Craft Articles
Join us in exploring others’ craft and building our own.
Here you will find explorations of mentor texts – articles that dive into specific craft elements in published books, interviews with authors, and tips on growing and improving as a writer.
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Striving for Unfiltered Vulnerability: A Q&A with Misa Sugiura
"I create my characters’ flaws, misconceptions, and spiritual wounds around a theme or a question that interests me, and then I give them a personal conflict that directly challenges those flaws, misconceptions, and wounds. After that, it’s a matter of developing broader challenges, events, relationships, and conflicts that can revolve around the same theme." ~ Misa Sugiura
Making a Character's Desires Concrete
Sometimes when writing, we know what our character wants, but it’s a struggle to turn the nebulous desires into something tangible, something attainable, something concrete. Here's how.
Stories are Stories: Learning from Early Reader Cat Can Fix It! by Stefanie Hohl
Just because you have to use simple words doesn’t mean the story has to lack emotion or depth. It’s challenging, but early readers can still use all the elements of story—character, plot, setting, etc. In fact, looking to early readers as a model, writers in other categories can see how efficient storytelling can be without sacrificing emotional depth.
Writing Deep Stories with Simple Words: A Q&A with Stefanie Hohl
“Studying craft is the best thing I have done for my writing. I like to write in many different genres, and each one informs the other. Reading and studying books and examining how other authors accomplish their craft has helped me tremendously.”- Stefanie Hohl
Learning from 2022 Picture Books That Soar High with Craft
Diverse group of authors highlight craft elements in their latest books that you can integrate into your own writing or illustrating.
Crafting Characters: Building Character Relationships
In our final Crafting Characters post, we dive into character relationships. These authors share the questions they ask, the strategies they employ, and the exercises the use to develop rich character relationships.
Crafting Character: Discovering Desire
What does your character want? Desire drives a story. Yearning creates propulsion. But how to you find/create/discover your character's desire? These seven authors give us their strategies for engaging with their characters' desires in ways that make their stories richer and keep readers turning pages.
Crafting Characters: Getting to Know Your Non-Fiction Characters and By Working Outside In
It's CRAFTING CHARACTERS post number 5! Today we've got something for everyone--working from the outside in, and special tips for getting to know your non-fiction characters. Whether it's asking "what if"? or interrogating a character's economic circumstances, whether diving into research or interviewing a real live person, in this post you'll find wisdom for taking your characters--both fictional and real--to the next level.
Crafting Characters: Getting to Know Your Character Through Writing Your Story
It's our fourth installment of our CRAFTING CHARACTERS series, and today, we check in with writers who work their characters out on the page as they draft. Some of these authors do use some freewriting techniques, but usually after they've seen their character in action on the page, or during the revision process. Read on for some excellent insights!
Crafting Characters: Getting to Know Your Character's Traits
In our third post of Crafting Characters, our authors and contributors share how they connect with their character's traits--whether through pulling from their own personalities, using tarot cards, or looking for opportunities for opposition. Read on to find out their strategies.
Crafting Characters: Getting to Know Your Character By Thinking and Listening
Welcome to our second post in our Crafting Characters series. For some people, working out character before putting pen to paper is the best way forward. Others have characters show up nearly fully formed, or at least with enough substance to have something to say. Those people often make efforts to listen to their characters--whether through freewriting, through scenes, or through meditative daydreaming. These authors and our contributors share their favorite ways to develop their characters. Read on for some mindful strategies for uncovering character and letting the characters speak.
KidLit Craft's Comprehensive Guide to Character
Looking at voice, interiority, internal arc, character relationships, and more, our writers have analyzed mentor texts in all categories to discover strategies for creating characters that leap off the page and into readers' hearts. This list is one you can return to over and over to find just the post you need in the moment.
Picture Book Mentor Texts: Making 2nd Person POV Sing in How To Wear a Sari
HOW TO WEAR A SARI is a charming how-to guide for wearing a colorful, twinkly, silky sari. It’s also a great mentor text for how to write an excellent picture book in 2nd person.
Follow Your Curiosity: A Q&A with Darshana Khiani
Follow your curiosity. Write and draw what you like. Know there are no set rules but it is important to understand the current book market. Picture book writing is all about how strong the concept is and then how well it is executed.
The Heroine’s Journey in The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi
The Heroine’s Journey celebrates the gifts of the matriarch. It explores themes of family, community, collaboration, cooperation, and love. As an author, and as a person, it’s important to me to write books that support those values, so everyone who reads them can be inspired to evolve toward a more feminine, collaborative, resilient society. To illustrate the points I make in this post, I’ll be examining the Heroine’s Journey of Elin in The Beast Player, a Japanese YA fantasy by Nahoko Uehashi. Elin’s story is an excellent example of the Heroine’s Journey.
KidLit Craft Goes to the Movies: The Emotional Antagonist in Eddie the Eagle
Some great stories make use of what Melanie Jacobson calls the emotional antagonist. The emotional antagonist is on the protagonist’s side, but the protagonist doesn’t have their approval or support.Jacobson believes emotional antagonist can be a powerful addition to a book because it gives a story an extra satisfying ending–a resolution with the emotional antagonist. We can see the emotional antagonist in action in Eddie the Eagle (2015).
Picture Book Poetry: The Reverso Poem in AMAH FARAWAY by Margaret Chiu Greanias
Margaret Chiu Greanias’s new picture book, Amah Faraway, illustrated by Tracy Subisak, matches the reverso form with the story of a girl and her grandmother who begin worlds apart (one in the US and one in Taiwan) in a way that enriches both the story and the form.
Taking Poetic Risks: A Q&A with Margaret Chiu Greanias
Since I began writing picture books, I've longed to tell the story of my relationship with my Amah (grandmother, in Taiwanese). Even though we saw each other infrequently, I adored her. But like Kylie, my main character in Amah Faraway, I always felt a bit shy at the start of our visits--due to my own cautious nature, the distance, language barrier, and cultural differences.
Finding Your Book--in the Bookstore
Knowing where my book would sit on a shelf and what books it would be friends with helped me think more clearly about my revision. When I’m faced with a choice, I can consider what would sit well in the spot I found for it.
Celebrate Your Awesomeness by Getting Back to Work
You’re reading this blog post because you want something different. You can bond with friends over not working later. Right here, right now, you’d like to work. So let’s go. Get to work!