Writing Children's Books – Sharon Siamon
Interview –Series Author Talks About Writing Middle Grade Novels
Aug 19, 2009
In an interview with Suite101 writer Jennifer Jensen, Sharon Siamon talked about the challenges and joys of writing for children, writing horse adventures, and bringing both human and animal characters to life.
About Sharon Siamon
Sharon Siamon is the best-selling author of 38 children's books, including the Saddle Island trilogy and the Mustang Ranch and Wild Horse Creek series for middle grade readers. Her books have been published in twelve countries and eight languages to date. She lives near Ottawa, Canada, and rides horses any time she can.
Why do you write for children instead of adults?
When I started writing for kids I found my passion. I was an avid reader as a child and those children’s classics are still among my favorites.
How does writing for children differ from writing adult fiction?
I’m not sure it’s very different. You can’t write down to children. You have to enter the world of your characters as if you were one of them and see situations and people from their perspective. And they need to solve their own problems without an adult zooming in to take over responsibility.
Do you start with a character or a plot?
I always start with characters—for example the twins, Sophie and Liv in the Wild Horse Creek series. I plunk them in a setting I love – the southwest desert, the Rocky Mountains or the seacoast of Nova Scotia, and see what happens.
Why do I start with people? For me, plot ideas spring from the characters’ personalities and their reactions to the settings. For example, in the first Wild Horse Creek book, The Mystery Stallion, Sophie dislikes and fears the desert and longs for her home in Vancouver, while her twin Liv falls in love with the landscape and never wants to leave.
How do you bring horses to life? Do they become characters in their own right?
I’ve always written about animals, from cats and pigs to dogs. But horses are special. They look at you with those large, luminous eyes and challenge you to discover their stories and tell them. Horses are complex, like people, but very different from us. We look at them across the prey-predator gulf, and yet they come to us, and trust us.
Maybe my most loved animal character is Caspar, the big white horse that always escapes and runs in the ocean surf in the Saddle Island trilogy. He’s a lot like the big work horses I rode as a child. But all the horses in my books have their own tale to tell. There’s Patch, the wild horse from Wyoming offered up for adoption, or the mysterious black stallion in Wild Horse Creek, or Cactus Jack, the super intelligent cow horse who gallops through that series.
What are some of the other challenges of writing for children?
Perhaps one challenge, particularly for picture book authors, is that everybody thinks they can write a children’s book. Many awful books by celebrities make their way to the shelves.
Do you have any other advice for aspiring children's writers?
I think it’s the same advice any experienced writer would give. Read good children’s books—as many as possible. Write about what you know and love. And don’t give up. No words that you write are wasted. [Malcolm] Gladwell says you have to work 10,000 hours to get good at something. This is certainly true of writing for children.
Find more from Sharon Siamon about the writing life, writing a series, and writing for children in How to Write a Children's Book and Find an Agent.
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