Transcripts
1. Introduction: P. If you are here right now, you have an interest in
writing picture books. It can be difficult
to know where to start with any new venture. So I design this
class to give you the best possible
starting point for your picture book
writing journey ahead. I'm DK Ryland, children's
book author and Illustrator. And this is part one in a four part series
all about writing picture books with
the goal of having your story published by a
traditional publishing house. If you're planning
on self publishing, there will still
be a lot of useful information in this class, but not all of it will be
geared towards that path? If you want to write
picture books, the first crucial
thing you need to do is familiarize
yourself with the market. It's very likely the
picture books you write as a kid do not reflect the current market of
picture books today. This class will give
you tools to read picture books with
intention and get to know the types of books you
gravitate towards and ultimately the types of
books you'll want to write. There are so many options
within the picture book market. Do you gravitate
towards funny books, lyrical books, how
about non fiction? In this class, we will not
only read many picture books, but explore what makes
those books work, so that when you
sit down to write, you'll be ready to write
a manuscript of your own.
2. Tools : For this class, you will
only need a few things. First, and most importantly, you will need a library card. Second, you will need to print
out the six worksheets in the Projects and Resources tab under the heading
Download Resources. You will need 20 copies
of worksheet one, ten copies of worksheet two, and one copy of the rest. Third, you'll need a
highlighter and pen or pencil, fourth, you will want a binder with tabs to put
the worksheets in. I design these worksheets
to be useful to use even years down the road when you're writing
masterful manuscripts. These can be a
resource for you as long as you continue
to pursue writing. Putting them in a
binder will help keep them organized
and accessible. The project for this
class is to print out the my favorite picture
books worksheet and post it to the
project section below. This can be done at the
completion of the class, and you will be
helping others taking the class find really great
books to check out as well.
3. Picture Book Log: So let's get started. For this section of the class, you'll be reading and
recording 100 picture books. 100 might sound like a lot, but it's very important to familiarize yourself with what kind of
books are out there. More importantly, what kind
of books speak to you? And don't worry. We're going to break it down into
manageable bites. First, if you haven't already, you will need to
print out 20 copies of worksheet one
picture book log. Hole punch them and put
them in your binder. Then you're going to
head to the library and check out 20 picture books. Try to check out all kinds. Older books, newer books, books with kids, animals, inanimate objects, art you like, art you don't like,
fiction, non fiction. At this point,
don't discriminate. Pause this video and go
check out those books. Restart when you're
ready to start reading, and we can start filling
out worksheet one together. At this point, you have
your first 20 books checked out and are ready to start recording them in your
picture book log. I have a pile of my
favorite picture books checked out from the library
to show you how to do this. Now that you've checked out
your first 20 picture books, it's time to log them in
our picture book log. I'm going to show you
how to do this with some of my favorite
picture books. Right here under Book title, I'm going to log my
first picture book. I've picked Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown, one
of my favorites. Under book title,
I'm just going to write Mr. Tiger Go Wild. Then I'm going to
give it a rating. Five stars being the best, one star being I
didn't like it at all. For my demonstration, all
of my books are going to be five star books because I've picked out only my
favorite picture books. Now, you may have one star two star three star four
star, five Sarbooks. Don't be afraid to be
really honest here. You're not going to
hurt anyone's feelings. These ratings are
for your eyes only. The more honest you are with your ratings, the more
it's going to help you. The author of Mr. Tiger
Goes Wild is Peter Brown. I'm going to put that
in this box here, and the illustrator
is also Peter Brown. The publisher and the year, we're going to find usually on the first spread after the
end papers. Here we go. We've got Little Brown here, and then on this side, we have copyright 2013. That is the year that
it was published. Little Brown, 2013. Then why did I give this a five star rating
or maybe for you? Why did I give it
a one star rating? This is just little reminders for things that we
like and things maybe that we didn't like as we start reading through
and reading these books. Mr. Tiger us Wild,
I love the artwork. It's very clever. It's quirky. This doesn't have to
be super in depth. We're going to
analyze picture books way more in depth as we go. But these are just
quick little notes to ourselves as to what attracted us to the book or
maybe why we didn't like it. The next book that
I'm going to log is Dandy by Amy Dickman
and Charles Satoso. Under book title, I'm
going to put Dandy. I'm giving my five star rating. The author is Amy Dickman. The illustrator,
Charles Santoso. Now, this one is interesting because the publisher is on the first page or
the first spread here. But the year that it
was published is. If you find that you open
up to that first spread and it is nowhere to be found and we're going right
into the story, then go ahead and go to the next to the end papers
in the back and you find the you should find the year
that it was published. Right here, this was
published in 2019, and this was also
published by Little Brown. Little Brown, 2019. Dandy is also very
clever, funny. It's one of those books
and this doesn't happen, I don't think a lot
with picture books that it's relatable for both the kid and the
adult like a Disney movie is, it's really special in that way. It's very fun. I'm going to go ahead and fill out
the rest of these. You fill out the rest of yours and meet me back here when you have your first 20
picture books logged. Now that you've recorded
your first 20 picture books, go back to the library and
be a bit more selective. Let your interests guide you. What did you like as a
kid? What do you like now? Are they similar or
are they different? Judge a book by the cover here. Pick the 20 books that you
naturally gravitate towards. Once you have those 20 books, read and record them in
your picture book log. Now, pause this
video and go do it. For the next 20 books,
choose the classics. You might need to
use your library's ordering system to put them on hold if they don't have the ones you want at
your local branch. Most libraries have an online ordering system
where you can put the books you want
on hold and they'll pull them for you and put
them on a hold shelf. That'll be the easiest
way to make sure you get the specific
books that you want. To find classic picture books for this section of the class, you can use the website
that I'm showing you here. The link to it is in
the about section of this class down below, or you can just do a
Google search of your own. Now, pause the video and record your classics in your
picture book log. For the next 20 books, choose only books that have been published in the last
two to three years. I love to do this
category right after the classics because it's fun to see how picture books
really have evolved. Once again, your library's ordering system will
be very helpful. Now, the link to the website
that I'm showing you now is also in the about section of this class down below, or you can of course, do a Google search of your own. Now, pause the video and record your 20 modern picture books. For the final 20 books, choose whatever you
want to read more of. If you need ideas
or suggestions, check out what
others have posted in the project section
of this class. Now for the final time,
pause this video, read your 20 books, and record in your
picture book log. Finally, print out
20 more copies of worksheet one and put
them in your binder. If you're serious about
writing picture books, this is a great practice to continue even after you've
mastered the craft. Now we will move on to
part two in this class, which is taking a closer
look at the selection of the books you read by
analyzing and comparing them.
4. Picture Book Basics : I this d d d So one of the most obvious
things you'll notice about picture books is
that they're very short. The page count is
usually 32 pages, sometimes 40, sometimes 48. But what you'll want
to notice when you're reading these books
and keep note of as you start to write
your manuscripts is that there's not a lot
of words on each page, which leads us to word count. Word count for most picture
books is 200-600 words. Now you'll notice
that this might change based on whether
the book is non fiction. Non fiction can be longer, and also when you read your
classic picture books, sometimes those word counts are a little bit longer as well. Another thing you're going
to want to pay attention to is how the author leaves
room for the illustrator. I'm going to show
you an example from Extra arm by Mac Barnett
and John lassen. I'll read you a passage here. She made sweaters
for all the dogs and all the cats and for
the other animals too. Soon, people thought, soon
Annabel will run out of yarn. But it turns out she didn't. Annabel made sweaters for things that didn't
even wear sweaters. What Mac Barnett does here is says she made sweaters for things that
didn't wear sweaters. So he left room for John Klassen to decide
what those things were. He didn't say she
made sweaters for the mailbox and the
birdhouse and the house. He just let the
illustrator run with that. Okay. Another example of this, leaving room for the
illustrator is from Gaston by Kelly De Puccio
and Christian Robinson. Here, it says, misses Poodle
admired her new puppies, Fifi, Fufu, a, and Gaston. What the reader is
going to notice is that Gaston is different looking. It doesn't say Gaston didn't
look like the other puppies, doesn't say that in the text. She allows Christian Robinson to show that with
the illustrations. Then she doubles down
on it by saying, would you like to
see them again? Fifi, Fu, a, and Gaston? Perfectly precious, aren't they? There's nothing in the text that says, Gaston was different. And she lets Christian
Robinson do that, and she lets the reader figure that out on
their own as well. Now, another really interesting
and important technique that picture books
use is page turns. I'm going to give you
an example of page turns from Duckworth
the difficult child by Michael Sssman and
Julia Sarda it says. But after taking a nap, Duckworth was
practicing his recorder when the cobra slithered right up and so this illustration, as well as the dot dot. Makes us have to turn the page to find out if
the Cobra swallows him. Page turns basically are used as a cliff hanger on each page so that we
continue to turn the page, and we have to find
out and he did. He swallowed him
whole. Then from here, this is actually a page turn
of its own as well because now we need to know
what's going to happen because this boy's been
swallowed by a snake. The next thing
we're going to talk about is the story arc. And any story really has a beginning, a middle,
and an ending. In a picture book, the
beginning is very, very short, maybe 20%, maybe less
than the entire book. This is where the main character and the story problem
get introduced. Sometimes that's even done
in the very first sentence. Now the middle of the
book is going to be the most meat of the
story, maybe 60%. This is where the main character tries to solve their problem, and they face obstacles
along the way. A lot of times those obstacles
are going to escalate in severity or they just
become more and more climatic. Now, the ending is also very short, just
like the beginning. This is where the problem
gets resolved and the reader is left with
a feeling of aha or ah, or there's just a resolution that happens there
that is satisfying. Now, the beginning, the
middle, and the end, should all connect to each
other and make sense. Also the ending a lot of times is going to connect
back to the beginning. Sometimes there's
a seed planted at the very beginning that
makes that ending feel even more satisfying and
even more inevitable. Now you may have seen
this story shape drawing before and it's going to start with the
inciting incident. This is where the story
problem is introduced and it kicks off all of the rising
action of the story. The rising action is going to be the main character trying to solve their problem and the obstacles being
placed in the way. Now the climax is going to be the most intense
moment of the book, that moment of is this
going to get solved, or is it not going
to get solved? It's a big action that happens. The following action happens
right after the climax. That's just leading
into the resolution. Usually in a picture book, the following action
is very short. There are exceptions
to all of these rules, but usually it is
very, very quick. Then the resolution, like
we talked about before, is that feeling of everything has been resolved and the reader is now satisfied. Now there are unusual
arcs as well. Those tend to happen in concept picture books or non fiction. But we're going to focus mainly on fiction picture books
and this standard arc, but it's good to know
what they look like and it's good to draw out each arc, which we'll go over later
just so you can see how it changes and how to
play with that a little bit. The final thing
we're going to talk about is character arc. Each character goes on an external and an
internal journey. The external journey is where the character tries to
solve their problem. This is what we talked about before, the
middle of the book. This is where they try
to get what they want. This should be pretty
apparent when we read what that external
journey looks like. Now, the internal journey is more about the
character's growth. This is more about what
it is that they need, and sometimes they
know what they need and sometimes they don't. At the very end, sometimes the external journey is met as well as the
internal journey. Sometimes the external
journey is met and the internal journey
is not and vice versa. Start paying attention to those character arcs
because how they get resolved plays a lot into how you feel at the end
of reading a picture book. Now that we have
all that covered, we are ready to dive into the next worksheet,
analyzing picture books.
5. Picture Book Analysis : P least So grab a highlighter or marker
and start picking out the manuscripts that
you gave five stars to. Pick at least ten. If
you haven't already, print out ten copies
of worksheet two, analyzing picture books, or however many manuscripts you'd like to take a closer look at. You can do more than ten, but I don't recommend
less than ten. Let's dive a little
deeper into why these manuscripts stood out to you and why they are successful. This worksheet
will be especially useful when you write and
revise your own manuscript. Now that you've picked your
ten favorite picture books that you want to take
a closer look at, we're going to go over how to use the picture book
analysis worksheet. You should have ten copies
of this because we're going to do one
worksheet per book. I'm going to show you how to do this worksheet using one of
my favorite picture books, Melfll, by Cory R Taber. Under book, I'm
going to first write Mel Fel by Cory R Tabor. Then our main character
in this book is Mel. She is a Kingfisher. She is a bird, Mel. The setting is in
Mels family tree. Pretty much everything
takes place in this tree here. Mels tree. Then the first thing we're
really going to take a look at is the opening
sentence of our book. I Mel fell. Take a look
at this. There we go. The opening sentence is one
day when Mama was away, Mel decided it was
time to learn to fly. What this first
sentence does for us is it gives us
our main character, Mel, and it also gives
us our story problem. It says she decided it
was time to learn to fly. Right away, we know this might
not be a very good idea, because it also
says Mama was away. Learning how to fly for
a baby bird is obviously dangerous and something that she should probably do
when Mama is there. We also see a little bit
of Mel's character here. She looks like a very
confident, resolute bird, and then her siblings are
giving us little worried faces, which confirms to us that maybe this isn't a very good decision.
Maybe this is a problem. That first sentence in a
picture book is going to be so important because it's what is going to make the
reader want to read more, and a lot of times it's going to deliver a lot with very little. It's already delivering for us the main character and
the problem straightaway. Under opening
sentence, I would put one day when Mama was away, and I'll just leave it here, but I would write
that whole thing out. Now the next thing
we're going to take a look at is page turns. Page turns and Mel fell or
pretty much every page. We could flip to any page
and be in a good spot here. Here we've got Mel
doing her little flip, diving off of her branch, and then it says, she fell. The fact that we end on, she fell makes us want to turn the page because what's
going to happen next? Is she going to keep falling? Is she going to fly?
All of this tension is built up with each page
turn because on each page, She continues to fall. Here she's falling past the ws. It says, Mel fell and fell. Of course, I want
to turn the page again because at some point, she's not going to have
any more room to fall. We'll use this one here,
Mel fell and fell. Now, not every picture book
is going to have a page turn, a really strong page turn like
that on every single page. But these are built into this story structure for
this particular book. The next thing we're going to
look at is the story arch. First, the inciting
incident in Mel fell is that she decides
to learn to fly. That is the event that kicks
off all of the other events. Mel decides to learn to fly. Now the rising action, we saw some of that
when we're looking at those page turns,
is that she falls. Mel, Falls. The tension naturally
increases with her falling because we know she's getting closer and
closer to the ground. As a reader, we're getting
more and more invested, more at tension, more concerned as to what's going to
happen as she falls. Now, this might look a little different in other books
where a character has a problem and tries
to figure it out and each attempt at a solution
rises in tension as they go. So It can present itself
in different ways, but the rising
action is basically a character working
towards a solution or the reader feeling like the tension is
building and building and building as they get
closer to this climax. Now, the climax in Mel fell, I don't want to ruin for you because I want you to
read the book yourself. But what I will show you
is that a lot of times, if you can't find the
climax in the text, you're going to be able to see the climax in the pictures. I'm showing you a
spread from Bear came along by Richard T
Morris and Louann Fam. In this spread, we have
these animals here. You see their feet and they are about to go over a waterfall. This is a very big
climatic moment here. A lot of times our climax is going to be this full spread, full of tension, full of
movement and expression, and an fame is an amazing job of extending
the climax to two spreads, where now we get to
see their expressions. But this is a very
stand out illustration and it shows where
that climax is. Another example of
seeing the climax in illustrations is from Duckworth a difficult child again
by Michael Sesman and Julia Sarta on this page, this is a climatic moment. A snake is eating a little boy. It doesn't get any
worse than that. The problem can't get
any worse than this. But there's a lot of movement, it's a full spread,
it's a bold page. You can really see that this
moment is important. Okay. You'll fill out the climax, and then the resolution comes usually shortly
after the climax. It's basically, how does this
story problem get solved. Another thing I want
to point out to you is that over here in this area, we can draw the story shape. What I mean by that is from the slides from before where
I showed you the story. A lot of times the story arc is going to
look a lot like that, but it doesn't always
look like that. In Mel fell, the story arc
is a little bit different. We have our inciting incident. Then we have our rising
action, which we talked about. It's her falling. Then we have the climax at the top that I'm not
going to ruin for you. Then we have our falling action, which is almost the same
length as the rising action. That's a little bit unusual. Usually the falling
action is pretty short in a picture book right after the climax and then right
into the resolution. Then we'll put the
resolution here. If you start drawing your story shapes after you
look at your story arc, it's going to show you
what the majority of your stories look like shape wise and how
they're pasted out. Also it'll show you when
something's a little bit unique, and then you can start
to think about why did it work even though it didn't fit into
the usual formula. The next thing we're going to look at is the character arc. The character arc, if you
remember from the slides, is made up of both
an external journey and an internal journey. In Mel fell, the
external journey is that Mel wants to fly. This is what the
character wants. Then I would put yes, she was successful or no,
she was unsuccessful, depending on the book and whether or not the
characters wants were met. Now, in Mel fell, the internal journey is
a little less obvious. This is what the
character needs. To me, I think the
internal journey is that M overcomes fear. Overcomes fear. Then I would also put was
she successful? Yes or no. What you're going
to notice about the character arcs is that sometimes the
external journey is met and the internal
journey is met. Sometimes the external
journey is not met and the internal journey is met and vice versa. It's not often. I can't think of a
picture book where both the external and
internal journey are not met. That would be pretty unusual. But start paying
attention to how those different combinations of those journeys being
met make you feel. What the author does with those external journeys and
internal journeys being met or not is a really important storytelling
technique as well. Go ahead and fill out your
picture book analysis sheets. You should have ten of them
and then meet me back here. Once you've analyzed at
least ten manuscripts, print out the picture book
comparison worksheet. This will show the types of
books you gravitate towards what they have in common and what you might want to
write down the road.
6. Comparisons and Final Project : I this dt dt dt. We are on our final assignment here where we are going
to compare the books that we like to get a better idea as to what books we're going
to write in the future. First, we're going
to start with genre and style of books
that you like. I'm going to fill this out
as if I were filling it out, but obviously your answers are going to be different
than mine, and that's great. I would fill out that I
tend to write more fiction. I like more fiction. I
like to read more fiction. I do like some funny
animal non fiction. Some good animal facts
are always cool with me. Funny animal nonfiction. Maybe you like
nonfiction biographies. Maybe you like fiction that is rhyming or
serious or lyrical. This is where we're
going to put down the basic similarities between the ten books that we gravitated towards and
that we really enjoyed. Now, once we have that down, we're going to look a little bit closer into other similarities. When you really dive
into those ten books, were there similarities
between the characters? For example, are they
mostly animal characters, kid characters or maybe
inanimate object characters? I tend to enjoy
books with animals, and deeper than that, are
those cha characters are? Are they troublemakers? Are they adventures? Are they inspiring? What kind of characters do you
tend to gravitate towards? Then we can take a look
at the publisher that we tend to gravitate toward as well in our picture book log. Maybe there's a pattern there. And that's just going to help
you down the road when you submit to publishers
either an agent or not through an agent, just to know where you
should be targeting. Now, do you notice that
the books that you read are mostly by
author illustrators, where it's the same person
writing and illustrating the book or maybe separate
authors and illustrators. I tend to enjoy books that
are by author Illustrators. This isn't every single book, but there is a pattern here. Author Illustrator. Then do you notice through line
with the story arcs? Do your story archs circular? Do they follow that
pretty typical path that I showed you
before in the slides? When you look at
the character arc, do your characters usually get what they want
and they need? What's the through line there? Are there similar themes
in the books that you're reading like maybe
teaching a lesson? Are they teach basic skills, how to make friends? Are they coming up with these universal truths that you just feel are very powerful. Any other similarities, this is where you're
going to dig a little bit deeper to find the things that connect all
the books that you like. Then finally, why do
you like these books? This is going to be
your North Star. This is basically why you write. I tend to really like
funny picture books. The reason I like funny picture books is
because as a kid, I used to read them to escape into another
world into a book. When I read them to my kids now, I feel a bonding there where
we can laugh together, and we can talk about it, and that's just a really
nice experience for me. I like funny picture books. Because I would put my personal reasons for
liking funny picture books. But maybe you like things that
are a little more serious. Maybe you like books that teach kids social emotional
learning or stem, or maybe you like social justice picture
books because they're so powerful and they teach important life skills and maybe
make better human beings. Whatever it is that
you really believe in as to why you write, that's what we're
looking for here. Now that you have finished
all the assignments, it's time to fill out the top
ten picture books worksheet and upload it to the projects
and resources section. This will help students
taking this class to find really great
book recommendations. It's also really
interesting to see our very tastes and interests. If you want to take
it a step further, you can go on Good reads or Amazon and leave reviews
for your favorite books. In general, it helps
these books get found. It's a great way to start
positively interacting with the picture book community.
That's it for this class. Congratulations on starting your picture book
writing Journey. Writing Children's books is a very challenging yet
rewarding experience. The practices in this class will serve you all
along the way. Make sure to come back to
them when you feel stuck. In Part two, we will
take what we've learned and apply it
to idea generation. So you can get started on
your first manuscript. In the meantime, I've put some additional
resources you will want to look into in
the resources tab. See you in Part two.
DK Ryland, Illustrator, Surface Designer
