestures that go along with the words. These are the things that make short story characters come to life.
These are just a few of the elements that need to be mastered when working in the children's short story field. A good writer can do well writing for children, but as with any field of writing, this is a craft that must be learned. One of the best books ever written on how to write for children is: Writing for Children and Teenagers, by Lee Wyndham, published by Writer's Digest Books. Lee died in 1978, but has left us the Bible on children's short stories. If you are seriously interested in writing for children, I urge you to get this book and study it well.
The story Writing Short Stories for Children: A Simple Overview is Copyright 1998 by Michael Bavota.
The collection of works called Fish Eggs For The Soul is Copyright 1998 by Brian Rickman.
Copy edited by Sara Fawbush, editor of The Young Writer's Collection.