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Book Reviews
The Writer's Guide to Crafting Stories for Children by Nancy Lamb
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If you have been searching for a thoughtfully written, deeply detailed and instructive book on writing for children, consider Nancy Lamb's The Writer's Guide to Crafting Stories for Children This is the book that covers the entire head-to-toe skeleton of the children's novel, along with insight into keeping your creative self nurtured and valued as a writer.
The first three chapters cover the basics: why you want to write, finding your story ideas, and a run-down on the different children's book genres. The information is high-level, basic stuff that you've probably heard before at conferences or in classes. Chapter Four is where things really start getting interesting.
A book begins with a good structure, and Lamb takes great care in laying out different methods for structuring a story. While the ideas may not necessarily be unique, Lamb does an excellent job explaining how to use the techniques, and discusses the need to find a method (or combination of methods) that work best for you.
In Chapter Nine, Lamb covers the structure of classical drama - still quite relevant - as it applies to good story-telling. Lamb interjects her own thought-provoking tips on how to use elements from the classical drama in your own story. (One note: Lamb uses the term "exciting incident" instead of the more common "inciting incident.")
Anyone struggling with scene development will find Chapter Eleven to be invaluable. Lamb takes the reader back to basics first, then gives her "ten commandments" related to writing scenes and developing scenic tension, and finishes with an almost point-by-point methodology for putting your scenes together in a way that enhances the story tension, page-turns, and excitement.
Plot and subplot, character and characterization, setting, point-of-view and voice are all given equal coverage in similar manner to Chapter Nine. Lamb starts with the basics, gives the reader examples and thoughtful tips to get the most out of the fundamentals presented, and then sets the reader loose with exercises and advice to put things into action. Only Chapter Sixteen (Promise, Premise, Theme and Moral) seems slight, but does contain an excellent six-point checklist of things related to theme to keep in mind while writing your own story.
I found chapters Fourteen (Point of view,) Fifteen (Inner and Outer Dialogue) and Seventeen (Voice and Tone) to be of particular interest. In Chapter Fourteen, Lamb gives a solid "writer's definition" of different points-of-view, including first person, second person, third person limited and omniscient; she provides lots of examples and points out the advantages and disadvantages of each. This chapter is a foundation for the next chapter on dialogue. Lamb notes that "there is value in white space" and gives her thoughts on how to create realistic dialog. By the time the reader hits Chapter Seventeen on Voice and Tone, the "aha moments" are many. Lamb defines voice as "the quality of narration, regardless of whether it's told in first person or third." She uses excerpts from several novels to show how voice changes, and why the author's choice "fits" the novel.
The Writer's Guide to Crafting Stories for Children is an excellent guide, most useful for the writer of middle-grade to YA novels. It is also an excellent resource book for any writer, regardless of genre, who is looking for a solid writer's reference book.
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