In the first
part of this series, I showed you some of the right and wrong reasons to indie
publish a picture book, the skills necessary to do it right, and why I choose
to indie publish with CreateSpace.
Now we're going to look at the first stage of creating a picture book—writing.
Write It
If you're
reading this, you probably already have something written down or you at least
have a good idea of what it is you want to write. I have, however, noticed a
few basic mistakes that picture-book writers often make when they're starting
out.
First, a
picture book should be under 1,000 words—and under 500 words is even better. Little
kids have short attention spans. Make a picture book too wordy, and your book
will probably lose their attention. So make it as short as you can, and make
every word count.
Second, a
picture book isn't just a story with pretty pictures added to it. A picture
book needs pictures to tell the story. So if your story
contains any words that can simply be shown in the illustrations . . .
Cut. Them. Out. For example, if your story says, “Abigail had red hair,” or
even “Abigail’s red curls bounced as she walked,” cut out the part about how
her hair looks. Let the illustrations simply show what Abigail's hair looks
like. If you're not an illustrator, don’t even mention it in the illustration
notes unless it’s vital to telling the story. You might feel inclined to tell
the illustrator, for example, that Abigail has red hair because your daughter
has red hair, and you want the character to look like your daughter. But if it's
not really vital to the story, leave it out. Let the illustrator best tell his
or her part of the story the best way that the illustrator knows how. Maybe
that’s drawing Abigail with red hair, but maybe it's drawing her with black
hair. Maybe it’s by drawing Abigail as a bunny rabbit. The important thing is
to give the illustrator the freedom to make your story the best that it can be.
 |
| The manuscript for Fay Fairy’s Very BIG Problem. Notice that the illustration notes only explain things that are necessary to the story and that are not easy to infer from the story itself. Also note that the words are in the font and format that will be used in the finished book to make it easier to copy and paste the words directly from Microsoft Word into the artwork. |
Third, make
your story kid, parent, teacher and librarian friendly. You’d think this goes
without saying, but you wouldn't believe how many writers insist on writing
stories that are meant to appeal just to kids or just to parents. Of course,
you want kids to shout, “Again!” But that’s not going to happen if an adult
doesn't buy the book first. Of course, you want an adult to buy the book. But
that’s not going to happen if the kid isn't going to want to hear it.
You should
also consider what your picture book offers a parent, teacher, or librarian
that can't be found in another book. A parent, for example, might need a
picture book about blended families or living with a developmentally disabled
sibling or a bunch of other stuff that Dr. Seuss never considered writing
about. A teacher might need a book about dinosaurs or rivers or a recent historical
event or how to deal with a bully. And librarians are constantly being asked
for books on topics they don’t have. Having a book on a needed topic can be a
great way to land those paid classroom and library visits that—as we saw in
part one of this series—can be a picture-book writer’s or illustrator’s bread
and butter. Obviously, this is true for nonfiction, but it can also be true for
fiction. So ask yourself what your book might offer its potential buyers, not
just the kids that make up the intended audience.
One way to
do this is to imagine offering your services as a visiting author to an
elementary school teacher. That teacher is going to want you to do more than
just read your book. What are you going to teach kids in connection with your
book? Are you going to make your author visit interactive? If so, how?
Fay
Fairy’s Very BIG Problem, for example, has a page in the back explaining
how I created the story by taking an ancient Indian parable—”The Blind Men and
the Elephant”—and changing it by asking, “What if the story were told from the
elephant’s point of view?” I would start my author visit by telling the kids
the original parable and how it gave me the idea for my book. Then after
reading my book to the children, I would ask them to pick a story they all
knew, like Cinderella, and I would ask them to see how many different stories
they could create by changing parts of it, like the point of view character or
the setting. It would be a creative exercise, and it would also teach them a
bit about writing and the parts of a story. So how can you turn an author visit
into something more for a teacher and her class? It’s something you should
think about before you've even published your book.
 |
| The story behind your book—whether if it’s the story of how you came up with the idea or how you got it published—can often be a great topic for an author visit. This page at the back of Fay Fairy’s Very BIG Problem explains the simple method I used to come up with idea for it—and how the reader can use the same method to come up with his or her own story ideas. |
Fourth, know
the difference between a picture book that a parent reads to a child and a
picture book that a child reads on his or her own. The first can have longer
and more complicated words and sentence structure, but the second has to have
short and easy to read words and simple sentence structure. I
Love You the Purplest by Barbara M. Joosse is a good example of a book
that was meant to be read to a child. Green
Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss is a good example of a book that a child is
meant to read on his or her own.
Fifth, map
out your book so that you’ve worked out what text goes on what page.
CreateSpace prefers picture-books that have exactly 40 pages. Subtract the
interior title page and the copyright page, and that means ideally your story
should fill 34-38 pages. Pay attention to the rhythm between odd and even
pages. Unless your book is made up entirely of double-page spreads, odd pages
should go on the right, and even pages should go on the left after the reader
has flipped the page. This means that odd pages are great places to ask
questions, and even pages are great places to answer them. For example, on an
odd page it could say, “What should Gloria Gorilla wear to the ball?” The child thinks about it for a moment,
picturing a ball gown. The page is flipped, and . . . The child
giggles as she sees that Gloria Gorilla is wearing a swimsuit, or pajamas, or a
spacesuit, or pretty much anything that seems a silly answer to that question.
 |
| This is the storyboard I made for my still to be published picture book, Click the Dog. While a writer who isn't an illustrator probably won't make a storyboard, writers should map out their picture books in a similar way, using text instead of illustrations. |
Study
hundreds and hundreds of modern picture books. Pay attention to what goes into
them, how many words they have, how the pictures tell the story, how they
appeal to both the adults that buy them and the kids the adults buy them for, the
length and complexity of the words and sentences they use, and how the story is
mapped out. Also ask yourself if this is a story that has been told before. If
so, what does your story offer that’s new? If not, why hasn’t a book like yours
been written before?
And finally,
when you’re sure you've written the story you wanted to write in the best way
possible, edit and edit and edit it some more. Get other people to look it over
for you. If you can, join a critique group for picture-book writers, get your
manuscript critiqued at a SCBWI (Society of
Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators) conference, or find someone nice
enough to critique it on Verla Kay’s Blue Boards, which are now the official SCBWI boards. Picture
books are very short, and every word has to be exactly right. There’s no room
for errors. And it helps to get a second pair of eyes to look it over. Of
course, you need to be open to honest feedback. Just remember it’s not about
you; it’s about making your story the best that it can be.
Once you're
done, put the text in the size and font choice that you want. I asked my
Facebook friends, who are mostly writers and illustrators, about recommended
font size. The consensus was that a 16-point font is best for picture books.
However, I found that was too small for the size I was planning to print the
finished book, which was 8.5” x 11”. I chose a 20-point font instead. I also
discovered that nowadays sans-serif fonts are considered the norm for picture
books, because they're easier to read in short passages, particularly for young
children. Helvetica is considered the best, but because I work on a PC, I chose
Arial, which is similar. And I chose Arial Rounded because that fit better with
the soft, rounded, and elephantine look I was going for in the book. I chose a
1.5 line spacing, because more distance between lines makes it easier to read;
and I chose not to paragraph indent, because there were too many paragraphs
that were made up of just one line. I also made sure that the final line of
each paragraph with more than one line had at least two words on it, so it
wouldn't look strange. I find it’s easier to format paragraph text in Word than
in a graphics program, like CorelDraw, so I did all of this in a Word file with
extra-wide margins. That way I could just copy and paste the text for each page
from Word directly into CorelDraw without having to make too many adjustments.
 |
| The inside title page and the first two pages of Fay Fairy's Very BIG Problem. Notice how the title page can also be used to tell a part of the story. |
Of course,
this is only the part of the writing that involves the story. You’ll also need to write a great title, the blurb
(both for CreateSpace and the back of the book), your author bio (at least for CreateSpace,
if not for the last page of the book), the copyright information (look at other
books for ideas on how to do this), and a dedication or a whatever extra
materials you might want to include. Having all these bits of writing done in
advance can help make the final parts of creating a picture book and publishing
it with CreateSpace a lot easier.
 |
| The copyright page from Fay Fairy’s Very BIG Problem. You can go to Copyright.Gov to get an official copyright, but don’t worry if you don’t have one: anything original you write belongs you the moment you write it down, whether you've purchased an official copyright or not. CreateSpace will provide you with the ISBN for your book, so it’s not necessary to purchase one if you publish with them. |
For more
information on writing picture books, I highly recommend Writing
with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children’s Books by Uri Shulevitz.
Picture
Writing: A New Approach to Writing for Kids and Teens by Anastasia Suen
and The
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Children’s
Book by Harold Underdown are also great books that deal with the topic.
I also highly recommend Underdown’s fantastic website, The Purple Crayon, for all things related
to children’s book publishing. It’s just overflowing with useful information.
That takes
care of writing your picture book. In the next article in this series, we're
going to look at illustrating it. Hope to see you then!
Everything You Wanted to Know about Publishing a Picture Book (But Didn't Know Who to Ask):
Part 1—Introduction
Part 2—Writing
Part 3—Illustrating
Part 4—Publishing
No comments:
Post a Comment