Picture Book Writing Practice
Hello all! I hope you’re doing well. It’s been a while since I’ve shared what I’ve been working on, and I’ve missed it.
This update is a belated re-posting of what I shared a little while ago on my Substack. If you’re subscribed to both, sorry about the belated repeat!
Today I feel particularly inspired to talk about picture books. The driving force behind my love of drawing and painting has always been narration. In fact, I wanted to be a writer before I wanted to be an illustrator. Now I’m feeling greedy, and have decided I can be both.
Of course, I have spent considerably less time writing than I have illustrating, at least for the past 15 years, and I have a lot to learn.
My confession regarding my relationship with picture books is that in college I was afraid of being pigeon-holed into children’s illustration work as a woman. I didn’t want to feel stuck making my work soft, or approachable. So I made comics instead, because I was still in love with the way visual art and writing could work together to tell a story, and I felt that comics could be anything, but picture books could not.
Never mind the fact that many of my favorite artists have illustrated picture books, and that the art in picture books is hugely varied, or that I was shoving myself into a different pigeon hole all in an effort to avoid another.
All of this to say that I was young, and foolish, and these days I guess I’m just a little less of both those things. To make up for my own ignorance, I will put links to a couple of resources I’ve found from people who do know what their talking about.
Before seeking any of the above out, I started writing, because I love learning by doing, which really means learning by making hours and hours of mistakes.
For example, three of the six or so stories I’ve been spending time on employed rhyming schemes. Apparently, one of the first rules of submitting picture books to publishers is that they do not want to read your terrible rhyming poetry. Fair enough. Now, there are exceptions to every rule, but is it wise for me to consider myself to be that exception? Probably not.
Just for fun though, I will share a couple of those drafts. I am not ashamed of my rhyming! At least, no more so than I am of my writing in general, and I kind of have to let that go to improve now, don’t I?
The first one I’ll share is called The Haunted Pumpkin Patch. I wrote this after visiting a pumpkin patch late in the season, and I was so inspired by the shapes of all the rotting pumpkins falling apart, that I wrote a spooky little poem about it.
I set this aside for now, because it aggressively breaks the no rhyming rule, and it needs plenty of editing. It delight’s me nonetheless. What I like most about it is how much fun I would have illustrating it.
The second story I’ll share is titled Everything Wicked :
Not only does this rhyme, but as a whole it feels kind of unclear. I poured a lot of big feelings into in all the way back in November, and I’ve been noodling on it ever since. My biggest concern is that it feels preachy and indecisive, which is a pretty obnoxious combination. Despite all that, there are a lot of pieces in it that bring me joy, and I don’t think I’m ready to give up on it. At the very least, I plan to try writing a version that doesn’t rhyme.
The last project I’ll share is called Finderella. Fun fact, I woke up in the middle of the night on a boat with just this title and picture of the character in my head. I then immediately fell back to sleep. Thank you, unconscious brain.
I’ve taken this story further than the one’s above, having made thumbnails and then more finished drawings for the pages. I edited the writing as I did this, mostly to adjust the pacing.
People have asked which I do first, the writing or the drawing. My answer (mostly based on my experience writing comics) is a little bit of both, and it changes depending on the story. Writing is what makes something feel concrete to me. It’s like percussion in music, not the most important part, but a driving force. That said, I often doodle alongside the writing, or even just start with thumbnails of the pages and then go back and nail down the writing after doing so.
In this case I started with a drawing of Finderella. I had such a strong visual of this strange little mermaid living in a sardine tin, I wanted the story to be rooted in that image. Obviously the name is also a play on the fairy tale Cinderella, so I started with that structure and proceeded to veer wildly into the distance.
Here is my rough draft of Finderella, where I was trying to nail down the art and the writing together:
I decided I was happy with what I had, and moved on to more finished pencil drawings for the artwork, still editing the writing as I went. Here are a few examples of those pages:
This, as it turns out, was a mistake. I skipped a pretty major step when I moved on from the rough but legible thumbnails to the more finished drawings, which was peer review.
I didn’t feel as though I could share the story with anyone until it was more polished. Now that I have shared the polished version with a few people, I wish I could have applied their feedback much earlier. By protecting my ego, I only added to my workload, because I’m not sure if any of the nicer drawings will still apply to my rewritten story.
This realization then prompted me to sit down and write this post. I wanted to slow down, consider my process so far, and open myself up to other people’s opinions.
Over the years I’ve mostly gotten over the fear of showing people paintings and drawings in progress. I’ve divorced myself from the feeling that their criticism is transferable to me. Apparently, I haven’t cleared that hurdle when it comes to telling stories. So here I am, practicing.
Do any of you enjoy writing? Drawing? Both? Do you have thoughts regarding picture books that you’d like to share? Are you practicing something new in your life?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the above!
Sincerely,
Claire
Here are a couple of spots on the internet I’ve looked for information regarding picture books:
https://www.scbwi.org/ (you can often find older editions of their very comprehensive illustrator’s guides at the library)
In addition, I’ve just been spending a lot of time reading picture books.