Reading your own text out loud can help pinpoint problem areas. Picture books are often read aloud by parents, caregivers, educators, older siblings, the young reader themselves. Do check out Josh Funk’s posts about the do’s and don’ts of rhyming picture books. Be aware that many editors have a knee-jerk negative reaction when they find out a mss uses rhyming text because of this tendency to use rhyming as a crutch. One good exercise (suggested by my friend Heidi Stemple): write your mss in plain prose, without any rhyme, to see if it still holds up. If you find yourself changing the story or forcing certain things to happen just to make a rhyme work, rethink whether you should be using rhyme. Many new picture book writers assume that they need to use rhyming text. I f you decide to use rhyming text, make sure you know how to do it well. Rushing to get through, or assuming that short = easy or quick is a recipe for disaster.” It needs to be tweaked and made sure that every word is there for a reason - a good reason. There is craft, there is fine tuning, there is CUTTING OF TEXT. “Writers have so many ideas they want to work on one, move on to the next, flood an editor with a bunch of projects… Thing is, picture books take time. Justin Chanda, my editor at Simon & Schuster Children’s, said that one of the biggest mistakes he sees aspiring picture book writers make is not taking the time to really hone their project. Feel free to check out the 32-page thumbnail layout guide in my Templates For Book Creators. Tara Lazar has a great post about picture book construction, and so does John Shelley at Words & Pictures and Joyce Audy Zarins at WritersRumpus. There are many exceptions, but be aware that exceptions often cost a publisher more money. It does not mean that all 32 pages are available for your story.
A standard picture book is 32 pages this is because of how the physical book is constructed. Familiarize yourself with what’s being published recently, not just the classics that you read when you were a child.įamiliarize yourself with the format. Same advice applies to experienced artists. Just because you are a brilliant MG or YA writer does not mean you can write brilliant picture books. I strongly advise reading many picture books before trying to write or illustrate one yourself. SOME BASICS FOR BEGINNING PICTURE BOOK CREATORS: