2023 June Self-Edit and Query Workshops

The Children’s Writers of the Hudson Valley was delighted to have Sara Schonfeld, Associate Editor at HarperCollins Children’s Publishing, lead a workshop on self-editing like an editor and how to strengthen your query letter. Sara was warm, friendly, approachable, and knowledgeable. Below is a brief summary of our workshops.

Some of Sara’s tips for self-editing was a reverse outline, write down what happened in the story and what is it doing for the story. When editing ask yourself questions, does each scene advance the character or plot?

Think about your main character: what are the themes, relationships, growth, motivation.

After Sara’s PowerPoint presentation, our writing exercise was to edit several pages of our manuscript focusing on specific areas.

Tips for strengthening your query included what to look for when researching your comp titles, how to find examples of comp titles, answering the five basic questions (what, when, who, how and why) and following the four basic structural parts of a query letter. 

Sara reviewed proper query protocols when submitting multiple query letters to editors or agents.

Some common mistakes in writing query letters were too much world building, too much information, too long and others.

Our writing exercise was to rewrite our query letter. Sara read many query letters to the group and gave constructive feedback. Even if your query wasn't read, listening to Sara's comments were still valuable.

We want to thank Sara for spending the afternoon with us and teaching us about self-editing and making our queries stronger. Also, we want to thank our hard working attendees and the CWHV staff.

2022 November Fall Conference

Our November 2022 Fall Conference was a wonderful success. It was a pleasure to see so many familiar faces, and our faculty was welcoming, knowledgeable and their presentations, excellent. We had Frances Gilbert, VP and Editor-in-Chief of Doubleday Books for Young Readers; Rachel Orr, agent at Prospect Agency; and Talia Benamy, editor at Philomel Books.

We opened our conference with fellowship over coffee, cookies and muffins.

Our Keynote was Frances Gilbert. She talked about the rules of writing. The tip is there are no rules in writing. She showed a slide of 9 picture books, four of them were medal winners, and all of those writers did not follow the rules. She talked about some of her editorial preoccupations, including word counts, plot, stories being too formulaic, main character growth or no growth, plus others.

Rachel Orr talked about strong beginnings that will hook the reader, the different categories of beginnings, what makes a bad beginning, and what is the purpose of picture book beginnings. She talked about nontraditional structures and the three categories of endings. Working on our own manuscripts, we used some of the techniques that we learned to improve our beginnings and endings.

Talia Benamy’s workshop was on crafting compelling characters. We reviewed what makes characters seem real, three dimensional and someone you’d like to spend time with. We examined ways to make characters come alive, what are their wants, what do they think they want, mannerisms, habits, etc. Our exercises encouraged us to delve deep into our characters to flush them out.

Our final session was a panel with Frances, Rachel, and Talia. Some questions asked were about the submission process; multiple authors on the same story and how royalties are split; if a client and agent part ways, what happens to future royalties and commissions; how did the editors and agent feel about self-published works; and what happens if an editor leaves in the middle of an acquisitions?

The faculty and attendees enjoyed a Panera’s lunch. Thank you Panera for providing our lunches. We want to thank our faculty, staff, and our dedicated and hardworking attendees, without your support, we wouldn’t exist. 

Frances Gilbert

Talia Benamy

                                            

Rachel Orr

2022 JUNE CRAFTING A HOOK WORKSHOP

We were thrilled to have Elizabeth Law, Senior Editor and Backlist Specialist at Holiday House run a workshop at our June 2022 CWHV Event on writing your manuscript’s hook. She was humorous, knowledgeable, approachable and a real delight.

Crafting a compelling hook is essential in getting an agent’s or editor’s attention. If your hook doesn’t grab or appeal to them, they will stop reading. When writing your hook, try to put the key words in your title or in the first 25 words of description. Always highlight the conflict or tension.

Several examples of hooks were discussed, along with several formulas for crafting your hook.

1. Book A meets Book B (for example: Mean Girls Meet Parent Trap)

2. My book, (title) has the sexual tension like Twilight but with pirates instead of vampires. (State what is similar and what is different.)

Our hands-on-exercise was working on our hooks, sharing them (optional) and then getting Elizabeth’s feedback.

If you’ve received letters from agents or editors with nice compliments like great writing, great characters, etc., but no acceptance offers, it could mean there was no hook and therefore they didn’t know how to sell it or there was no emotional arc.

Tips on researching, finding comp titles and finding examples of hooks were discussed.

Thank you Elizabeth for a wonderful and fun afternoon! You can find Elizabeth on Twitter @elawreads

2021 November Fall Event

Our debut in-person CWHV conference, since Covid, was a delightful success! We met at the Hampton Inn & Suites in Poughkeepsie on November 6, 2021.

We began with registration and fellowship. This was the first time, since our last CWHV conference in June 2019, that many conference attendees met face to face. Attendees chatted, shared coffee and cookies and genuinely enjoyed seeing old writer friends.

Our opening speaker was Alison Weiss, acquisitions editor at Pixel+Ink. In 2016, she was named a Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree. She was friendly, enthusiastic, knowledgeable and well prepared! Besides lecture and discussions, there were writing exercises and a three-page handout.

Alison discussed different approaches to planning and building a series across diverse age levels and genres. We discussed the different kinds of series, and ways to develop your character. We worked on our pitches and brainstormed book ideas for series potential. You can follow her on twitter @alioop7 and learn more about Pixel+Ink at pixelandinkbooks.com 

Our second presenter was K. L. Going, an award-winning author. Her first novel, FAT KID RULES THE WORLD was named a Michael Printz Honor Book, and was included on YALSA’s Best Books for Young Adults and on their list of Best Books for the Past Decade. Kelly has participated in prior conferences and is always a joy to listen to.

Kelly talked about different strategies to explore the creative process. Her exercises were unique with multiple stations, one table dealt with taste, texture, smell. Another table offered multiple cards with varying characters, settings and situations.

There was a table with enlarged black and white photographs that inspired me to write a backstory. Other tables offered prompt cards and postcards to stroke one’s creative juices.

To visit Kelly on-line go to klgoing.com, facebook, twitter at @klgoing, instagram @klgoing 

    
Critiques were offered on site by Alison Weiss, K.L. Going and Jalen Garcia-Hall (editorial assistant with Scholastic, Inc.)

We want to thank our presenters and our industrious attendees for supporting us and making our return to hosting conferences an informative and fun afternoon!

For announcements and conference updates, please visit our CWHV facebook page.    

Alison Weiss

K.L. Going

                                                                              

2020 June Conference

We're sorry to announce that we canceled our June 13, 2020 Children's Writers of the Hudson Valley Conference due to the outbreak of coronavirus.

We are following recommendations encouraged by the state and federal government to cancel our event to discourage the spread of the virus. 

Please keep checking this website for updates and sign up for our newsletter for announcements on future conferences.

2019 November Self-Editing Workshop

Our fall event was a self-editing workshop focusing on query pitches ran by Katherine Jacobs, a Senior Editor at Roaring Brook Press, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group at St. James Church in the Mid-Hudson Valley. Katherine was engaging, informative and a pleasure to spend the afternoon with.

The first free writing exercise was to describe your work in progress and then using that writing sample, find words or phrases that get to the core of your story. We discussed what is the most important thing your reader needs to know about your story on the first page followed by another writing exercise.

We examined the first page of two published works and discussed the important information that we learned from them. Katherine then explained the written pitches for those two published works, one for a picture book and one for a novel.

Katherine Jacobs

Using information from our prior writing exercises, we worked on our own pitches.

There was a discussion on competitive titles and agents. Everyone left with a handout with more advice for their work in progress. 

We look forward to seeing Katherine again!          

To receive updates about our current or future conferences, sign up for our newsletter.

"Thanks again for organizing the workshop on Saturday. I found it SO HELPFUL! I am really excited about revising my picture book manuscript now." Caroline Nastro, 2019 attendee

2019 June Conference

We were honored to have Alvina Ling, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers as our opening keynote speaker. She spoke on her publishing journey and the importance of goal setting. Five steps for attaining your goals: do your research, outline a step by step plan, work hard and preserve, network like crazy and believe and hope in your goal and abilities. As Abe Lincoln said, “A goal properly set is hallway reached.” I love that!

Her workshop session reviewed the basics of novel structure: voice, character and plot. Voice: Who is the main character? Points of view: multiple or single. Tense, past or present. Prose or verse. Ways of making your character’s voice distinct was discussed. Character: learn about our character through physical descriptions,
action, self-discovery and dialogue. Plots: the seven basic plots and three simple plots were explored.

Eve Adler, Senior Editor at Sterling Children’s Books, picture book workshop talked about how to hook your readers with the right voice. Unfortunately, I was not in this workshop. If I find someone who can share their notes, I’ll add to this post.

Kate Brzozowski, Editor at Feiwel & Friends and Swoon Reads, discussed your writing voice in novels. Your writing voice is influenced by your tone, your diction, sentence length and access into the character’s head.

Emma Sector, Literary Agent at Prospect Agency, discussed the difference kinds of chapter books. Some are like graphic novels in the structure and art style, some are episodic with three or four different stories using the same main character and others are one storyline. Usual word count is 10,000 to 12,000 words with ten chapters. For a series potential, you need different secondary characters with a structure that can be repeated. Think Magic Tree House.

Our closing speaker was David Neilsen, storyteller and author of creepy, funny middle grades. He described ways to build the mood so the reader can be scared, why the reader has to identify with the character, and why children want to be scared. He discussed some dos and don’ts when writing to scare young readers. He closed his session by entertaining us with a reading.

We want to thank all of our attendees, without their support our conferences would not be a success! Thanks to our fabulous speakers: Alvina Ling (@planetalvina on twitter and @alvinaling on Instagram), Eve Adler, Kate Brzozowski, Emma Sector, and David Neilsen. A special thanks to Merritt Bookstore for all their heavy lifting to provide us with a bookstore, Panera for delivering our delicious lunches and finally, to our dedicated CWHV committee members.

For my live tweets during the conference, search #CWHV.

To receive updates about our current or future conferences, sign up for our newsletter.

"Thank you for another excellent writing conference in a welcome setting, with delicious food and lots of drinks.These conferences keep me focused on plugging along to my writing goals, and spur me on to work more diligently. And I always leave with new ideas to improve my writing." Catherine Cwiakala, 2019 attendee

Kate Brzozowski

Alvina Ling

Eve Adler

Emma Sector

                                            
            

David Neilsen