KidLit411 Birthday Bash 2017 Day 2: All About Craft

Jan. 17, 2017

Welcome to Day 2 of the Kidlit411 Birthday Bash Giveaway: ALL ABOUT CRAFT!

Today's prizes are about improving your writing and illustration craft. This is the second of our four-day giveaway. Be sure to visit our other giveaways:

Monday, Jan. 16 was All About Books
TODAY: All about Craft
Wed. Jan. 18 is All About Critiques
Thursday, Jan. 19 is All About Submissions

Each prize has its own Rafflecopter widget. You must enter each prize separately. (Sign in with your name and email on each widget and follow the instructions). Taking an action once (like commenting on this post or following us on Twitter) qualifies you for all of that day's giveaways.

Day 2's giveaways end at noon, EST, Jan. 24, 2017.

We are lucky to have these giveaways due to the incredible generosity of our kid lit community (in all, totaling over $3500 worth of kid lit courses!), so please thank all of these donors.

THE CRAFT OF POETRY

PRIZE 1: The Lyrical Language Lab: Punching up Prose with Poetry, with Reneé M. LaTulippe ($479 value)

In this online class, poet Renée M. LaTulippe teaches children’s writers the poetic techniques that will make their writing more powerful and infuse their manuscripts with poetry, music, and magic. Great for writers of both prose AND rhyme, the course includes in-depth feedback on assignments and gives you a strong foundation in meter; trains your ear for rhythm, lyrical language, and rhyme; and sharpens your analytical and critical eye for revision.

This is the full, guided class that includes feedback on your work. It is one of the best writing craft courses out there. Plus it's fun! Her current course is sold out, so this is the only way you can get into it this session.

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THE CRAFT OF PICTURE BOOKS

PRIZE 2: Shel SILVERstein Membership in Julie Hedlund's 12x12 challenge ($147 value)

Are you ready to write 12 picture book manuscripts in 12 months, surrounded by a passionate community of like-minded authors? Gain access to 12 free writing craft webinars, a members-only forum to share critiques and advice, a Facebook page, and an amazingly supportive community. Win a free SILVER membership in 12x12.

If you win this and have already joined 12x12, Julie Hedlund will refund your fee (or if you are in Gold, apply it to your Gold membership).

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PRIZE 3: A 12x12 Webinar of your choice (excluding agent bundle) ($79-$97 value)

As part of Julie Hedlund's 12x12 picture book challenge, she has developed webinars with industry experts. Topics include first pages, illustrations, the writing life, poetic techniques, nonfiction, building an author platform, and more. She is giving away one webinar of your choice from her selection, excluding the 4-webinar agent bundle.

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PRIZE 4: Art of Arc: How to Analyze your Picture Book Manuscript with Alayne Kay Christian. ($79 value)

This self-study course that will deepen your understanding of picture books written with a classic arc and introduce you to other picture book structures. The course:

gives you tools to analyze your work prior to investing in professional critiques
shows you how to avoid common writing errors and apply writing elements that will enhance your stories to take them to a higher level.
includes 217 pages with ten lessons, seventeen supplements, and eighteen worksheets. Plus bonus materials and resources.

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PRIZE 5: Making Picture Book Magic with Susanna Leonard Hill ($129 value)

Making Picture Book Magic is a 4-week online interactive picture book writing class taught by children's author Susanna Leonard Hill. The 21 lessons and 13 supplements focus on character-driven stories and cover every element of writing picture books from character, conflict, setting, and different picture book formats to what to do once you've written your book. Lessons are designed to be completed in about 30 minutes and are delivered weekday mornings at 7 AM EST.

An optional interactive Facebook group allows writers to interact with their classmates if desired, but all students can receive feedback from Susanna even if they choose not to join the FB group. Students who complete the course will finish with a solid picture book draft and the building blocks for tackling other manuscripts.

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PRIZE 6: The Craft of Picture Books: Storyteller Academy - Making Picture Book Stories with Arree Chung ($ 600 value)

Storyteller Academy is founded by Arree Chung, a picture book author/illustrator who publishes with MacMillan, Harper Collins, Bloomsbury and Abrams. His NINJA! series has earned starred reviews from Kirkus and School Library Journal.

Arree shares his experience, insights, and creative process to help you grow as a storyteller. You'll receive practical advice on mindset, overcoming imposter syndrome, and how to grow your creativity. Arree also walks you through the creative process of making a picture book dummy from scratch. Throughout the course, Arree shares his publishing journey with real world examples of sketches, early dummies and statistics about the children's book industry. Arree also shares his mistakes and his failures in addition to the successes. The course has an emphasis on developing your story. With bi-weekly critique groups, and a Storyteller Workshop, you'll have creative community to support you. If you want to tell the story inside of you, sign up for Storyteller Academy!

For Kidlit411 readers, Arree is offering discounts to his class through these links (disclosure: these are affiliate links):

Course + critique group with Arree: $500, you save $100 off $600
Course + critique group with Arree (3-mo payment plan): $500, you save $100 off $600
Course + critique group self-organized: $120, you save $30 off $150
Course + critique group self-organized (3-mo payment plan): $120, you save $30 off $150

Course only: $100, you save $30 off $130

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THE CRAFT OF CHAPTER BOOKS

PRIZE 7: Chapter Book Blue Print from Children's Book Insider ($197 value)

Chapter Book Blueprint is more than an online course that teaches you how to write chapter books for readers ages 5-10. It's a revolutionary system that coaches you through the process of learning how to become a writer, and how to incorporate the DNA of the best chapter books into your own work.

Chapter Book Blueprint breaks the entire writing process down into a series of small steps. Each step features a video with instructor Alice Kuipers, and an accompanying worksheet that allows you to develop and practice that material. Your work is then transferred to the next worksheet, and built upon in the following step. You'll begin Chapter Book Blueprint with a story idea, and end with a polished manuscript. For the entire line of Writing Blueprints, please visit http://www.writingblueprints.com.

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THE CRAFT OF MIDDLE GRADE

PRIZE 8: Mastering Middle Grade Novel Writing with Hillary Homzie and Dr. Mira Reisberg Children's Book Academy ($427 value)

Join Children's Book Academy award-winning master teachers, Hillary Homzie and Dr. Mira Reisberg, as they help you write and sell those much-desired Middle Grade novels in fun, highly interactive step-by-step trainings that will totally make it doable and fun! Upgrade your chapter book or even your picture book concept in ways that you can’t even imagine now to open new doors. Are you ready for an extraordinary adventure in this empowering, and highly interactive e-course with awesome, submission opportunities and tons of bonuses? The Children's Book Academy has a fantastic record of published students. Enter now!

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THE CRAFT OF WRITING

PRIZE 9: Developing Your Writer's and Your Character's Voices - A Workshop/Webinar Children's Book Academy (Self-study, $49 value)

Random House/Knopf editor Kelly Delaney and Children's Book Academy director Dr. Mira Reisberg, co-teachers of the Craft and Business of Writing Children's Picture Books, created this webinar to teach writers about the many facets of voice, that mysterious quality that all agents and editors are looking for. In this offering, the recorded and edited webinar has been magically transformed into an at your own pace workshop complete with lots of instruction as well as super handy worksheets to find and develop your own writer's and your character's voices.

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PRIZE 10: An All-Access pass for 2017 to Joyce Sweeney's three classes, three webinars, and all archived videos ($972 value)

Joyce Sweeney is the author of fourteen books and the writing coach for more than fifty traditionally published authors. She has won numerous awards including the Delacorte Press First Young-Adult Novel prize for Center Line and the Nevada Young Reader’s Award for Shadow. Joyce has been critiquing manuscripts for twenty-five years, has been an active member of SCBWI, and teaches workshops on craft. Joyce offers her writing expertise through video taped classes and webinars via www.SweeneyWritingCoach.com.

The winner of an ALL ACCESS PASS will receive enrollment in 3 ten-week classes. Each class has an interactive forum for homework and follow-up.

Mystery & Suspense. Feb 2017
Fiction Writing Essentials. July 2017
Romance & Adventure. Oct. 2017

In addition, the winner will receive all archived videos and three live webinars. Webinars are an hour long lecture with Q and A.

The first webinar of 2017 will be 7pm (EST), February 8, 2017 on the topic of Beginnings. How to start, where to start, how to get all those important details in without a big info dump. Joyce will guide you through. Helpful for those revising or beginning something new.

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PRIZE 11: Joyce Sweeney's 10-week online Mystery & Suspense class ($149 value)

The winner will enroll in a ten-week class beginning Feb. 13, 2017, Mystery & Suspense. Each week students will receive a video lesson with homework assignments. Students can post their homework to the interactive forum and interact with other students all while getting feedback from Joyce. Lessons include plotting a mystery, plotting a thriller, characters, setting, structure, advanced suspense techniques, and more

This class will benefit both strict genre writers and those looking to add mystery and suspense to their novels.

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THE CRAFT OF ILLUSTRATION

PRIZE 12: Will Terry & Jake Parker's ILLUSTRATING CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Parts 1 & 2) ($300 value)

Win the The School of Visual Storytelling (SVS) course, Illustrating Children's Books, taught by author-illustrator Will Terry (featured in our Author-Illustrator Spotlight in April 2014) and illustrator Jake Parker (illustrator, animation designer and comic artist).

This professional level online class has two parts. Part 1 (Creating the Artwork) will cover the development of content. It does not focus on mediums, but will teach the decision making process (creating characters, designing the illustration, POV, developing mood, unity of background, thumbnails, roughs, etc.). Part 2 (Business and Marketing) covers the business side of illustration, from submitting to marketing to making dummies to negotiating contracts. A 200 page PDF accompanies this course along with a 20 page assignment workbook.

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PRIZE 13: Mark Mitchell's Make Your Marks & Splashes Children's Illustration Class ($249 value)

Win a complimentary 2017 version of the Make Your Marks & Splashes online course on children's book illustration, which starts March 15 and runs live for four months. (The winner can start in on the video lessons right after the birthday bash, and be upgraded into the new 2017 course version with live class sessions when these start March 15.)

All levels are welcome in this exciting online course taught by

award-winning children’s book author-illustrator Mark Mitchell. Discover how to draw effectively and use traditional watercolor to complete satisfying, full-color final art for your story. You'll learn 'best practices' for using visual references, transferring sketches to your painting surface, preparing a dummy package and submitting final art. The course includes video interviews with 30 illustrators and author-illustrators and several art directors and agents.

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