Local launches online picture book writing course

Once upon a time, aspiring children’s book authors had to rely on brick-and-mortar courses to hone the skills of their chosen craft.

Today, it’s virtually a different world.

Sag Harbor resident Emma Walton Hamilton, a best-selling children’s book author, editor and educator, has recently launched a picture-book writing course, “Just Write for Kids!,” that she hopes will appeal to the legions of time-pressed individuals who dream of publishing stories for the youngest audience.

“I’m aware that there’s a high level of interest in writing for young people these days among English teachers, work-at-home moms and others who’d love to avail themselves of this course, but can’t make it to classes,” the director of the Southampton Children’s Literature Conference at Stony Brook Southampton explained recently.

Part of her inspiration for starting this independent study—whose time-insensitive nature allows users to enroll when it works best for them—stemmed from seeing similar mistakes pop up repeatedly as she was editing, including issues with verse and clear beginnings, middles and ends.

If she could make the basic principles of writing for children more accessible, she believed, she could improve others’ ability to write and get published—while also making her own editing job easier.

“It’s deceptively difficult,” she says of writing picture books. “It’s a very specific art form, almost akin to writing haiku.”

Ms. Walton Hamilton, who has co-authored 20 children’s books with her mother, Julie Andrews, recalled making the same common beginner’s mistakes when she first waded into the waters of children’s literature.

Among these mistakes, she noticed, is the habit to overwrite.

The picture-book genre is usually limited to a 32-page, 1,000-word maximum. With little wiggle room, and publishers seeking greater economy of words and a good balance between pictures and text, Ms. Walton Hamilton said that authors need to be aware that a powerful verb, for example, can supplant unnecessary adjectives and adverbs.

Keeping the young reader in mind by using a young protagonist of a similar age is also key.

In her first draft of “Dumpy the Dump Truck,” Ms. Walton Hamilton said, she and her mother initially made the driver a teenager, but following an editor’s suggestion to keep the main character as young as possible, they redrafted a version with a grandfatherly driver with a little boy as his sidekick.

Even though the mother-daughter team has been writing together for a dozen years, Ms. Walton Hamilton says, “We’re just beginning to hit our stride.”

The $297 course delivers eight lessons via e-mail, with each installment featuring a specific topic, such as character development, theme, plot structure and narrative. The entire curriculum is designed by Ms. Walton Hamilton, with the technological component taken care of by her Midwest-based webmaster, Erica Rueschoff.

“Yes, it’s a home study, but you’re not in a vacuum,” Ms. Walton Hamilton noted, highlighting a number of extras that come with enrollment, including an editing checklist, a writer’s resource list of publications, organizations, websites and conferences, and blogs intended to help authors stay current in the industry and to smooth the path toward publication.

A $50 dollar gift certificate for users may be used toward manuscript evaluations, line editing and one-on-one consulting with Ms. Walton Hamilton, wearing her editor’s hat.

The course also allows virtual interaction with Ms. Walton Hamilton and other participants, who so far have hailed from New Zealand and the United Kingdom, as well as across the United States. The program is currently available in English only.

“I very much believe that our future readers of tomorrow depend on us giving them quality material to read today,” the author/editor/teacher said. “It’s easy to get discouraged; there are a lot of naysayers, but I’m a relentless optimist. My view is that society has always needed storytelling and storytellers from the time we sat around the fire in the cave, and I don’t see that changing. The formats and venues may change, but we’re always going to need good stories”—even in a digital age.

“It’s a good time to be a writer,” she said. “What else can you expect from Mary Poppins’s daughter?”