Hello everybody! I am Jon Bard, Managing Editor of Children’s Books Insider, the Newsletter for Children’s Writers and Fightin’ Bookworm in chief at the CBI Clubhouse the place to be if you are a children’s book writer. Today, how to get started writing picture books?
Many beginners believe writing picture books are a breeze but it requires a lot of skill to pack a story into a few words. If writing a picture book is your dream, here are some tips to consider before you begin.
Keep it simple. You should be able to sum up the plot of your picture book in three sentences. Not every detail of course but the broad strokes. Use one sentence for the beginning, naming your main character and the problem or conflict he’ll face in the story. One for the middle, describing the gist of the efforts your character makes to solve this problem and one for the end, how we finally resolves the conflict and reaches his goal.
If three sentences don’t capture the essence of your plot, then it’s probably too complex for a picture book. A note here, you’re concentrating on plot in this case, the action of the story rather than theme, the underlying message. Don’t get into describing theme when you’re summarizing your plot. The theme shouldn’t even be an issue at this point. You want to construct the story, so the characters actions and how he changes because of those actions implies a lesson to your readers.
Think at pictures. The term picture book says it all. The illustrations are just as important as the words. The average picture book is 32-pages long, with about four pages of front matter, that’s the title page, the copyright page and so on. So, you have 28 pages of text and illustration. If you’re in for a thousand words to tell your story, that’s the average length f a picture book text about thousand words. That gives you about 36 words per page and some pages will have more words, some less depending on the pacing of your story.
While you don’t want to obsess over precise word counts when you’re writing early drafts of your manuscript, do keep in mind that every page of your book needs to inspire a different illustration. So, count out 36 words from your manuscripts and note how big a block of text that is on a page. That’s about how many pages you can devote to each illustration. After that, your characters have to do something. Move around, change locations. So, the illustrator will have a new picture to draw.
One way to think in pictures is to convey with the character’s problem and her efforts to solve that problem in concrete visual terms. If your characters having trouble memorizing facts for school, that all takes place inside her head, but if she’s embarrassed because she can’t swim, then her attempts to learn are easily illustrated.
Some illustration will span two facing pages. That’s called a two-page spread. In this case, you’ll have about 70 words for that single illustration. But picture books are a mix of single page illustrations and two-page spreads. So, keep the actions moving at a good pace. Keep a childlike outlook. Picture book characters can be children, adults, animals or fantasy characters. But all main characters must embody the sensibilities of a child between the ages four and eight.
This means, the problem your character has faced need to be relevant and important to your target audience. The way your character tackles that problem must fit in with the way a child would tackle it. Don’t create an adult main character just so you could impose some adult wisdom on your readers. Grown-up characters using the emotional, illogical and sometimes messy-coping strategies of children can be a very effective and often very funny storytelling technique. Above all, the character must be the one to solve the problem using methods that are accessible to children. If readers see themselves in your main character, then they’ll understand the underlying message of your story.
If you want to learn more about writing picture books or any kind of children’s book, stop by the CBI Clubhouse for lots of information. We’ve got podcast interviews with top bestselling authors, videos just like this one, articles, E-books and of course the current issue of Children’s Book Insider, the famous newsletter for children’s book writers. So, stop by the CBI Clubhouse and join the Fightin’ Bookworms. Until next time, this is Jon Bard, reminding you, keep writing.
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