One aspect of writing for children that is sometimes overlooked is the sense of flow and voice in the piece. However, children’s literature might be the most important place to have this, as these stories are so often shared aloud.
If a story doesn’t have a natural flow and rhythm, it becomes awkward when you are trying to read it out aloud. This is particularly difficult for little ones learning to read, as they may stumble over words that don’t feel right.
Even if they know the word in question, it can trip them up. If it feels oddly placed in the sentence compared with what they hear people say naturally, they can question themselves.
Some books will try to force rhyme to an extent that it actually interrupts the flow of a book, which can also be damaging for the reading experience. While rhyme can be done in a way that creates a fun and silly atmosphere, some rhymes end up feeling laborious.
In the context of phonics books, rhyming can be a blessing and a curse. If rhyme can be a part of the natural flow of a story, it can help to reinforce the phoneme. However, if the book was built around the confines of everything rhyming, the content often becomes dull or random.
Probably the most important thing when writing for children is to read the material aloud. I do this several times for each book that I write to hear how it words with natural cadences, pace, and flow. By testing to see how each line works out aloud, I often find areas that need extra drafting.
Sometimes there might not be anything ‘wrong’ with the sentence. It may be perfectly clear and easy to understand. But swapping out some of the components of the sentences or the order in which they are said can help to make the sentence really click.
I also pay a lot of attention to the number of words on a page or in a sentence, as length can make a big difference on how that line will be read out. This also helps with the visual flow of the work, as it is important for the page to look reader-friendly.
Aside from tailoring the writing to work with rhythm and flow, it is also really important to factor voice in children’s literature. Voice is something that we usually consider more for longer novels, as it provides variation between characters, helps with character development, and can also give us a good feel for the world.
However, I think that voice also has a place even in short phonics readers. We often ask children to read with expression to help with their reading fluency, but how can they do that if the voices of characters are either too flat or too whacky?
By having different voices for characters, even if they only have a few lines, this can help children to start experimenting with the ways that they might portray these characters in their reading.
It might also help them to describe the ways in which characters are different, as some aspects of development can be hard to discuss. By vocalising characters, they may begin to get a feel for the central parts of how they feel.
You may even want to encourage your children to use their body or props to express how a sentence sounds. This might sound a bit abstract at first, but you would be surprised how quickly they will catch on to this concept.
By physically expressing different emotions and traits, this will help them to show the personalities of the characters in these books. This can also be a great character creation tool for games, as they can use a keyword like an animal or a verb to base their action around.
Flow and voice aren’t only important for fiction either. I make use of the same techniques while writing our non-fiction for younger children so that they can feel the range of emotions and perspectives that I use for the different topics.
Voice can help build up suspense when reading about creepy spiders. It can create a sense of wonder when discussing camping and the outdoors. Most importantly, it can allude to humour in the images that can help them to decode and enjoy the sentences.
Voice is also crucial in our non-fiction titles for older readers, as it can help to develop a sense of how creative and formal vocabulary and sentence structures vary. Having an understanding of this early with their reading will help them when they are expected to replicate such tone variation in writing pieces at school.
Whether flow and voice are helping a reader to peel back the layers of a character, get a sense of genre, or develop confident, expressive reading voices, they are a crucial part of the writing process. This is why I put flow and voice at the centre of all of our Bookbot stories, so that we can create enjoyable and memorable reading experiences.
Thanks for reading,
- Bel