One of the best things that children can do to help develop their creative writing skills is to read – and read widely. By 'read widely', I mean reading beyond their usual favourite kinds of stories and into other areas on the bookshelf, including non-fiction. For...
In the latest addition to the Writing For Kids series, Claire Saxby looks at setting stories in the past. Claire's latest novel Haywire is set in 1939 in the NSW town of Hay. It's about 14-year-old Tom, whose family runs the local bakery, and Max Gruber, nearly 14,...
I get very excited every time I receive a new post for the Writing For Kids series because I learn something new from every post. They might be writing tips aimed at kids, but they're actually brilliant for writers of any age. After all, these are writing tips from...
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of reading Kate Simpson's new picture book, Anzac Girl: The War Diaries Of Alice Ross-King. And if you follow any of my social media platforms, you'll know it was a real pleasure – I shared it everywhere! It's a very beautiful book,...
Last year, I wrote my first-ever funny story for publication in Total Quack Up Again, an anthology of funny stories in support of Dymock's Children's Charities. Regular readers might remember this post about the experience. One of the editors of the anthology was...
If you've listened to the So You Want To Be A Writer podcast recently, you'll know two things about me: video is not my happy place, and I've recently created a new creative writing course for kids for the Australian Writers Centre. These two things came together in a...
When you're starting out as a writer, the best thing you can do is to learn from other writers. The same is true when you're starting out as a published author – you look to the best in the business and try to learn as much as you can. Fortunately, Australian...
When I asked Australian children's author Tim Harris to write me a post for kids who love to write, there was no question of the topic: remarkable characters. Tim's latest book, Mr Bambuckle's Remarkables, features a fabulous cast of characters and there's no doubt...
When I asked my friend Allison Rushby, author of many novels for children, YA and adults, to come up with a post full of writing tips for kids, I had to laugh when she sent me one with this headline: Writing for kids: stay weird, stay different But when I read...
