When my children’s debut, Secrets of the Snakestone, was published in March this year, I made the big mistake that all experienced writers counsel against: looking at the reviews on Goodreads. Thrilled and furious in equal measure as I scrolled, I did notice one point that was made again and again (usually as a positive, but sometimes as a negative, observation): that the book was a “page-turner.”
Given the current crisis in children’s reading for pleasure, I find it odd that the fact of a children’s book being a “page-turner” can be considered a criticism. Don’t we want children to keep turning the pages?
I think one of the reasons I was drawn to writing children’s literature is my own short attention span. I can never be doing with long, dense books. The Secret History is on my TBR pile, but to be honest there it is likely to stay, as I zip through fantastic short reads like Yellowface or Alice Oseman’s Solitaire. One thing is definitely true: it is far easier to criticize a book for being a page-turner, than to write one.
So, what are my secrets for earning this accolade/criticism? I can only speak for myself, not Danielle Steel, but here are my key pieces of advice:
Keep it short
There was a veritable Twitter/X storm earlier this year, following an anonymous letter from a bookseller to The Bookseller newspaper, about children’s books being too long and complex. As a result, many publishers are now insisting on a maximum word count of 40,000 words for a Middle Grade book. A surprising number of bestselling children’s books are relatively short. A Kind of Spark has a word count of 30,000, The Last Bear 40,000, The Girl who Stole an Elephant 39,000. Secrets of the Snakestone comes out at 55,000, my next book will certainly be shorter. Focus on tight plot, plenty of action, cut down the number of characters. Less, in children’s writing, is often more.
Cliff-hanger chapter endings
I realized the importance of cliff-hanger chapter endings when I was reading Enid Blyton’s Adventures of the Wishing Chair to my son. Every chapter ends on a cliff hanger. As we got to the end of each one, he begged to go on to the next. There are many problematic aspects to Blyton, but her mastery of the cliff-hanger chapter ending is a lesson to every aspiring writer.
The rule of the cliff-hanger chapter ending is quite simple. Always end a chapter at a moment when something is about to happen, so the reader will want to turn the page to find out what that is. Then, give them the answer immediately at the beginning of the next chapter. This way, we are planting the subconscious expectation in the reader, that the question will be answered if they read on. Kiran Millwood Hargrave is a master in this technique – much can be learned from a close reading of her work in this respect.
Be evocative without clocking up words
The last thing we want in a children’s page-turner is long pages of descriptive prose. But we do want to be evocative, to create that lush world that the reader will be sucked into (whether we are writing fantasy or not; every book, even contemporary realist fiction, has its own Instagram filter of a world). How, then, to be evocative without writing pages of description? There are a few tricks in the page-turner writer’s armoury:
– Names: Never waste an opportunity to squeeze some character out of a name. Names can carry so much atmosphere and meaning. Would a rose by any other name really smell as sweet? No! Suppose it were called a Stinkwort? Think about how much these fabulous names from classic children’s books convey about the characters: Miss Slighcarp, Miss Trunchbull, Dolores Umbridge, Cruella de Vil. In Secrets of the Snakestone, my arch-villains are called Madame Malaise and Brother Ombre.
– Mind-maps: create mind-maps for your characters, or fields of imagery and colour associated with them. My favourite example of this is Cruella de Vil in Dodie Smith’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Her name compresses to “Devil”, and she is repeatedly associated with fire and hell in the book. Her country mansion is Hell Hall, the walls are painted red, she is associated with pepper and always has a blazing fire even in summer. The image created of her is of a fiery red-eyed monster, and yet nowhere is there a long description of her physical appearance in the book. It is all drip-fed by tiny subconscious associations.
Be interactive!
Don’t preach or give moral lessons to your readers. You want to tease them with the fun interactive puzzles of Alice in Wonderland, not the homilies about the busy bee that Lewis Carroll poked fun at. History has not been kind to overly didactic children’s books. In Secrets of the Snakestone, I challenge the reader with riddles and plot twists. Give them something to think about, rather than telling them what to think. Keep them on their toes!
You want them to be immersed in the adventure of the book when reading, but to have something to think about afterwards. This is the “afterlife” of the book, the part that haunts you long after the last page is turned. It’s admittedly not a children’s book, but Yellowface by RF Kuang is a masterclass in this technique. We are swept along by the drama but there is so much to ponder afterwards, about the nature and relationship between writer and subject, the act of creativity and plagiarism, the concept of OwnVoices, and so on.
Hopefully, in this short article, I’ve given you some pointers on writing your own page-turning story. Writing a page-turner is a craft: some people are naturally good at it, but everybody can learn the basics. It’s an essential aspect of the storyteller’s skill, and one all children’s writers need to master. Because we want children to keep turning those pages, not giving up and turning to Minecraft!
Piu DasGupta was born in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, with an English mother and Indian father. Her Bengali grandmother was a writer and her early childhood was spent surrounded by the sitar and Tagore songs. Piu’s first literary work was a poem about a great flood in Kolkata that swamped the family’s home, forcing them to camp on the rooftop. In later childhood she moved with her mother and sister to England and studied English at Oxford University, graduating with a First-Class degree, after which she pursued an eclectic career as a lawyer and subsequently a writer.
She now lives in Paris with her family, and writes across a wide range of genres including adult and children’s books and poetry. Piu’s debut middle grade novel, Secrets of the Snakestone, was an Official Indie Children’s Bestseller, a Times Children’s Book of the Week and was widely reviewed in The Guardian, New Statesman and The Observer.
