The basics of writing for children - begin with a character.

The basics of writing children's books, part one - commence with your main character.

There is a huge variety of ways in which � so they tell us � writers get to work. Some say that they never put pen to paper until they�ve worked out the whole idea beforehand. Some will have a vague idea of the outlines of their story and will �develop� its detail as they write. Yet other writers begin with a character and encourage the plot to grow around that character�s development. Some will start with an occurrence and then find that other events follow naturally; or they may have discovered a pattern that can be repeated, with variations, to make up a book of short stories.

Often, by looking at the end product, we can guess which of these different methods was used by a particular writer; but often we have to rely on direct information from the author 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 realised that they had hit on a formula for enjoyable stories that when varied, could be used over and over with enormous success.

The successful formula or recipe in all of these examples depends upon a main character whose idiosyncrasies dominate any scenario in which the writer chooses to place him or her. William is the rebellious schoolboy, manipulating his environment, as far as he can, to his own advantage; Pooh is a bear of very little brain, with a fat belly 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� tales the disruptive behaviour with which the young reader can easily identify, is presented as funny rather than unacceptable.

Sometimes the concept of a clearly defined character can bring about not repetitive scenarios but in a long narrative 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 great idea and, because she was already an experienced storyteller, Cedric Errol, the character based on her enchanting small son, gathers around him the other characters and happenings that make Little Lord Fauntleroy a fascinating, if now unfashionable read.

The above exerpt from Frances Burnett�s autobiography suggests that she was one of those writers who begin with an unstructured idea of the plot, but who have an idea of a situation which requires development. Without being aware of exactly how the narrative ends, the author must have had in mind Sara Crewe, the warm-hearted little rich girl who is suddenly reduced to extreme poverty, but behaves throughout like �A Little Princess� or, in her greatest book, �The Secret Garden� of ugly spoiled little girl Mary Lennox, transported from her luxurious life in India to silence and a harsher reality in cold Yorkshire.

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