In August 2014, I was promoted to Course Director for Children’s Entertainment, a course in the Creative Writing for Entertainment BFA Program at Full Sail University. In this course, we study writing aimed at people from birth to the age of 18. We look at books, television, and films aimed at the three major age groups–children (0-6), middle grade/juvenile (7-12), and young adult (13-18)–and examine what writers are doing in and what publishers and studios are expecting out of entertainment for young people.
Sample Syllabus
The Children’s Entertainment course introduces students to writing content for young people. This course provides an overview of classic literature, television, and film for three different age groups: children (ages 0-6), juvenile/middle grade (ages 7-12), and young adult (ages 13-18), and places it within the context of writing for those groups.
Course Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this course, students will have:
– learned the different audiences, formats, and markets under the umbrella of children’s entertainment;
– analyzed classic and contemporary examples of children’s books, television, and movies;
– analyzed a classic fairy tale, fable, or myth and executed a retelling of that story for three different age groups;
– reviewed narrative techniques for writing characters, plot, dialogue, suspense, humor, description, and others and applied those techniques to writing for children and young adults; and
– explored opportunities in the industry for writing children’s entertainment and using the skills from this class.
Course Materials:
– MacBook Pro
– FSO 3.0-compatible browser (i.e., Firefox or Google Chrome)
– Word processing program with ability to convert to PDF via save or print (e.g., Word or Pages)
– Scriptwriting software with ability to convert to PDF via save or print (e.g., Final Draft)
– The Writer’s Guide to Crafting Stories for Children, Nancy Lamb, Writer’s Digest Books
– Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Louis Sachar, HarperCollins
– The Giver, Lois Lowry, Houghton Mifflin Books for Children
– Thirteen Reasons Why, Jay Asher, Razorbill
– Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson, Square Fish
Semester Project
The main focus of this month will be analyzing children’s texts the considerations that need to be taken into account when writing for children. As an extension of this, we will be working on stories designed for each of the age groups. In order to examine how a story might be told for different ages, the main project for the course will be to adapt a single fairy tale/fable/myth/legend as a picture book for Children, a short story/TV episode/short film for Middle Grade audiences, and a short story/TV episode/short film for Young Adults. The end result will be to analyze how a story–regardless of content–can be broken down to it’s universal elements and be made “appropriate” for any audience.
Grading:
Professionalism – 10%
Library Research Assignment – 10%
PROMPTS – Six total at 2% each – 12%
QUIZZES – Four total at 2% each – 8%
Picture Book – 10%
Middle Grade Scene – 5%
Young Adult Scene – 5%
GROUP PROJECTS – Two at 5% each – 10%
Reflection – 5%
Revision of Fairy Tale – 25%
Sample Assignment
1.6 Writing Assignment – Fairy Tale Comic/Picture Book
Objective:
To create a children’s picture book/comic based on an existing fairy tale, fable, or myth as a way to learn how to (a) adapt familiar material in a unique way, (b) simplify plot and writing style to fit a 0 – 6 age group, and (c) think visually about storytelling for a pre-reading audience.
Step One: Watch the Overview of Fairy Tale Assignment Video
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the video posted that provides an overview of this week’s assignment and the writing assignments in this course in general. It will give you a better sense of the big picture for these fairy tale retellings you’re going to be working on in this course.
Step Two: Select a Public Domain Fairy Tale/Fable/Myth
Check out Project Gutenberg’s website at http://www.gutenberg.org for a great selection of public domain works. You can search e-books with search term “fairy tale” or “Grimm” or “Anderson” or even “Little Red Riding Hood” depending on how specific you want your search. This site offers a lot of the classics that have fallen into public domain, but also fairy tales from other cultures that might be interesting to adapt.
Step Three: Analyze Your Chosen Work
Before you begin your original work, analyze your fairy tale by examining:
1. the plot of the fairy tale, boiling it down to its inciting incident, climax, resolution, etc.; and
2. what makes the fairy tale “recognizable” and what elements you need in order to call your version a retelling.
Step Four: Plan Your Adaptation
Plan your adaptation by thinking about:
1. what unique spin you could put on the fairy tale to make it your own;
2. who your protagonist is, and his or her desires and journey throughout the story; and
3. what might appeal to this age group, including specific questions of whether you see this as a story for two-year-olds versus six-year-olds.
Step Five: Create Your Comic/Picture Book
There are myriad ways to complete this assignment, and you’re free to explore ones that you’re comfortable with or think would work. However, a few notes:
1. If you choose to do a comic strip, you can Google “comic strip templates” and find lots of samples you could use to draw in. If you choose to do a picture book, you can simply draw each picture on its own page.
2. You can create your pictures and hand-write your text by hand. If you do this, you’ll need to scan your images and compile them into one PDF (you can put each picture separately onto slides in a PowerPoint or KeyNote and then export into a PDF, or put each image separately in a Word document and then save as one PDF, as a few possibilities). You are also welcome to handwrite, but be sure that your handwriting is clear and reflects proper capitalization, etc.
3. You can create your comic or picture book using a computer program. Some examples are PhotoShop, if you have it, or free programs like Paint, Paintbrush (for Mac), Paper (for iPad), etc. There are lots of free drawing and art apps out there that you can experiment with.
4. Whatever you do, make sure that you exercise control over the images you’re creating. Using clip art or a comic creator from the web, for example, could be problematic if you’re not exercising control over the images in your story. It would be better to have stick figures that you created than to have clip art that you didn’t.
Note: I understand that the CWEBFA program does not provide the Adobe programs, so some people might run into some technical issues with this part. Here are a few open-source alternatives to the Adobe programs you may try out if you wish:
Gimp (Photoshop): http://www.gimp.org/
Scribus (In Design): http://scribus.net/canvas/Scribus
Audacity (Audio Editing): http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
TweenLite andTweenMax (Flash): http://greensock.com/tweenlite and http://greensock.com/tweenmax
Step Six: Turn in Your Fairy Tale Comic/Picture Book by Sunday Night at 11:59 p.m. EDT
1. Your final deliverable should be a single PDF. If you have separate images, you can paste them into a Word document and then save that as a PDF, place each image on a slide in PowerPoint or KeyNote and then export as a PDF, etc.
2. Your final comic/picture book should include your name and the name of the fairy tale that you’ve adapted somewhere in the file.
3. Please upload the final PDF to FSO by the deadline.
This assignment is worth 10% of your overall grade, and is assessed out of 100 points.
Mark D. Thomas 