Well, folks, I don't know about you but I am baffled by this category this time. I got nuthin'. I know there is a huge body of work about how to write books for children--but I don't know my way around it--and I hope we may get some suggestions from that. And between parenting books and academic books, there should be some good stuff out there on how children understand and relate to stories, and I'm hoping maybe we'll get some suggestions for those, too. If you don't have suggestions here I'm hoping that instead maybe, like me, you'll have questions and requests. If you were setting out to write a family film, what sorts of non-fiction books would you go looking for to prepare yourself?

Well, there's historical fiction, which kinda spans the gap. Octavian Nothing and The Evolution of Calpuria Tate and The Hope Chest and the like. Not sure if they're really 'family,' though. The first two are tough going. And they're certainly fiction, though based in fact. In terms of pure nonfiction, I dunno. Biography, told in a 'family-friendly' voice? Thing is, there's no such thing as a 'family' book, according to publishing. You won't find a shelf with that label. There are children's books. I think middle-grade, more than YA or picture books, is the equivalent. In terms of fiction, there are the classics, which you listed pretty ably in another thread. I wouldn't bother with those, though. Even the ones recently made into movies aren't really applicable to us, I don't think, because they're hard to evaluate through the sheen of childhood memory. Roald Dahl's stuff, the Golden Compass series, CS Lewis. Picture books are more like pitches than outlines. Not sure how many words WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is: I'd bet under 500. Probably under 400. In terms of middle-grade fiction (I know, I know), I'd probably read some historical issue-y stuff like the ones I mentioned above. (Octavian Nothing is middle grade that most adults would have trouble reading. Didn't finish it, myself.) Just to see what's possible in a novel. I'd read fantasy for tone, from bestsellers like Artemis Fowl and Origami Yoda to lesser-known stuff like 11 Birthdays (Groundhog Day for kids) to The Rendering (Matrix meets Ninja Turtles). I'd read When You Reach Me and Alvin Ho. I could keep going: I suspect that middle-grade is the richest vein for screenwriters in general. But specifically nonfiction is tough. I'm not sure what a book about cool dinosaurs or gross bodily functions really brings to screenwriting. I might suggest some books that interweave fiction and non: historical fiction, but also things like Percy Jackson, which is a fantastic introduction to the Greek gods.

Thank you for tackling this list, Jay, and for thinking out loud on it. Historical fiction: I agree with where you ultimately wound up, that these are fiction, too. I'll add your historical fiction suggestions to the fiction list, and your middle-grade fiction suggestions, too. > Biography, told in a ‘family-friendly’ voice? Now there's an interesting idea! Scott has left this exercise pretty wide open for us, so we've got room to work out together what we want to accomplish in any given category. My take on all of them: the books don't have to be written for the same audience as the movie genre targets; rather, the books should help us write in that genre. So here with non-fiction books, I don't think they have to be books targeted at a "family" readership (which as you point out isn't a readership recognized by the marketing departments of the publishing & bookselling world); rather, we want to figure out what kind of non-fiction books will help us write family movies. On that basis, I love your suggestion of biography, and I'll go a step further and say since we are the immediate audience for the books, it's probably not as important that the voice be family-friendly, as that the subject-matter can help us understand and write for family film audiences: do we better understand a child's voice, or personality, or POV, or goals and struggles, or world, from reading this work? Sorry--that came out way more wordy and convoluted than I intended. Am I making any sense? So..."Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" would be a potential book in this subcategory for me, not with an eye to adapt it, but to look at a huge historical event through the specific POV of a specific girl, and analyze what that tells me about making a child a protagonist in a story against a historical (or momentous) backdrop. > Picture books are more like pitches than outlines. I love this idea! And there must be mountains of picture books sitting in public libraries whose copyrights have expired, just waiting for those of us who want to brainstorm concepts for stories. > I suspect that middle-grade is the richest vein for screenwriters in general. I've been wondering about this myself, and your observation rings true for me, too. . . . It just occurred to me that there's usually a spate of family films released during holiday season, so any non-fiction books about winter holidays might be good research when brainstorming for story ideas. (I'm grasping, I know! This list is hard!) . . . While we're chatting, it has also occurred to me that one of the reasons that I'm foundering is that I don't have a strong personal connection to this genre (no kids) or a deep knowledge of it (haven't been a kid for a while), so I've just pulled up a few articles on writing family films--and I'm arbitrarily adding them here as the most recent Family Genre series post, in the hopes other will see them and find them helpful. (Anything that's of a more lasting value I can add later to tonight's upcoming "other resources" list.) Maybe if I can figure out what I don't know, I can get a better handle on what types of books I'd need to read to tackle this. - Writing for the family film market explores the genre from a business perspective. - Breaking In: Tips for Writing Children's Films may use the term "children's films", but is really talking about what we're calling "Family Films" at GITS. - And here's the jackpot: Writing for the Whole Family [pdf], a write-up of the 2011 Scriptwriters Network Panel. . . . There's such a strong message coming through that Family Movies are primarily built on existing properties. I'm wondering if an unestablished writer wants to break in with a family spec script, if the most effective path might not be to write and sell your story as a children's book first (piece of cake! *sigh*), and then adapt it to the screen (can anyone here comment? has this been done? and do family specs ever sell?). If those assumptions are true, then I'm back to looking at "how to write for (middle school) children" (see Jay, I'm listening!) as probably the #1 subcategory here. Maybe the #2 is some kind of overview of children's fiction / fairy tales / myths (not the stories, but a non-fic book about stories) to help identify good concepts that are established properties but in the public domain. Likewise, we've got three big, recent kid-lit franchise film hits: Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games. There's got to be some academic lit out there, at least about the first two, analyzing WHY the stories resonate with kids, and with four-quadrant audiences, and reverse engineering how they work. That would be worth looking around for. Okay, so...so far, this is a conversation and not a list. And that's okay! I feel like if we keep chewing on this assignment and tossing it around, we may yet close in on what kind of non-fiction books will be helpful, if not specific book titles. And in the meantime, we're thinking hard and learning (well, I am, anyway), and I hope that's ultimately the goal of this exercise. Thank you for the conversation, Jay. And everybody else: don't be shy! Get in here and discuss this and help Jay and I figure it out. The more the merrier. This list really needs some hive mind power behind it!

I think the reason we're floundering is because there's no there there. How many family movies were based on nonfiction books? The closest I can think of is historical fiction: was Iron Will adapted from a book? How about Titanic? In terms of adapting your own children's book, I dunno. I have a few kidlit books published. That's not so hard. Hard part is, I think you need to have a *good-selling* kidlit property. Probably a best-selling one. And even there, how many books that hit the extended list, say, get adapted and sold as spec screenplays? I wonder.

Scott has really thoroughly documented how the current big spec categories are Action, Comedy, and Thriller. I wonder if one of the morals there are that if you want to break in with a family scrip, A) the odds are pretty bleak; and B) you've go a better chance if it's a strong cross-genre (Family + Action or Family + Comedy)? I can't think of any Family Thrillers--is there such a thing? Which leads me to a general question that's been on my mind a while, and it's going to sound dumb, but it's really bugging me: if people break in right now primarily in three genres, and Hollywood tends to stereotype writers based on their break-in script...where do the writers come from that write the other genres and how to writers break out of their initial pigeon-hole?

Home Alone? Spy Kids? Far as breaking in goes, nobody knows less about that than I do. It's my personal genius.

Jay, do you get the feeling that we're at somebody's anniversary party (in the Elks Hall!), and the band started playing and we got up and the dance floor and NO ONE ELSE IS DANCING? Thanks for the conversation. I hope that if you and I keep being witty and scintillating and fabulous looking that maybe some other brave souls will join us. And hey: that ruffled shirt looks GREAT with your rented tux. And sideburns.

I'm sitting in the corner, nursing my bourbon, watching you dance...

Ha! Get in here, Teddy, and flex that impressive brain of yours. If you set out to write a family script today, what kind of gaps would you face? What kind of non-fic topics would you want to read up on to fill in those gaps?

Other parts of me have been called impressive, but never my brain! B-dum-pschhh... [clears throat] anyway... This is a tough category. I really don't know what to suggest. The only thing I can think of would be psychology books. A family film would possibly involve a parent/child relationship and since I don't have kids myself (frankly, I'm scared of them) and, like you, I haven't been a child for a while (although my ex-wife would disagree) personally, I'd probably read up on some parenting books or some child psychology. But that's so general. I don't know of any specific non-fiction books that I could suggest. Sorry, I don't have much to add to what you and Jay have already covered. However, this is the one genre that I would ask my friends who have kids what they would be looking for in a film they could take the whole family to. I wouldn't ask that in any other genre I set out to write. Back to my corner.

> However, this is the one genre that I would ask my friends who have kids what they would be looking for in a film they could take the whole family to. I wouldn't ask that in any other genre I set out to write. Yes and Yes. My ideas of what is appropriate for kids is way off base. E.g., trying to show my then 9-year-old nephew music clips from The Blues Brothers--with zero recollection of just how much swearing is in the film until the clips started to play; or, in contrast, being horrified by one of the articles I linked to above (from 2011) that says MTV looks for "edgy" material for girls as young as 7. (Seven? "Edgy"? Really?)

My ideas of what is appropriate for kids is way off base. Perhaps, but so is a lot of parents' ideas, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3jaujeGv3k I was stunned when I saw that clip. WTF?

Deeply WTF. I guess it would be more accurate to say my sensibilites about what is appropriate for children are clearly out of synch with the mainstream... Which leads to an on-topic (!) question about writing family films: how "edgy" do you make your story? Because really, I don't want to be the person who pens and sells "The Littlest Poledancer". Not that I foresee a family script in my near future. But I hope that if Roberto Benigni can make an international hit out of Life is Beautiful, perhaps it's possible to make stories for kids that conform to what I feel is appropriate for children--in my own outmoded, old-fashioned, non-lingerie-assigning way.

It seems this fear isn't just hypothetical: > When [Susannah] Grant was adapting Charlotte's Web, she kept getting suggestions about adding more bodily-function humor. "I'm not sure I'm comfortable putting fart jokes in E.B. White," she said. -- AFF Panel: Writing Family Films

I can't believe this post has been up for over 24 hours now and we don't have a single recommendation for a specific non-fiction book. Surely there are parents, children's lit authors, and people who work professionally with kids among the GITS readership. I just can't live with this list being empty, so I'm going to go out on a limb and make a recommendation, in the hopes that it's like seeding a twenty dollar bill in a tip jar. Here goes: Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, by Mary Pipher, PhD (2005). I have not read this book, but it has been highly, highly recommended to me. If you are writing for or about tween or teen girls, you may want to check it out. (It was a big enough seller that it should be easy to find in many public libraries, too.) There: we have a list of ONE book. What else have you got? (Teddy and Jay, I know you are the only ones who'll ever read this, and maybe Scott. Sorry! I...just had to try. And Jay, I'm not ignoring you--I'll make sure all those fiction books you suggested wind up on the fiction list.)

Jay, I tried to pull out all of your fiction suggestions and add them to the fiction list but I'm concerned I may have missed some, so please feel free to double check.

"List" Recap: Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, by Mary Pipher, PhD (2005).

Chapter 19 "Writing for Children", from Writing Drama by Yves Lavandier The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Bruno Bettelheim The interpretations of Fairy Tales by Marie-Louise von Franz A Psychological Interpretation of "The Golden Ass of Apuleius" by Marie-Louise von Franz Morphology of the Folktale by Vladimir Propp