WRITING CHILDREN’S BOOKS TIP #10: HUMOUR

Children love to laugh!! Do you want to write stories that children will love and read over and over and over again? Do you want to delight your readers and make them crave your stories? Yes?

Make your stories funny! Yes, make children laugh!

TIPS FOR WRITING HUMOUROUS STORIES FOR CHILDREN

• Use humorous experiences from every day life. Think of funny things that have happened to you, your friends and family. Tweak them a bit and use them! See picture book, The End of Something Wonderful: A Practical Guide to a Backyard Funeral.
• Please please please keep the jokes as short as possible.
• Surprise your readers! See picture book, We Don’t Eat Our Classmates
• Bathroom humour: Stories featuring body sounds are a hit with younger children especially books with farts and burps! See chapter book Gangster Granny by David Walliams PS: Don’t go over the top!
•  Stories where children play pranks on or triumph over adults: See Captain Underpants
• Exaggerate, yes, stretch regular situations to the point of absolute silliness!  
• Create absolutely totally ROTFL funny whacky characters
• Wordplay!! Try these and some sarcasm too to score high points with your readers!

Remember, don’t try too hard! There’s nothing more annoying than an overstressed joke.

NB: Humour can also be used to write about tough topics to make them easier for young readers to digest. The best example of this is Stephanie Lucianovic’s The End of Something Wonderful: A Practical Guide to a Backyard Funeral.

Here are some of my all-time favourites:

Picture Books

• B J Novak. The Book with No Pictures.
• Mo, Willem. Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.
• Ryan T Higgins. We Don’t Eat Our Classmates

Chapter Books

• Dav Pilky, The Captain Underpants Series
• Peggy Parish, The Amelia Bedelia Series

Middle Grade

Louis Sachar, Sideways Stories from the Wayside School

1. Action: Read like a Writer

Identify the funniest books you’ve read and try to figure out the elements the author utilized to make you laugh. Can you see any of the tips above?

2. Read.

So, want to write a funny story? Start reading. You can start with some of the books on my list. 😊

Want to write a story for children, don’t know where to start? Tell me all about it and we can figure out the theme and some mentor texts for you!

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Photo credit: www.amazon.com