From student to teacher by Keren David

Can you teach people to write for children? I think you can. Although I've been a professional writer all my adult life, I don't think I'd have made the shift to writing YA novels without the course I attended at City University.
The course helped me focus on what I wanted to write, and gave me ideas about how. It challenged me to have a go at all sorts of writing, and it gave me a chance to relax and have fun with writing stories as well.



Recommended reading: picture books

Last term I was very flattered to be asked to take over teaching that very same course. I was nervous and excited when I met my first batch of students last January.

Over the course of ten weeks, we talked about every type of children’s writing, from picture books through to YA and crossover novels. I picked a list of recommended reading (that wasn't easy) which included classics and contemporary novels.

We analysed what made them work, talked about structure and word length, ways of planning and plotting and just giving it a go. We talked about getting published, approaching agents and joining helpful groups like SCWBI.  Maurice Lyon, editorial director at Frances Lincoln Children’s Books was kind enough to come and share his wisdom about all aspects of children’s publishing (I learned a few things!).

Recommended reading: chapter books

Every week my students tackled one or two writing exercises. The first week I brought in a selection of interesting objects - a broken bracelet, a wooden fox, a ship in a bottle - and asked them to come up with a story outline. They scratched their heads, they discussed, they wrote and crossed things out. ‘That was hard,’ said one lady. She never came back.

Others did though, and tried their hands at exercises for plot-planning, character building, world-imagining, finding your voice. We looked for stories in our own backgrounds, we rewrote traditional tales. Every week some students found the exercise particularly difficult, others had their breakthrough moment. Some only attended a few classes, others found it had a profound effect on how they thought about their whole lives.

Recommended reading: YA

I didn’t set homework, but suggested that everyone should try and write something by the end of the course to share with the group. The suggested length was 1,500 words. Some wrote picture books, others started YA and MG novels. One started writing a novel while she was doing the course - she’d reached 21,000 words by week ten. Someone else wrote a non-fiction picture book. I have to admit that I was full of pride at the excellence of their creations, even though I wasn’t sure how much I’d contributed to them. My students were so enthusiastic that they’ve set up a writing group to continue their efforts – we’re meeting up for the first time this week.

I learned a lot from teaching the class. It was actually very helpful to discuss areas of children’s writing which I’d never tried myself - fantasy, say, or picture books. I also realised how important it was to step away from formal ‘how to’ teaching, and give students the chance to talk about how writing made them feel vulnerable and nervous. That’s why writing exercises were important. They force you to come up with instant ideas, which often aren’t great - how can they be after ten minutes thought? At first everyone was striving for excellence, for a polished finished product. Then gradually they realised that the whole point of writing in class was to show that getting started doesn’t have to be perfect, it can’t possibly be polished, but it is possible in an hour to go from a blank mind and page to the start of something that might grow. That's what I'm going to try and explain to my students right at the start of term this time. I still feel bad about the lady who never came back.

 If you’re interested in signing up for the course, and you're free on a Tuesday night between 6.30 and 8.30pm, and you can get to Islington, details are here.  I’d love to see you there.