Tips for Young Writers

Tips for Helping Young Writers

Writing Tips from Author Mary Amato

Children's author and writing coach Mary Amato (Snarf Attack, Underfoodle, and the Secret of Life: The Riot Brothers Tell All) shares her best tips on keeping a diary or writer's notebook, as well as ideas for parents to encourage their children's creative writing. You can also watch our Reading Rockets video interview with Mary Amato.

Mary Amato’s Tips for Keeping a Diary

A diary is a place to write down your own life experiences. Keeping a diary can be rewarding, even if you’re not interested in becoming a writer. If you speak to its pages with honesty and emotion, it becomes the most amazing keepsake possible: a record of your life.

Mary Amato’s Tips for Keeping a Writer’s Notebook

A writer’s notebook is a place where you can write all kinds of things: ideas, questions, thoughts, true stories, invented stories, rough drafts for poems, songs, or stories, bits of dialogue that you overhear, and more. It’s different from a diary, which is a record of your own life experiences.

Mary Amato’s Tips for Parents: How to Encourage Creative Writing

Discover more than a dozen ideas for encouraging your child to write, including creative and simple ways to get the whole family involved. You'll also find out how WOW stories can help unlock story structure for young writers.

Write Like a Journalist

Just a few pages from your newspaper can be turned into a good writing exercise. Cut out a few pictures from the paper. Ask your child to write a caption for each one. Compare their caption with the paper's caption. Talk about ways captions help readers understand one small piece of the story. Turn a recent family event into a newspaper story. Try to write a headline, the story, include a picture or drawing, and add a caption.

Write to Your Favorite Author

Does your child have a favorite author? Here's a great way to engage kids in a conversation about books they love and wonder about the real person who wrote those books. Here's some advice from children's writer Mary Amato on how to write to an author:

  • Write a thoughtful, personal letter. Tell the author something about yourself and why you enjoy her books.
  • Ask thoughtful questions, like how did you come up with the setting for a particular book, or why did a character behave a certain way in the story. (Your child might also share that she, too, wants to be a writer, and what was the path the author took to get there?)
  • Learn the five parts of a formal letter: heading (address and date), greeting, message, closing, and signature — and where each of those parts are placed on the paper. Which punctuation mark follows the greeting and the closing? This article, An Introduction to Letter Writing, is really helpful.
  • Write a rough draft of the letter using the letter format. Help your child edit the letter by checking spelling, sentence and paragraph construction, and capitalization.
  • Write the final draft. A handwritten letter is especially personal!
  • Send the letter to the writer "in care of" her publisher. Here's how to find that: look for the publisher's address inside the book. Usually, the mailing address will be listed in the first few pages of the book. (If the complete address is not shown, you can always find it on the publisher's website.)
  • Include an envelope with your name and address and a stamp, ready to go. Make it easy for a busy author to respond.

To get to know some of your favorite children's authors and illustrators, watch the author interviews on Reading Rockets!

Tips for Helping Young Writers

 

Launching Young Writers

Find out why writing is so important in our lives, as well as practical suggestions for activities to help your child become a stronger writer. Get tips >

7 Great Ways to Encourage Your Child's Writing

If your child struggles with writing, it’s important to find new and exciting ways to encourage her to write. Here are some creative strategies to try.Get tips >

Download PDF: English | Spanish

Graphic Organizers to Help Kids With Writing

Discover four graphic organizers that can help kids organize their ideas in a very visual way. They also help break a writing project into smaller, more manageable steps.Get tips >

Download PDF: English | Spanish

3 Writing Tips for Kids Who Don’t Like to Write

Does your child want to do anything but write? Would they rather do chores than put a pencil to paper? Here are three tips for kids who don’t like to write. (From Understood)

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