When fellow writers get together, the first piece of guidance offered is the same. You have to find your voice.
It is well-meaning advice, but also strangely vague. What does that actually mean? Voice is the way a sentence sounds. Is it humor? Is it the types of characters you create? Or is it something quieter and harder to name?
For me, finding my voice did not happen in isolation. It happened through collaboration. Working with an editor and an illustrator challenged me to move beyond surface emotion and into something deeper. I was pushed to look past what a character’s face might show and instead ask what it feels like to be inside their world.
That shift required imagination. I found myself reaching for images that felt closer to the internal experience. Quicksand that pulls you under when everything feels too much. Tornadoes made of cereal boxes and sound and motion. Not because those things appear on the page exactly as written, but because they helped me find the right words to describe overwhelm, confusion, and release in ways a child could feel.
From Characters to Feelings
When I first began writing children’s stories, I fell in love with characters. They arrived fully alive in my imagination. Quirky, sensitive, brave, or misunderstood. I wanted to tell their stories. Each one carried a piece of me, or someone I had known. Character-driven storytelling felt natural, like making a new friend and then introducing them to the world.
But as my writing grew, so did my understanding of what I wanted children to take away from my books. I began to realize my characters were not only companions, but vessels for something larger. They carried feelings, expression, and the universal need for connection. What started as portraits of individuals slowly became pathways for exploring the emotions every child encounters.
Moving Beyond Characters
Characters are still at the heart of my work, but I now see them as part of a broader emotional landscape. Instead of building a narrative solely around who they are, I focus on what they feel and what the reader might feel alongside them. My guiding question shifted from “Who is this character?” to “What will this story invite a child to experience?”
This shift changed how I write. It moved me away from surface emotion and toward lived emotion. Not what a character looks like when they feel something, but what it feels like to be inside their world.
Learning to Write What a Child Feels
That evolution became especially clear while working with an illustrator on The Boy with the Yellow Timer. Collaboration challenged me to think beyond description and into experience. I did not want the reader to simply observe Nathaniel. I wanted them to feel what it is like to be him.
Nathaniel does not explain his emotions. He shows them through action. Through rhythm. Through how sound, light, and movement interact with his body. When his world is calm, it is steady and predictable. When noise grows louder, lights brighter, and activity increases, his actions change. Overwhelm is not named. It is experienced.
Working with an illustrator required me to articulate those inner states clearly. I had to understand not just what Nathaniel was doing, but why. What does calm feel like in his body. What does too much look like from the inside. That process deepened my writing. It taught me that emotion in children’s stories is most powerful when it is felt rather than explained.
The Five Themes Guiding My Process
To create that bridge between character and emotion, I began working with five guiding themes that function like storyboards. Each one has its own rhythm, imagery, and purpose. Together, they form a framework for how I write.
I treat each theme almost like a research project. Part art. Part structure. I use a spreadsheet to clarify the emotional center of each story. For every theme, I define:
- The core feeling or emotional center
What is the heartbeat of the story? What do I want the child to feel by the end? - The reader’s experience
Should they feel soothed, empowered, understood, or brave? - The emotional flow of the story
Each beat is mapped to ensure the pacing supports regulation rather than overwhelm. - Natural imagery or metaphor
Seasons, animals, and environments, such as quicksand or a tornado, quietly mirror the character’s emotions and help me describe the character’s internal feelings. - The therapeutic how
Woven into action and behavior without naming or instructing.
Turning Emotions Into Storyboards
When I wrote What Do You Do With a Feeling, I formalized this approach. Each storyboard became less about plot and more about emotional pacing. Characters remain central, but they serve a larger purpose. They help children experience, recognize, and process feelings in a way that feels safe and familiar.
By combining structure with imagination, my stories become both relatable and therapeutic. They invite children into emotional understanding without asking them to label or explain their feelings.
Closing Thought
What I hope my stories bring into the world are gentle narratives that give children permission to notice their emotions, sit with them, and share them when they are ready. They are written to feel simple and accessible for a child, while remaining layered enough that an adult reading aloud finds meaning too.
At their best, these stories are not just books. They are shared experiences. Moments of connection between child and adult. Between words and feelings. Between the page and the heart.
