Lesson 1. Includes a discussion of how to use the course material.
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The Picture Book
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No other medium of print is as exhaustless in scope and possibilities as the picture book.
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Lesson 2.
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The A, B, C
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Naturally, when one decides to write simple stories for children, one starts with the A-B-Cees. Ha! Here's the trap. The iron jaw snaps
shut around the ankle of the UNWARY.
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The Cycle
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With baseball, everything starts and ends at home plate. With cycle, we end where we begin.
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Lesson 3. Simple Humor
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Chronological Narrative
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It tells a past-time story so that it sounds like the present. It's happening NOW!
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Tales Retold
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Write the familiar one you've known all your life. All you do is put a twist on it and make it YOURS.
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Lesson 4. Novelties
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Repetitive Statement
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Saying something again and again can make stories you write for children UNFORGETTABLE.
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Question and Answer
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These are colorful dialogue stories that some editors find DELICIOUS.
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Lesson 5. Conversational
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Cumulative
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Whether it is Christ gathering disciples by Galilee or Sir Edmund Hillary gathering climbers for Everest, this story can be a CHALLENGE.
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Sunk and Saved
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I can't move. My foot is stuck. The water is rising. Nobody's home. Who's knocking? I'm HERE!!
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Lesson 6. Sell Your Homework
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Bible
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Talk about walking on thin ice! He who writes stories drawn from Scripture must tread LIGHTLY.
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Plant and Pick Up
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You simply plant your foot on the first page and pick it up on the last. It's EASY!
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Lesson 7. Sell Your Homework
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Frame and Flashback
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Leave that monster wave poised and cresting as you go back and tell how you ever got into this FIX!
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Problem and Solution
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The more that is at stake if the hero fails, the more interesting the story will be.
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Lesson 8. Sell Your Homework
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Multiple Problem
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This kind of story is the "if at first you don't succeed, try and try and try AGAIN!"
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Other Problems
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Clever writers have developed lots of ways to tell stories that are COMPELLING
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Lesson 9. Sell Your Homework
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Come to Realize
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Sometimes it takes an "Aha! I see it all now!" kind of awakening to solve a problem that is otherwise NOT SOLVABLE.
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Factual
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Less fiction than fact. But still fiction with fact.
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Lesson 10. Sell Your Homework
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Slice of Life
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It opens anywhere. It closes anywhere. It goes anywhere. Look, Ma, no rules!
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Rhyme
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A story in verse has rules it has to follow, but it can be all sheer FUN!
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Lesson 11. Sell Your Homework
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Concept
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Themes are never stated in words in a story. They are the underlying concept that governs the plot and determines the outcome.
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Surprise Ending
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Youngsters love it when never in a thousand years would they think this story would end like THAT!!
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Lesson 12. Sell Your Homework
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Catalog
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You take this thing and that thing and some other thing and you add some more things to some more and more and MORE.
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Whimsy
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It's an intangible sense of wish, of quiet fancy, of reflection, of hope, of nice things or sad things happening to people.
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Gospel
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A story of yours could be for someone else the doorway to ETERNITY!
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