I’ll let you in on a secret—I’m not really an author. Actually, I’m a poet who has managed to trick a bunch of people (including some very nice editors and a terrific agent) into believing I’m an author. I’m sneaky like that.
For me, the work of writing prose is hard. All those words! My novels tend to shrink a lot, before they grow. I revise and edit myself so heavily that the pages melt away. My background in poetry, and my love of precise language, doesn’t lend itself well to the mad dash—the word-sprint—you have to do when you draft a novel.
But picture books? Ahhhhhh, picture books! Picture books are so much like poems. With their economy of language and their image-heavy text, picture books do much the same work poetry does. I actually enjoy the feeling of trying and failing and shelving an idea, because with picture books, you can just start over again with something else. I love seeing art come in from my illustrator, finding out what my words looked like inside an artist’s head. But best of all, I love the beginning of a picture book, the burst of a new project.
I have a huge junk file on my laptop called JUNK, and it is absolutely filled with documents that are “new beginnings.” Empty documents with only a title or a single line in them.
See, as a poet, I don’t really come up with “ideas for picture books” so much as I dream up little spurts of language, lines of text from which a picture book can grow. For me, the beginning is more about the way a few words sound together than it is about an “idea.”
Let me explain. I’ll use as my example my first book. INSIDE THE SLIDY DINER grew out of my career as a waitress, so if I had begun with an idea, I’d have written down, “make a picture book about a diner.” Instead I wrote down, “Inside the Slidy Diner, the Greasy Spoon of stuck.” I didn’t even know it was a picture book when I began it. At first I thought of it as the first line of a prose poem. I had no idea that I’d invent a character named Edie, or that the diner would be a kind of pseudo-magical place, or that there would be a funny cast of characters. I only had the internal rhyme of “sliiiiiiidy diiiiiiner” and the alliteration of “ssssssspoon of sssssstuck.” But the story sprang from that language.
Likewise, the JUNK file I mentioned earlier is full of lines that I’m not sure about yet. In each case, I don’t know what my idea is exactly, or what the story is about. I only know that I liked the way a few words sounded in my head. Maybe you can help me puzzle them out. Here are a few:
1. Doctor Delete
2. The spoon of wishful thinking
3. What the wind wants
4. The Boring Book
5. My Iffiest Scritch
6. Dirty Curls
7. Boy Who Caught His Death
See what I mean? These are not ideas. They could still head off in a million different directions. They’re just words, that sound nice, in the right order.
So now, as an exercise, for other folks who are equally language driven, I might suggest that instead of trying to think up a pict
What amazing insight into the brains behind the work. There was a certain point in Penny Dreadful when I did think to myself, “she sure has a magic touch with words.”
I am so glad that you are able to take prose and make it so poetic.
Great ideas on applying poetry word-play to picture books! *heading off to dig around in own junk folder*
I’m a huge fan of word play leading to ideas! I love these suggestions and I’m going to get right to it!
Thanks for this great way to come up with ideas.
I love da words!! This approach is so playful and creative! Thank you!
Oh, my. Love, love, LOVE this. Thank you!
(Hmm…Dirty curls? Is there a hair salon next to the Slidy Diner?)
Love it! Im a language-oriented person too…. Im going to have fun with this one! Thanks for that advice, the tidbit, the words of wonder, the 411, the helps, the redirection, the……
Great idea for story creation thanks! I also think your no. 7 would go very well with your no. 1
Great tip, Laurel. Thanks!
Thanks so much for great advice and for sharing it in such a fun way. I’m printing this out and taking it for a whirl.
Your books sound/look wonderful.