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As you create stories for children, here are a few simple points or “rules” to keep in mind.

True, some of these “rules” can be broken.

But you know what they say - “You have to know the rules and be able to follow them before you can start breaking them.”

Here they are:

1) When writing for children, be sure your main character - the viewpoint character - is a child or teen.

Many times, grandparents decide to write stories for children, but then they create a story where a grandparent is the main character.

Kids may love a story that features a grandparent. But children identify with the main, viewpoint character. It’s hard for them to identify with an older person when they are a child and haven’t had all the life experiences of an older adult, so make that viewpoint character a child.

2) Be sure to give your main character a problem, right at the start of the story. Many beginning writers love their characters so much that they just hate to give these characters a problem or conflict.

But, hey, guess what?

Without a conflict, you don’t have a story. So be sure the main child in the story has an age-appropriate problem, right from the get-go.

3) In stories for young children, stick to a single point of view. This means you should tell everything from the main character’s viewpoint.

You can’t tell us what the dog is thinking, or how Grandma feels. You can “show” these things, but you can’t tell them. You can only “tell” what the main character is thinking or feeling.

4) Make sure your viewpoint character solves, or resolves, the story problem himself. Too many times, beginning children’s writers have a parent, or other well-meaning adult, rush in to save the day.

But editors look for children’s story that feature a child protagonist who solves his own problem - or at least resolves it without a lot of help from adults - so give adults only minor roles in your stories for children.

5) Try to create an unexpected “twist” for the end of your story.

This should be something completely logical, but unexpected.

Read several short stories in children’s magazines and look for the “twist” in each of them until you begin to get the hang of this for your own stories for children.

6) The main character should grow or change somehow as a result of solving or resolving his own problem.

This doesn’t have to be a BIG change, but the reader should see some difference in the main character now that he has gone through a struggle to solve or resolve the overall story problem.

If you keep these simple points in mind as you create stories for children, you’ll be WAY ahead of much of the competition.

Happy writing!