Section 06 · Starting Out
Starting out as a childrens writer
The first year: finding a working routine, learning the age bands, reading like a writer and knowing which advice to ignore.
Starting out as a children's writer feels like standing in front of two doors. Behind one is the idea you cannot stop thinking about. Behind the other is the actual craft of turning that idea into a manuscript an editor wants to read. This guide walks you through what matters first, why a great idea is only the first step, how long your book should try to be, and when to bring other readers in. The short answer to the biggest question: the idea counts for less than you think, and the execution counts for more.
The idea is the easy part
Almost everyone starting out believes the opposite. The idea feels like the precious thing, the thing to guard. A widely shared piece of advice from kidlit.com, a long-running site answering craft questions from writers, turns that assumption on its head: ideas are common, and execution is what separates a pitch from a book. The author of that piece describes reading slush piles and seeing the same failure again and again, a premise with real promise attached to writing that does not deliver on it. Her most frequent complaint, she says, is wishing a writer had made a good idea work.
Why agents ask to see writing before deciding
According to that same page, an agent who hears a strong pitch at a conference still cannot judge anything until the manuscript itself is in front of them. Many ideas sound fantastic when described out loud. The question is whether the writer can build a world a reader wants to stay in, characters worth caring about, and stakes that keep pages turning. Her example is The Hunger Games: the high-concept premise, kids forced into a death match as political pawns, would electrify anyone in a pitch meeting, but plenty of similar ideas sit unfinished in drawers. What made that book land was the writing, the pacing, the thriller-shaped execution.
Should you worry about someone stealing your idea?
No, and the reason is practical rather than polite. As the piece on ideas and execution points out, a plagiarist who stole your idea would still have to produce an entirely new execution of it, years of labor, because the idea alone is not the book. Two writers handed the same premise will produce two different manuscripts. If you are starting out, this should free you: the thing to protect and polish is not the concept but the sentences.
How long should a children's book be?
Length is where beginners drift furthest from professional norms, usually by writing long. A separate kidlit.com guide on manuscript length gives ballpark maximums drawn from one agent's experience, and the numbers are sobering for a first-time novelist.
- Board book: 100 words max
- Picture book: 600 words max
- Early reader: 1,500 words max
- Chapter book: 4,000 to 15,000 words
- Middle grade: up to 45,000 words for contemporary, mystery and humor
- Upper middle grade fantasy and sci-fi: up to 65,000 words
- Young adult: up to 85,000 words, or 95,000 for fantasy and sci-fi
What a high word count signals
Those numbers are estimates, not laws, and the guide is candid about that. A manuscript can exceed a maximum if every word earns its place. But inflated length often signals something agents recognize instantly: not enough revision. First fantasy manuscripts, the page notes, tend to arrive dense with description, slow in pace, and proudly announced as the first book of a trilogy. The author's advice is blunt. Cutting words and killing darlings is one of the hardest revision skills to learn, and most debut writers have not learned it yet. There is also a business side: words become pages, pages become production and shipping costs, and an editor weighing a debut has to justify the expense.
When do other readers come in?
Execution improves fastest with feedback, but timing matters. Kidlit.com's guide to critique groups and beta readers suggests a workable sequence for a beginner: finish the draft, revise it on your own for a few passes, then bring in critique partners. A novel changes so much while you are writing it that early feedback can answer questions the draft itself will later dissolve. The distinction the page draws is useful too. Critique partners meet regularly and dig into the work hands on, sometimes reading twenty versions of one chapter. Beta readers come later, for fresh eyes on a polished manuscript before it goes anywhere near an agent.
Finding your first critique partner
If you have neither, start small. One partner found online or at a conference is enough, and if the fit is wrong you look for another. The Verla Kay Blueboards and the SCBWI are two places the guide names for meeting other writers, and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators is a real organization with regional chapters, described here in the third person; this magazine is not part of it and does not speak for it. What matters at the start is the habit, giving feedback, receiving it, learning to act on it. You can read more about how critique groups work elsewhere in the Review.
A first-year shape for the work
Pull it together and a beginner's year has a rough outline. Draft the book without guarding the idea. Measure the draft against the word counts above and cut hard, using revision in passes so you fix one problem at a time instead of everything at once. Then find one reader, and later a few. The idea got you to the desk; only the execution gets the manuscript off it. Tonight, open your draft and cut one paragraph you have been protecting, then see whether the scene around it reads faster.
In this suite
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Finding a writing routine that survives a normal week
You can build a writing routine that survives sick days, holidays and work crunches by planning around the publishing calendar's quiet stretches, and resume it on the days you miss.
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Your first year: what to do, and what to skip
Where to put your hours when everything feels urgent: which habits earn their keep in year one, what can safely wait, and how to tell a revision pass from a manuscript you should set aside.
Every guide in this suite reads against the Critique Groups arithmetic, and two neighbouring suites extend it: Craft & Revision and Illustration.