Day Three - Summarizing
Chapters 18 of How to Write a Children's Book: a 7-day Workshop in a Book
The summarization step happens in three smaller steps.
In this section, you will be writing a sales description, spill one, and spill two.
SUMMARIZING your story in a couple of sentences helps you understand what you are writing.
This is going to seem counterintuitive, but you will be
writing a brief sales description of your soon-to-be book. Even though your book isn’t a book yet, writing a sales description can help us visualize the finished product and help us better understand the story we want to write.
Imagine that the book is written. Someone sees your book on a website, and they think it might be an excellent birthday gift. Before they buy, they want to know a little more about the story. They scroll to the description. What do they read?
You only need a few sentences.
Write one to four sentences to help this imaginary person decide if the story is right for the child’s birthday, holiday, or just-because gift. Keep it short and straightforward.
I was able to write two sales descriptions during my 10-minute session.
The first thing you probably noticed about my screenshot is that there is a big blank in my first sales description. I was more than four minutes into my sales description when I got stuck on what the main character, Stephen, was going to share with the reader.
To keep things rolling, I added a blank, and almost immediately began writing the next sales description using similar vocabulary.
I must have written and deleted the second sales description five or ten times, but, after going over what I knew I wanted to include and erasing things that didn’t feel right, I landed on the final sales description.
The story felt like it was coming together by the end of
the 10-minute session.
DAY THREE - SESSION ONE
Ready your writing implements
Set a timer for 10 minutes
Write a brief sales description
Tip: You will most likely have time to write more than one. Do it. This will make your story even clearer.
I hope you enjoyed this excerpt from “How To Write A Children’s Book: A 7-Day Workshop In A Book”.
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