How to Begin
The most important thing is to connect to your audience. Greet them in a cheerful and friendly style. Be as natural as you can. Smile a lot, but don’t overdo it. If there’s no one to introduce you, do it yourself and do so right away.
Get your audience involved as soon as possible. Ask a question. Start with a story. Read something interesting from your work. Hold up an audio-visual. Whatever you start with (and everything else that follows), make sure it’s interesting to your audience’s age.
Topics to Talk About
Whatever topics you decide to talk about, make sure you sound like a real person with everyday struggles just like your audience. In general, include as many interesting tidbits as you can. Kids love to hear how I come up with character names, and if I ever use names of real people.
Here are some things you can talk about:
1. Challenges you face in your work. It may be coming up with ideas, getting your thoughts on paper, revising, dealing with your editor. You can discuss advantages and disadvantages of the genre and/or age range your write for.
2. What you enjoy about your work. Talk about feel-good and fun moments, and also the long-term satisfaction.
3. Your goals as a writer. For example, explain how the writer always has to connect to the reader (kids their age), and how you do that.
4. What makes you unique as a writer? For example, my friend and I coauthor many children’s stories. Everyone always likes to know how that works.
5. When did you start writing? As a child? Or maybe you never even thought of being a writer until years later.
6. Your personal writing process and the writing process in general. How you work with plot and character.
7. If your audience is young, you can demonstrate (with your actual book) the different parts of a book and what the author has to include besides the story, like the table of contents, acknowledgments, etc.
8. Describe the revision process, how you self-edit, and how you work with an editor.
9. Tell them how the words on your screen become a printed article and published book. You can talk about the different kinds of people involved in newspaper and book publication, like editors, proofreaders, illustrators, graphic artists, etc.
Conclusion
Always finish before your audience’s interest starts lagging. Of course, in the best-case scenario, your audience will be begging for more, but don’t forget that there’s a limit to how long children (and adults too!) can sit at one stretch. One good way of ending your talk is to include a fascinating tidbit about yourself or your work. You may even want to read aloud from your writing. And of course, finish with a smile and thank your audience for listening.
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