Writing Picture Books: Part 2 - Idea Generation

1. Idea Generation Introduction: 50 50. If you want to write a standout picture book, you have to have a standout idea. Hi. I'm DK Ryland, children's book author and illustrator. This is part two in a four part series all about writing picture books. In this class, we are tackling idea generation. If you are here right now, that means you have taken part one in this writing picture book series. I crafted these classes deliberately in a certain order so that you can get the most out of them. But if you haven't taken part one, definitely go back and check it out. In this class, we'll be exploring three different exercises to generate as many creative ideas as possible. I personally think idea generation is the most fun part of the entire writing process. But when I first started out writing picture books, it's the part that made me feel the most anxious. I felt like, What if this is the only idea I ever have? I'm here to tell you, ideas are everywhere, really good ideas. The hardest part really is turning those ideas into a good book, which we will get into later. Have fun with this process, and don't let it intimidate you. Put away your internal critic. There are no bad ideas here. Generating ideas is mostly learning how to pay attention, and it's like working out a muscle. The more you do it, the easier it becomes, and the stronger and the more viable the ideas get. 2. Tools and Project: For this class, you will need some form of pencil and paper, whether that's literally a pencil and paper or whether that's Word or Google Doc on your computer is completely up to you. You are also going to need to print out one copy of each of the four worksheets in the projects and resources section below. And you will need your binder from class one to put those worksheets in. Everything we do in these classes can be useful to you all along your writing journey. It's a good idea to keep it all in one place. For your final project, you are going to pick a book title that already exists, but you have not read it and write a pitch for it. Then you will read that book and rewrite the pitch to match the real manuscript. But the first exercise we are going to do is mining your kid life and current life for picture book ideas. Print out worksheet one, if you haven't already, and let's get started. 3. Exercise 1 - Mining for Ideas: Okay, we're onto the first exercise, mining for ideas, and we're going to mine your kid life, as well as your current life for ideas. And we're going to let the experiences that you've had guide you in doing this exercise. So I'm going to fill this out as if I was filling it out myself, but obviously fill this out the way that you would, and it should be a lot different obviously than the way I would. So when we look at mining my kid life, the first category is moments that impacted me. And this can be positive and this can be negative. It's impacted you in any way. It could be as difficult as divorce or death, or it could be as positive as the first time that you danced and fell in love with it, or the first time you did the thing that you became the most passionate about or Maybe when your parent told you that they're proud of you. There's so many different things and ways that you can go with this. So whatever comes your head, start there, and then just keep listing until you can't list anymore. So you know, I would start with divorce that pops into head into my head and maybe the first time I threw a ball. And played softball. Then I would just keep going and going and going with that. But just keep listing until you can't list anymore with that. Things that I loved. For me, I loved playing sports. I loved school, I loved reading. I loved poetry, I loved jumping in the pool. I loved riding my bike all around the neighborhood. These are all just very kid things. I'll just put a couple of those down sports, bike riding. Ice cream, you know, whatever. So these are just the things that you think of when you think, Man, that was good part of childhood. And then things I hated. First thing that comes to mind for me is weeding. I never liked weaning. There are some chores that obviously were just, you know, not the favorites. Vacuuming was one of them. So maybe chores are in there or maybe being told what to do. I was very stubborn kid and I did not love being told what to do. Or maybe it's I mean, it can really be anything. Maybe it's that your parents watch sports and you didn't want to or maybe you had to go visit grandma, you really didn't want to or whatever. So things as a kid that made you say, Oh, we have to go do that or, I really don't want to whatever, clean my room. Whatever that might look like. Things I thought were funny, The first thing that comes to my mind is Farts, which I think, pretty much all kids think are funny. Far, my sibling, my brother was very funny. He was older than me, so I looked up to him and I thought he was hilarious. So keep listing all of these categories are just take yourself back in time to those moments and put yourself in those moments as a child, and what would have made you laugh? Then where I lived is going to be significant because depending on where you live, there's different things that impacted you, right? Like if you lived on a lake and you grew up fishing, that's a huge childhood core memory, right? For me, I grew up in a beach town. There were squirrels that lived on the beach. This is so random. And I don't know that everybody knows that there are beach squirrels and beach bunnies. I loved these squirrels and I would feed them and go visit them and I thought they were the coolest. And the fact that I lived near these beach squirrels made this core memory possible. Now other people obviously that I grew up with either served or maybe trained to be lifeguards or things like that. The environment dictated the experience. So think about where you lived and how that maybe impacted your experiences growing up. Things that were unique about me, m One of the things that was unique about me was that I was highly athletic. And so I pretty much only hung out with and played sports with the boys and like all growing up in elementary school. And I was total tomboy. I dressed like a boy. I didn't want anything to do with being, you know, girly or perceived as girly or doing girly things. And that was a significant impact. Think about the things that made you who you are, or you in the theater or singing or maybe chess or something that was unique to you that you could really get into and that you know a lot about and maybe was pretty formative for you. Now, mining my current life and thinking about what you're watching on TV, it's not that significant what the TV show is or anything like that, but what's significant is that you've chosen to spend time with a series, or maybe movies or something like that. Think about why you like that TV show. What is it about it? Is there a theme in there that's impactful, or is that it's like a suspenseful show and you like to you like that feeling of not knowing what's coming next? Or maybe it's the way the story is told. Maybe it's documentary, and so maybe non fiction is something that you're interested in. So start thinking about the type of entertainment you're consuming and why you're consuming that entertainment. Why is that something that you enjoy? That's going to inform the entertainment that maybe you want to put out there as well. Now let's think about what you love to do now? Do you have hobbies and interests that are the same as when you were growing up or that are different? Have they changed? For me, personally, I still play a lot of sports and love sports, golf, and pickleball and tennis, things like that. Hobbies for me that's like art, and I'd love to get into pottery, haven't done it yet. Food, do you like to cook? I personally love baking. Do you like to garden? What are the things that when you have free time? If you have free time that you want to spend it doing. Then this last one is what makes me mad? What makes me mad is going to be a thematic guide because something that makes you mad is something that you care about. For me, things that make me mad are like mistreatment of animals or children, obviously, I care about that. That's going to make me care enough to get angry, right? Then, things that are mildly irritating can fit in this category as well, right? As a parent, it irritates me when people live vicariously through their kids and push their kids, even though it's not something their kid likes to do or something like that. And so even the mildly irritating can show up. There can be a theme in a picture book about a kid going against the will of their family and doing what it is that they truly lights them up and being fully themselves. These are things that can pop up and sometimes they're going to pop up organically because they're subconsciously things that you believe in. But sometimes being aware of them and looking for the theme in your work, those things can intersect, and you can see the deeper meaning before you even realize that you're writing it. Go ahead and just think of all the things that you can and list the things that either make you angry or make you even mildly irritated. I hope you had fun with that mining exercise. Exercise two is all about charting out inspiration for your next picture book. Pronto worksheet two, and let's get to it. 4. Exercise 2 - Chart it Out: All right, we are moving on to Exercise two, which is called Chart at Out, where we are going to chart different interesting aspects of a story and try to mash them together and just brainstorm some new and interesting ideas. The first category in this chart is interesting settings. Go ahead and set a timer for a minute or so and just list as interesting settings as you can think of. Even if they're uninteresting, that's okay too, as many settings as you can. If I were going about this, I would just start listing whatever came to my mind. Outer space, the moon, the deep ocean, a boat, a tree house, a cave, a school or classroom. Then I would just keep going and going and going and going until this was completely filled out. So go ahead and do that and then and then we're going to look at interesting characters. Interesting characters, you're going to think of characters that are kid relatable. Usually, you're not going to have adult characters. Sometimes you, maybe you could have a zookeeper or something like that, but they do have to have kid qualities to them when you actually write the story. Keeping that in mind, obviously, let's say, a troublemaking girl or something like that. Something that makes her stand out or or maybe like a ballerina. Maybe someone a girl who is a little bit more stereotypical, I guess, a sensitive boy. Let's say, maybe a witch. We can get a little bit more like mythical, a ghost, something like that, something more Halloween, even go like Santa Claus or something. We can also go with things like inanimate objects like a pencil. Is inspired here. Or let's say animals that we find interesting, maybe a cat, or maybe a little bit more exotic. We could do like a I don't know. I doesn't really matter. A 000. If you've never seen a kudo, they're really cool. They have these spiral horns. They're awesome. Just keep going with interesting characters and if you tend to want to write books about actual child characters, then go along that line. If you'd rather write about animals than go along that line or just mythical creatures or anything like that. Fill that out with characters that you find interesting. Then we're going to go over here to kid problems. Think about any problems maybe that you had as a kid, things that you struggled with. That could be things like making friends. That's the big one. It's hard as an adult, too. Making friends, maybe fitting in and maybe something like school related, like reading or having a hard time with homework or something like that. Then just keep going with things that maybe you struggled with or maybe you see your kids struggle with and keep going until you have a nice long list of kid problems. Truths, you believe deve in your soul. This relates back to the previous exercise when we were talking about things that make you angry. Just things that you really believe in. So and maybe thinking back on, really big lessons you learned in your life. One of those things for me personally is that I grew up in a really competitive environment. Sports were very highly celebrated and I did really well in sports. So there was always competition, and it was always trying to be the best. And so something I learned along the way is that if other people have success, it doesn't diminish my own success. So continually being supportive of other people and genuinely wanting others to succeed. So others success doesn't diminish your own. Think about things like that in your life that were these moments of like, Oh. Oh, k, that makes sense. That's going to make life easier and more peaceful, and it's going to make me a better person, that type of stuff. They can be simple things too, learn from your mistakes or maybe you have to fail in order to learn how to succeed, something like that. Or maybe you feel like being a part of a team can get you further than doing things on your own, or something like that. You really believe in teamwork and being a team player. Keep going, keep thinking, and just write down anything that comes to your mind that feels true to you. Once you have a good list, and I would recommend having this whole chart fully filled out. You have plenty to choose from. Then you're just going to randomly pick, close your eyes and randomly pick. A cave is my setting. This story takes place in a cave. Then same thing with a ghost, a ghost wants to get along with their siblings. Get a along with siblings. But can't because that's the part that you would make up, I I have this ghost character and they live in a cave with their family, obviously with their siblings, and they're fighting, what might they be fighting about? Why is it hard for them to get along? What's happening here to create that conflict? Whatever you come up with is what you would put R here. Then the main character learn from their mistakes. Okay. Probably would have made more sense to land on to be a team player. But that's okay. It doesn't matter. Now, when you fill this out, it might be really, really random. But it's a good exercise to see how can I take these things that seem random and put them together and make them work? It's a really fun exercise to see what you can come up with because this is going to bring a story to you that you probably wouldn't just randomly come up with, and it's an interesting brainstorming and also writing exercise. I highly suggest that you try to write this manuscript and see what you can come up with. Now, maybe you fill this in and there's a piece of it that's just not working and you're like, you know what? It would just make a lot more sense if the conflict wants to make friends. Let's get rid of that and let's make friends. You can always change things if whatever you randomly chose doesn't work for you, but it's a good place to start. 5. Exercise 3 - Play with Titles: P. And for our final exercise, we are going to play with interesting titles to inspire some interesting stories. So print out worksheet three and follow along with me. Okay, so now we are on Exercise three. We are going to use titles to play with different ideas and to brainstorm different ideas. So what I've done for you here is made up three different titles that are pretty generic and vague that you can kind of take A which way. You could go in 1 million different directions with these specifically. I'm going to show you what I would do with these and obviously, I want you to see what you can come up with as well. The first title is called Let's eat cake. The character that comes to my mind is a little mouse who maybe sees this cake being made, maybe it's at a birthday party, for a child, or maybe there's a parent making a cake for kids or something like that. Then the problem would either be how the mouse can get to the cake. Maybe they have to come up with clever ways to get to the cake, and there's all these obstacles because they're in a kitchen and there's this tiny little mouse and they can't be seen by these adults, or maybe they get to the cake, and the human characters freak out because there's a mouse on their cake. And then madness ensues. They are trying to catch this mouse, they're chasing this mouse, the mouse just wants to take a piece of cake with them. And then obviously that can be the conflict as well. So Maybe we just I mean, either way is fine. And then you can explore your ideas further if it becomes a manuscript that you want to write. The mouse has to come up with ways to get to the cake. Undetected. And then, thinking about words that use, like, undetected, like, maybe the mouse like goes undercover or maybe you know, there's different things are going to come up and let those ideas start to flow as you start to flesh out ideas. Now, this next title, pitter patter makes me think of two different things. One, it makes me think of rain, like the sound of rain. It also makes me think of a little animals footsteps, like the pitter patter. But since I already did a little animal, we'll go with rain. Our character is actually rain itself. What's cool about picture books is that it does not have to be a human or an animal or even something that's alive. You can do something as Just interesting, I guess, as rain or the sun or air or wind or something like that. I'm envisioning with this maybe something that's nonfiction. This format might be a little bit different as far as there being an issue a problem. I'm thinking about the water cycle and how water goes from rain and then it comes down and it feeds plants and animals and runs through streams and evaporates and that whole process. This is a thing that kids learn in school, so it could work really well for the school and library market. But maybe thinking about how rain affects different plants, animals, people all that along the way through the water cycle. Somehow following the pattern of the water cycle and maybe the cause and effect of the water cycle. Okay. Maybe I could think of ways that there is a bit more of a problem or a conflict or something that really grabs the reader in the way that I tell that story. Now the next title, the brightest Yellow. The character that comes to mind for me is like a canary, a yellow bird. And this canary thinks that they are the brightest yellow, maybe they see a flower bloom and it's a daffodil. I'd have to look up really bright yellow flowers, but it's a bright yellow flower, and they realize maybe they aren't the brightest yellow or maybe there's feelings of jealousy or competition, and maybe there's all these other yellow characters, a yellow butterfly, things like that. This canary has to work through maybe feelings of jealousy. So the canary is jealous of other characters, I guess, characters that are also yellow. These titles are so open ended that you could come up with multiple pitches for each one. You don't have to just stop at the one per title. If you have more ideas, then just keep going with it and keep brainstorming. Then down here, once you're done with the made up titles that I provided is space to make your own titles. What I would recommend is just like going on a long walk and clearing your head and taking maybe a little notebook with you, writing down the things you see, and creating some titles from just things that you see out in nature or in your neighborhood. Then trying to make those titles maybe a little bit open ended or a little bit vague so that you can brainstorm as many characters and problems and story ideas as possible for each of those titles. Go ahead and go do that now. Have fun with it. Not all of these are going to be great. Not all of these are stories that you're going to write, but it should get the ball moving on some interesting ideas. 7. Final Project Part 2: Okay. I've now read the Super cute book beyond the Borough by Jessica Masser, and I'm ready to write the pitch for the real book. The character is the Rabbit, and her name is Rabbit. Rabbit. And interestingly enough, she does. She wants a carrot, and she gets and she goes to grab it and she falls down a hill through a different burrow and into some water, basically, almost like off a cliff. And so she's very, very lost. So we k nailed that part. The setup at the beginning is that these bunnies or these rabbits stick together in their burrow, where it's safe. They don't really have exposure towards other animals. They're pretty suspicious of other animals. So this is a problem. She's beyond the safety of her burrow and instantly, she runs into a anteater. She doesn't know what it is, but it looks scary and different. Rabbit wants a carrot. That's not the big want, but that's what sets off this adventure. Wants a carrot and gets lost when trying to get it. She wants to find her way home. We can go straight to Rabbit wants to her way home. Now, when she is lost, she's also hungry because she lost this carrot. The aunt eater does something nice for her and gives her a piece of fruit or a nut, something like that, and the rabbit tries it and realizes that things that are different actually might still be okay. They might be good. She finally meets this aunt eater, who's very nice at eater, he introduces her to other characters that are friendly, and she gets to know them and she learns a lot from them. In the meantime, she's learning that things that are different or new might be good, and that we don't have to be scared of things just because they're different. That's the theme here, which is really quite lovely. She wants to find her way home. She can't get it because she's fallen down this huge cliff thing. Robert wants to find her way home, but because she's lost and so we're going to add something in here. But in the meantime, she meets new friends, new friends, and tries new things. New things and so they do something to solve their problem. At this point, she realizes that not everything and everyone that's different from her is scary. Now she realizes she can rely on them to help her get home. She ends up to solve her problem. She relies on her new friends. To help her get home. Then once they get back to the burrow, the other bunnies also realize that these other animals are not a threat. By the end of the story, the rabbits are better off than when they started. That's a very satisfying resolution where these bunnies are now in a better place. They didn't know what they needed, but they got what they needed from this adventure. Now, if I was writing this pitch to sell or to pitch to an agent or to an editor. I would try to figure out a way to weave the theme in because the theme of the story is really really nice. But what I want you to notice is that we use this formula and we just made adjustments based on the story arc of this particular story. We can use this as a jumping off point, but if it doesn't quite fit the story or what we're working on, then we can adjust the pitch from there. But it's a good base to go off of, but don't feel like you have to stick with that exact formula. Okay. Go ahead and read your book that you picked now and then write a pitch for it. When you're done with this assignment, go ahead and post it to the Projects and Resources section. It's really fun to see what other people have read for this assignment and what they thought it was about, what it's actually about, how close are we, how far away are we, that kind of thing? If you want to write down here, your takeaway from it, what was the theme of the book? Or what was similar, what was different in your pictures, things like that. That's totally cool too. Go ahead and post your assignment and you're done with this class, and I will see you in Part three when we will go ahead and write our own manuscripts. 8. Final Thoughts: Now that you've finished all the exercises for idea generation, I have some final thoughts for you. Idas are everywhere. The writing part is the execution of those ideas, which we will cover in the next class, part three in the series. I hope that this class showed you useful ways of exercising the muscles that will help you see stories in everyday life and inspire you to pay attention. Maybe even take a notebook with you everywhere you go. Write down anything that pops into your head throughout the day, or conversations that you overhear, or funny things that you see. There's inspiration everywhere. For more fun exercises and ideas straight from published authors, I highly recommend Tara Lazars story storm. I'll leave a link under the about tab below. That's it for this class. I'll see you in part three when we finally write our first draft.