Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi. I'm DK Ryland, Children's book author
and Illustrator. And this is P three in
a four part series, all about writing
picture books with the goal of being
traditionally published. Make sure you have taken P
one and two of the series. This class will make
a lot more sense once you have because we are going to build
on the exercises we did in those classes. In this class, we are finally writing and then revising
a picture book manuscript. The information
in this class was created with traditional
publishing in mind, and in traditional publishing, once the publisher
buys your manuscript, they choose the illustrator and hire them onto the project. You do not need to
hire an illustrator. Now, the only exception to
this is if you are also a professional
illustrator and are choosing to create the
illustrations yourself. In that case, you would submit a sketch dummy with a few
spreads of color art, but we will only be focusing on the manuscript text
for this class.
2. Tools and Project: It dist dist distant. For this class, you will need some form of a pencil and paper. Whether that's
literally a pencil and paper or whether that's a word or Google Doc on your computer is
completely up to you. You will also need
the three worksheets, which you can find in the
Project and Resources tab, you'll also need your writing
picture books binder. Once you've written and revised your picture book manuscript, you will complete
the project for this class by giving
us the title, the opening scene, and the
pitch for your manuscript. The whole idea is to make
us want to read more. Once you post your project to the Project and
resources section, make sure to leave feedback
for other projects as well. Reading other people's work is a great way to continue
to study the craft.
3. Outlining Your Manuscript: I this dt dt. If you remember from
our first class, we talked a little bit
about picture book basics. This should be a bit of a
recap and be familiar to you. A picture book is
32 or 40 pages. Those are not full
pages of text. The word count is much shorter, much more in the range
of 200 to 600 words. Every picture book
has a beginning, a middle, and an ending,
and that's our story arc. And that's where this first
exercise is going to focus. We're going to create
our basic story arc by outlining our story. Go ahead, if you haven't already and print
out worksheet one, outlining our picture book in the project and
resources tab below, and let's get started. I'm going to show you my process here for writing a
fictional story. But keep in mind
that you can apply this same process
to different types of picture book structures, non fiction, or concept
books, et cetera. You can use any of our
previous exercises to pick a project to work on. Look through those
and see if there's a manuscript idea calling to you that you'd like
to take a step farther and turn into
a full manuscript. You should have worksheet one, picture book outline
printed out. Once you have that, I
want you to look back in your binder at exercises
we did from Class two, the Exercise one
mining for ideas, exercise two, charted out, and exercise three titles. Now, see if any of those
ideas that you worked on brought about an idea for a manuscript that you want
to work on for this class. Is there anything in there
that's really exciting to you? The one that stood out to me, From the exercises we
did was let's eat cake, where I have a mouse
character, and it says, my problem is that the
mouse has to come up with ways to get to the
cake undetected. So that sounds fun
for me to write, and so I'm going to use
that as an example for writing picture books for
this session of the class. So pick out a idea that
you want to work on. Hopefully one of those exercises inspired you to work
on one of them. And then you're going to grab your picture book
outline worksheet. We'll start with the title. When you're working
on a manuscript, the title can always
be a working title. You can always go back
later and change a title. I don't know that
this is going to be the best title for this book, but I'm going to
brainstorm later on things on better titles
that I could come up with. Title, let's eat cake. Then now we're just
going to fill out the general idea
for what we want to happen in the beginning,
middle, and the end. In the beginning of this story, what I'm envisioning
is this little mouse who from their little
hole in the wall, sees a beautiful birthday cake being put up on the counter, maybe by the mom or dad
and a human family. Maybe it's someone's birthday,
little kid's birthday, something like that, and the little cake or the
little mouse wants the cake. I'm also envisioning
a bigger mouse, who's the friend, and that bigger mouse is
the voice of reason. No, that's not a good idea. It's daytime. There's people
out, that type of thing. At the beginning,
it's just mouse, sees cake, wants it. But realizes it might
be hard to get to. The main thing that
you're looking for with the beginning is in
this little summary, do I have my main character
and do I have the problem? I do. My main
character is mouse. Maybe I can come up
with a better name, but we have the main character and the problem that it's
hard to get to the cake. In the middle of this story, I'm just going to if I have any scenes in mind for
obstacles they might face, maybe I would write those,
or maybe I would just do a really general
summary here. But basically, mouse,
tries to get to cake. They fail multiple times. Then I was thinking,
I don't know what those failures are going
to look like quite yet. But I was thinking that
the climatic moment would be basically that they finally
get up on the counter, they get super close
to getting the cake. But then mom or dad comes and grab puts all
the candles on the cake, grabs the cake away, and the mice are just so close and it gets
taken away from them right before
they can get to it. So I'm going to
put climax close. But let's say mom takes away. Right before. They get it. This is just that dark night of the soul moment we
did all this work. We tried so hard and
we were so close. We couldn't get any closer, but then the cake
got taken away. Then the end and that sets up the ending
that I was thinking of. I think that what I'm
envisioning is that the two are watching as this kid gets
get sung to happy birthday, and there's a celebration
and they're watching, and they're really
really sad because they are not part
of the celebration. They didn't get the cake. But when everybody's
done with all of their cake plates and they
put them up on the counter, there's still these big
chunks of cake left to us, they'd be crumbs,
but to a mouse, it's actually a lot of cake. The final scene would be that the mice actually
at the end of things get like a mouse size slice
of cake by having the crumbs. So I'm watching celebration. Decoration. Finally, crumbs and satisfying. They're satisfied because it's a decent amount of cake or
a lot of cake for a mouse. They're very hay have
this vision of them looking just pleasantly plump
at the end and satisfied. What they want is
to get the cake. We have that. They work
hard to get to it? We don't think
they're going to get it at the very end, they do. So the story arc
and the problem, at the end, they do finally
get what they want. Now, the one thing
that I'm missing in this outline is
the character arc. That's something I
need to think about. What is it that Mouse needs? Along the way as I'm writing, this is something to keep
in the back of my mind. Is it is this a story about
resilience and perseverance? Is it a story about friendship. Is it a story about learning how to listen and take direction? Sometimes that doesn't
really reveal itself until you've really gotten into the
story and started writing. But it's just something
to think about that I have a general
idea of story arc, and I need to make sure that my character arc is equally as strong once I have this story written and I start
looking at revisions. Go ahead and fill out this
picture book outline. And then meet me back here and we will we'll start writing.
4. Writing Your 1st Draft : Okay. So before we start
writing our story, I have a Google Doc open
here. You can use Word. You could write it out on paper, but honestly, editing is a
lot easier on the computer. So I'm going to show you how
to format a picture book. First, I'm going to title this. Let's eat cake. Also, it's a good idea to
put the date in because m eight, 814, 24. Because if you are making
new versions and new edits, you want to know
what date it's from. If you start doing version one, version two, version three, sometimes it's going
to get confusing down the road as you don't remember
what version you're on, but the date is obviously
always going to progress. Start there, and then you're
going to put in a header. In the header, you want
to put your first name, your e mail address, and your website,
if you have one. Now, some people
put in more things, maybe their home address,
things like that, but I don't really see
the point in that, I leave it at that
for my header. Then the title is
going to go here. We're going to put that in bold. And then below that, I
put in the word count. I'm just going to leave it
blank for now because I have no idea how many words
this is going to be. Then honestly, I just hit a couple enters there,
create some space. From here, I want to make sure that I have double spacing. I'm going to look at my
outline here to get started. What I know is that Mouse
sees a cake wants it, but realizes it might
be hard to get to, and then there's a secondary
character as well. One of the ways I can open
this up is with dialogue. Let's say, I say, eat cake. Said little mouse. Then I'm going to hit Enter
after each dialogue input. What you'll see with
picture book manuscripts is there is a ton
of white space. It makes a lot more
inviting to read. You don't want these
big blocks of text. You don't want thick paragraphs. You want one line per line
and lots of white space. How about? That's
not a good idea. Said Big mouse. But you love cake.
We're learning a little bit about each
of these characters. Then Big Mouse is
going to respond. Yes. But it's daytime. And the humans are
out. Said Big mouse. But Mouse didn't hear him. He was on his way. Or maybe he was already plotting how to get to
the cake or whatever. He was already making
plans, something like that. The most important thing
here when you start writing your manuscript is to just go with it. You
don't need to edit. You don't need to worry about
if the words are correct. Just get the story down first, and then you can go back
and look at editing. Because if you want to fix everything and make it
perfect from the beginning, it's going to get
really overwhelming. Get all the ideas out, get the major scenes out
that are in your brain and get the general outline
into a manuscript form, and you can always
go back and edit. You're actually
going to definitely go back and edit plenty. There's plenty of
time to do that. Now, another thing I
want to point out is that I have dialogue here, and it says, Let's eat
k Said Little Mouse. There's a speech tag there
with Said Little Mouse. You can also write that
if you want it maybe in speech bubbles or you don't
want those speech tags. You can format it like this.
I'll show you down here. Little mouse. This is like screenwriting
and how they do dialogue. Little mouse, let's
eat eat cake, and then sorry Big mouse. Then whatever, that's
not a good idea. You can do your dialogue
like this as well. If you envision speech bubbles
or something like that, then you would write
it here or if you just don't like how many
speech tags there are, it's a mouthful, then you can play around
with that as well. So this right here is my
beginning. This is it. That's all I really want to do is establish my main character, which I do, and little
Mouse talks first, and there's a good
reason for that. Little Mouse is my main
character in my mind. So I want to make sure they're the first character
that's introduced. And what you'll
see that dialogue does here is it does give us
a little bit of personality. That little mouse is
a little persistent. Big mouse might be
a little bit of a scarty cat or scarty mouse. And so sometimes the dialogue is a really good way to
show character here. Then also we understand the
problem that they want cake, but it's daytime and
the humans are out, so there might be some conflict here between little
mouse and big mouse. Also I might change their names because that is a bit
of a mouthful to say. But for now, my
beginning is done here. Then now I'm going to go
into the middle of my story, which is going to be
where Mouse tries to get the cake and
fails multiple times. This is going to be
the meat of my story. It's probably going
to be the part that takes me the
longest to write. I'm going to go
ahead and do that. I'm going to start
writing this story, and then I am going to come
back once it's written, and we're going to
talk about revisions. Go ahead and get your first
version down on paper, get it all out of your brain. Don't worry about editing, don't be too critical, get it all out. I'll
meet you back here.
5. Big Picture Edits Part 1: All right. I have
my manuscript for Let's Cake here, and
it's printed out. It's two pages, and
it is 350 words. So we're falling in that
200 to 600 word count area. Now, I printed it
out so I could show you how to how to look at
a manuscript for revision, and you should print out if you haven't already
the big picture questions for revision that can be found in the downloads
and resources section, and we're just
going to go through and ask these questions
of our manuscript. Now, we want to start with our big picture questions first, so make sure that's
where you're starting when you're looking
at your first draft of your manuscript. Now, your first
draft isn't going to be super strong and that's okay. You should have things in here that can be
improved? For sure. To start out with, we're
going to ask ourselves, do I have a strong
main character? I'm going to show you how I would do this with
my manuscript, but obviously you're going to
do it with your manuscript. I'm going to write on
this paper as well, so I can go back and find ways to make my manuscript better. Do I have a strong
main character? And so sub questions to that are what makes
them interesting? Are they quirky, charming, flawed, et cetera? Are
they kid relatable? My main character is a
mouse, little mouse, and Little mouse is I think an interesting
character for a children's book because
Little Mouse is an animal. Most kids do like animals, and the animal likes cake, and most kids like cake. That is a relatable
thing for a kid. Animal, ache. They're also little, which I think a kid can
relate to as well, being little and having to overcome big obstacles,
things like that. I also think little
mouse has some flaws in that they're not
really listening to big mouse when they
say there's danger, and so that makes them a
little bit more interesting, that they are either
very persistent or maybe a ignorant to the
danger that's ahead. So I guess the more
positive thing would be to say
they're persistent. Yeah, I do think it's a
strong main character. I think that all checks
out. Next, we'll look at, do I have a strong story arc? And that's do I have a
beginning, a middle and ending? If you use the
outlining worksheet, you should have a beginning,
middle and ending. Now, are they all going
to be super strong? Maybe, maybe not, but
that should all be there. Then looking at the beginning, do I introduce the
main character and the story problem within
the first three spreads? Yes, we definitely do
that in this manuscript. We have little mouse
saying, Let's eat cake. You love cake and
big mouse saying, I do love cake, but
that's not a good idea. But little Mouse
didn't hear him. He was already on his way. We know that main
characters, little mouse, our side characters, big mouse, and the problem is
that they want cake. It's not a good idea. Little Mouse is going
to do it anyway. We are right into the
story right away. There's no backstory about Big Mouse and little
Mouse lived in a hole in the wall in the kitchen at this house where these
people lived and all that. We just jump right
into the action. Okay? The middle, does the character face obstacles that
they have to overcome. What I did was write a couple of different
obstacles in here. There's a cat that chases them, and then once they get
through that obstacle, they end up on the counter
where there's party supplies, and they find the
plastic solo cups and they use those to disguise themselves and
walk across the counter. But because they can't
see with the solo cups, they fall into the sink. So that's another obstacle and they have to figure out
how to get out of the sink, and then the final
obstacle being that the mom takes away
the birthday cake, and they watch as the other kids at the party sing
happy birthday to the, I guess, little boy, maybe. Yes, we do. We have obstacles
that they have to overcome. Do those obstacles escalate and culminate into a
big climatic moment? I think that's
where my manuscript could use some work that
yes, they escalate. Yes, there's that
big climatic moment. I think I could have one
more obstacle in there. I'm going to put a note to that. One more and maybe more connected to each other
that because this failed, then they end up here
and then they try this. I'm just going to say one
more and more connected. I think there needs to be a little bit more
tension and raising of stakes and a little
more investment from the reader than
what I currently have. At 350 words, I have room
to add some more here. Could I put the
character through more and increase the
stakes in tension? Yeah, that's what I was
saying before is that, yes, that's I think where
mine could use some work. Then the ending. Does
the manuscript end in a satisfying way and elicit
an emotional response? The ending is really
important because it's the last feeling that your
reader is going to have? You could have all these amazing scenes in
your manuscript, but if it's not ending on
a satisfying resolution, that's what your reader
is walking away with. This is really important. Is it surprising or unexpected? Does the end relate back to the beginning? This
is a good question. Does the end relate
back to the beginning? If it's not super satisfying, that's a question
to ask yourself. How can I relate it
back to the beginning? Because if it does take
you back to the beginning, that automatically creates this aha moment for the reader, and that's very satisfying. For me, my ending, I think could use a
little bit of work too, and I think I need to look at I like I like that they finally get the resolution
to getting the cake. I like that they get the cake. I'll go positive
equals get the cake. But the negative, I think, is that there's not a really strong theme
yet in my story. I need that theme, maybe what Little Mouse
learns or what it gets out of it, his character c. I need that to be
stronger in order for my ending to be stronger. I think I need to go back
and take a look at that.
6. Big Picture Part 2: And then do I have a
strong character arc? What is my main character's
internal journey? And what is it that
they need out of this? And my story arc and what
they want is the cake, and they end up getting the cake through these obstacles
that they go through. But their internal journey, what they actually need. That's a little
unclear right now. And this needs work. This is where the This is where a manuscript becomes emotionally satisfying
for a reader. This is a thing I need to take a look at. What do they learn? Is this the most
satisfying outcome? This is the question that
I need to ask myself. What do I want them to learn? Some ideas I could have is
friendship, maybe teamwork. Maybe it's more listening. Maybe it's persistence, Yeah, I need to look at
what's going to be the most satisfying result as they go through their journey
for their character arc. Then if I go to
what is my theme? Is this theme
directly related to the main characters
emotional journey? That's what we were
talking about before is that the theme connect
to the character. And is the theme impactful
without being didactic? We don't want the theme
to basically be like, because, little mouse,
listened to big mouse, he got the cake that he wanted
or something like that. That's really not very
interesting to read. Kids are smarter than that. We want the theme to be there, but we want the reader to
be able to find it and make that decision or that
connection themselves. This needs work as well for me. Does my pacing match the
feeling of my story? Are there scenes I need to cut where the story feels slow? That's probably not mine. Are the scenes all
necessary to the plot? I think so. My scenes
are pretty good. We're moving pretty quickly. I think I need to add scenes. Are there scenes I need to add because the story is
too fast or too slight? I, I think there needs to be
more tension, higher stakes? So that the ending
becomes more satisfying? The more tension you
have in your manuscript, when the solution comes, that becomes more
and more satisfying? Higher stakes. I'll go
back and look at that. Does each scene make
the reader want to turn the page to find
what happens next? Yeah, I think so. Yes. I think there are
really fun scenes and visuals and things like that that make the reader
want to turn the page. Okay. There we go. Now, the next question
that we're asking is, do I have marketing hooks? What would make a
parent, a teacher or a librarian want
to buy the book? Because at the end of the day, these books need to sell, right? The only way for a parent, a teacher or a librarian
to buy a book is if if there's a reason to
read it to their child. And that could be as
easy and clear as, it's funny, and a parent just wants to see
their kid laugh, or with a teacher, maybe it has a science or math angle or something like that
where they can use it in their classroom
with a curriculum. Same thing with a librarian. So when a publisher
looks at a manuscript, they're thinking about
the marketing hooks. How can we make sure that we're selling as many
copies as possible? That's another thing that
I need to look at as well. I think a stronger theme will make the
marketing hook better, stronger, I think
it should be funny. There are funny moments, but I could probably
amp up the humor quite a bit more
for another hook. Is there room to add more hooks without taking away
from the story? Sometimes you might think, Okay, let's add some science. Let's add a holiday or different hooks
that you can think of. But maybe by adding those hooks, it really detracts from
how good the story is. You also don't want that. You don't need 50
hooks in there, and then the story is
just a muddled mess. A couple of hooks
are going to do it. Okay. And then, would this story give an illustrator
enough to work with? Does the manuscript have
a variety of settings or lend itself to a
variety of compositions? So my setting is only
in the kitchen here, and that's not a
ton of settings. But because I'm
working with mice, a kitchen is a very big
setting for a mouse. Because the scenes
are always changing and there's a lot of
action going on here, there are enough
settings for this story. Also, the illustrator
can do a bunch of different angles
like a little mouse looking up onto a countertop. It looks like it's
really far away, so there's a lot to
play with there. Does the story lend itself
to action movement? Yes, because there's them
falling in the sink, climbing out of the sink, a cat chasing them, lots of action,
lots of movement, which gives it a lot of
illustration potential. The last thing we
have here are are there areas in your
manuscript that are overly descriptive that you can leave to the illustrator? And L et's see here. Okay. For instance, let's
take this line right here. This is getting a little
bit into line level edits, but it's a good
thing to look at. The walls were so slick and tall that they
couldn't see a way out, and this is when they're
stuck in the kitchen sink. And so I don't
necessarily need to describe that the walls
are tall and slick. This is something that
the illustrator can do. I could do something like they scrambled and they slipped and they couldn't see a way out. That's a little bit more
showing instead of telling and then the
illustrator has room to draw that it's slick and tall. They slipped and they scrambled. I'll just do that. They slipped. And they scrambled. But they couldn't see a way out. Go ahead and look at this big picture
questions for revision. Go through it, be really honest with yourself about what's really strong about
your first draft right now and what could work. Then write all up on here, and then go back
and see if you can strengthen those areas
that could work.
7. Line Level Edits : All right. So at this point, you've gone through
your big picture questions for revision. You've made those changes. I'm still using my
first draft here, just for the sake of
showing you how to use this next sheet line
level questions for revision. But you should feel
really good about the big picture
edits at this point. And it's probably going to
take you more than one pass. You probably will
have to edit to get a really strong story
and to be able to say, yes, all of those
things are working. You'll probably have to do quite a few passes and quite a few manuscripts
to get it there. But once you feel really
good about your manuscript, then we're going to go
into line level questions for revision in
line level edits. The first thing we're
going to ask ourself is, do I have a strong title? Basically, will this title stand out on a bookstore shelf? What makes it interesting? Is there a literation in it? Is it posing a question? Is it mysterious,
that kind of thing? We are going to look at M title. It's not terrible.
Let's eat cake. It's short, it's
snappy. That's fine. But maybe we could do something a little more interesting
like the cake Crusaders. Or Little Mouse's mission. You can really play with this. See if you can come
up with ten titles, as many as you can and see
what you can come up with. But I clearly like iteration. There's some common
knowledge that says three words is the best because it's snappy and
quick, easy to remember. Both of my books that are out right now have very long titles. I guess I didn't follow
that common idea. But Little Mouse's mission, that one has some mystery to it, which is fun as well. Just keep playing
around with that, see if you can come up
with a stronger title. Then next we have, have I made strung word choices? Are my verbs active,
precise, and interesting? The example here is walked, ver stumbled, ver sauntered. One of the things that we used here was they slipped
and they scrambled. Slipped and scrambled are way more interesting than
they tried to get out. So think about any of
your verbs, go through, underline all your verbs, and think about how
you can make them more precise and
more interesting. Next, have I used Omnipa, iteration, metaphors, refrains, and other
devices where appropriate. Omonopa is where
you're using words that that make the sound of
the word that you're using. For instance, if they're
being chased by something, or if they they fell right
into the kitchen sink. Maybe instead of just
telling you they fell, maybe I say crash. Because they crashed
into the kitchen sink. Or right here, I have
the word cl, clink. Action is happening and I'm describing that
with on a monopa. Iteration we talked
about in the title. You can use that
throughout as well. Basically all these literary
devices are going to make the manuscript
more fun to read. Metaphors is where you're
comparing two unlike things. It's also going to make your story more poetic
and interesting to read. It's going to give
the illustrator better visuals to
work with as well. Refrains are used a lot of
times in picture books. This is somewhat
of a refrain here, but Little Mouse
didn't hear him. He was already on his way. I have that and then
I have it again. But Little Mouse
didn't hear him. He was already on his way. After each scene, you can find a connective thread where
you can use a refrain. It makes the readability of the book more
interesting and fun, and also it gives the
kids something to repeat. It's like they're reading and following along with the story. Then sometimes you
can also change the refrain at the very end to show that there's
this big shift, usually the climatic moment,
something like that. I only have this twice. This is something for me to look at to see if I can add it again, or if I can make it more snappy or play with that
refrain a little bit. The next question is, Do my word choices, match
the mood of the story. In my story, everything's
really zippy and things are crashing and banging because
we're in a kitchen, and then we're also have quick little steps
because we have the pitter powder of a mouse. An example of where that looks
pretty good is here where I say little mouse hipped and hoped all the way
to the top of the counter. These are nice words that
match the tone of the story. On this back side, On the back side here, it says, little mouse and big mouse made their way across the
vast countertop. Made their way boring. Maybe they pit or pattered. Little mottle mouse and mouse, pit or pattered across
the vast countertop. Way more fun, way
more fun to say, and it matches the tone of
the story at the same time. Go through your manuscript
and look for words like that and see if you can just make this story more fun to read
with your word choices. Okay. The next question
is, H I replaced? He saw, he seemed, he realized he was,
he felt, et cetera. You're looking for places where
you have words like that. Here, they were back
in the safety of their mouse hole.
They were back. I could change I could do
something more you. We're safe. Maybe add some dialogue
or that was a close one or something like that where instead of describing
what's happening, and I would show what
happens with their dialogue. I don't want to tell
you what happens. I want to show you
what's happening. That's way more
interesting to read. Now the next question, are there places where I can show
instead of telling, there is let's see,
this one right here. They were so close, they could smell the
chocolate frosting. I'm just telling you
what's happening here. But if I wanted to show you, I could go like Amon
ape here, sniff. And then maybe at
M says, Chocolate. That's one way more
interesting to read, but I'm also showing
what's happening and instead of just saying they were so close,
they could smell it. Showing you them smelling it. I'm showing you that
just by smelling it, they know that it's chocolate. Now let's look at
work. How's my work? Does it fall within
the 200 to 600 words. Yeah, we're fine. That's good. I still have some
room to play with it. I think I could make this
a little bit longer. I think it needs to be
a little bit longer. Then can I cut words or
scenes that are unnecessary? I'll show you what
I mean by this. Usually the answer is, yes, you can cut words. Let's see. Big Mouse still didn't
think this was a good idea, but he really did love kick. He followed little Mouse up
to the top of the counter. But what he saw when he got there made him wish he hadn't. And the art note says there's
a cat behind little mouse. There's nice tension
there, right? But I could very easily change this scene to
be a lot snappier. Instead of, but what he saw when he got there made
him wish he hadn't. I could just say, but he instantly wish he hadn't. And then the illustrations
are going to show why. That's one, two,
three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine, ten, 11, 12, 13 words cut down or
distilled down to six. Make sure you're going
through and looking for places where things are
a little bit too wordy, or maybe we're describing
things a little bit too, and those are things we're going to see in
the illustrations.
8. Line Level Part 2: Next, will this book fit
into 32 or 40 pages? Paged it to see and find out. I have a couple examples
here to show you. But to start with,
you're not going to start on page one
because page one is going to be either
a half title page or a copyright page or
something like that. Usually, you're
going to start on page three, sometimes four, sometimes sometimes
four and five, sometimes five and
six, just depends. Let me show you what
I mean by that. I'll show you giraffe is
too tall for this book? And this is a book that I wrote. This book is 40 pages long, but it's self ended, which means this is these pages, these en pages are
part of the book, they're part of
the illustrations, and this is glued down. On the other side of this
page is actually page one. If I were to pagenate this, page one would be
glued down and I wouldn't even include
it in my pagination. Page two and three
would be my end papers. To write that, I would literally
put in parentheses here, pages 2, three, papers. That's what the
manuscript looks like for this book for raps
212 for this book. Then 45 here is the dedication, the copyright, and
the title page. 45 is all of that. Then six, seven, here is where
the book actually starts. The copyright would be 45, and then finally 67 would
be where the book starts. Now, that is a self ended
picture book and it's 40 pages. Then my other book, have you seen my acorn, is separate ended, which means these end papers are not
part of the final artwork. They're separate pages than the artwork and they feel
a little bit different. Page one here is a
half title page. I would write one half
title page just like that. Then the next page is my copyright and dedication.
Then in this book. That's pages 2 and 3, and then spreads
four and five are actually another
full title page. This book doesn't actually
start until pages 6 and 7. It can be done a lot
of different ways, just for the sake of ease when you're pagenating
your manuscript, because you're not sure exactly how it's going to get laid out, and that's not entirely
your job to do, but it's good to just know
if your pacing is working. What I'd like to do is do
number one or page one, and we're just going
to pretend we're working with separate
ended pages. One is a half title page. Two is your copyright
and dedication, and three is your half page where your story
is going to start. If you envision your story
starting on a full spread, then you would just
start that on four, five instead and have
this be two, three. But if you want your story
to start on a half page, you would start
it on page three. This is a good standard
thing to way to do this, one is half title page, two is your copyright
and dedication. T is the start of your story. For three, I don't have
any words on this page. I just have a woman puts a cake on the counter
in the kitchen. That is my art note, and that's what we're starting
with for this manuscript. Then four, five is Little Mouse, Let's see cake, you love cake, I do love cake. That's
not a good idea. Little Mouse didn't hear him,
he was already on his way. I see that as a full spread. Then I have little mouse
crawling up an electrical cord, that's hanging down
from the counter. This is where I want spread 67. Then I would just
go through, like, this feels like a
new spread as well. It's not how many words. I think this is
its own spread and then He followed mouse up. Maybe that's its own spread. Then when he's there, he sees the cat. He instantly wish he hadn't, that's a new spread here, and then you're just
going through and seeing. Now, if you end up right here and you're
already 32 pages, obviously, your pacing isn't quite right and you
can play with it. You want to end up. If you have one is
a half title page, then you will end on your
final page should be a half Page as well? 32 should
be just one page. Go through and paginate. Now, a lot of times when
you turn in a manuscript, you don't turn it in paginated. This is just for you to see
if your pacing is good, if this feels like
it's going to fit in a 32 page book or a 40 page
book and just give you a better idea where
maybe you have some pacing issues or whether
it looks really good. The next thing we're
going to look at is if your dialogue rings true. Do the characters sound
different from each other? I do think I could
go in and maybe change Big mouse to
be just a little bit more of a scary mouse, and emphasize that quite a bit. Do the character's voices
match their personalities, and you want your characters
to have big personalities, a really good way you can do
that is through dialogue. Little Mouse is just
brave and goes for it, and making sure the dialogue matches that and
then with Big mouse, making sure that he
is a little more timid and scared and you can show that maybe he
has a little bit of a stutter or something like that to show
that he's scared. And go through and
see if you can really amp up their
personalities. Then does the characters
dialogue reveal more about them? I think from the beginning, we see little mouses dialogue. Let's eat cake. You love cake. Let's go for this and
you want to go for this too type thing and
bringing along Big mouse. The dialogue isn't just there
to move the story forward, but the dialogue is also
there to reveal character. Places where you can pull double duty on that
are even better. Then are all of my
art notes necessary? If I got rid of this art note, would the reader
still understand what's happening in the story? Art notes, they can be formatted
different ways as well. Sometimes people do them in
different colors or whatever. But how I do art notes, you'll see the first one here. Under. But Little Mouse
didn't hear him. He was already on his way. I have in parentheses. I have Little Mouse
is crawling up an electrical cord that is
hanging down from the counter. That's what I have in my mind. Do I have to have this art note or the illustrator to
know what's going on? I don't think I do. They can make that decision
for themselves. I could get rid of that. Then let's see this one. Over here, I have
another art note. And it comes after, but he
instantly wished he hadn't. There's a cat behind
little mouse. Does the illustrator need
to know that in order to illustrate this book
properly, they do. If it said, but he
instantly wished he hadn't and Big Mouse says, run. The illustrator probably has no idea that there's a cat in this story because
it doesn't say cat, Run. Now if it did say that, cat, Run, then maybe I wouldn't
need that art Noe. Go through and see what
you need, what you don't. Sometimes you have to have an art note to move
the story forward. But if it's just detail about the story like what
someone's wearing or what the setting looks like or things like that, it's not necessary. The way I format these,
everything's double spaced. There's there's lots
of white space. It helps for editing, it also helps for readability. But on the art notes, I like to single space right under the dialogue that I'm
envisioning that art being, and I put them in parentheses
and I italicize them. And so that just shows
whoever's reading, an editor, an agent, my critique group, that
this is an art note that it's not actually a
text in the story. Okay then that is the end of
the line level revisions. Go through, do your
line level revisions, polish up that manuscript and then meet me back here
for our final project.
9. Final Project : Now that you've
written and revised your manuscript for this class, we are going to do the project. So open up the word document that you can find in the
Projects and Resources tab. You don't have to print
it out. We can do this directly on
the computer here. And the first thing
you're going to do is give us the title
of your manuscript. And the title that I
ended up going with was Little Mouse's Mighty mission. And the reason I
landed on this is because there's an
iterative quality, and there's also a
mysterious quality to it. It poses a question. What is Little Mouse's mission? I envision the artwork on the Title page
having something to do with Little Mouse trying to get to this big,
beautiful birthday cake. Go ahead and write in your title and think about
what makes it stand out? Is it a literative? Does it
pose a question or a problem? Does it combine unlike things to make it just mysterious
and interesting? Doesn't have to have
all these traits, but it should have something
that makes it interesting. Then under opening scene, you are going to put
your opening scene I had mine copied and
pasted from my manuscript, and mine is where Little
Mouse says, Let's see cake. You love cake. Big Mouse says, I do love cake, but
that's not a good idea. But Little Mouse
didn't hear him. He was already on his way. Your opening scene, you should make sure
that you introduce your main character
or main characters and also the story problem. And so that is the goal here, that your opening
scene is as snappy as possible while introducing main character and
the story problem. Then you are going
to write your pitch. Down here, we have the formula
that we've used in class two on how to write
a pitch and it says, main character wants
to do something, we would put in little mouse
wants to eat the cake. Wants to eat cake.
But because it's on the counter and There is a cat and people who might catch him. This story to take
takes place in a place. This story takes
place in a kitchen. Where the main character
learns something, where little mouse mouse
learns, let's say, persistence. This would be I can adjust this pitch to make
it a little bit more snappy or interesting and
play around with that. But that's the main formula, and that's what
we're working with. Go ahead and fill
out this word doc and upload it to the
Projects and Resources tab. Then go ahead and look at other
people's projects as well and see if you can leave
some feedback on maybe, that title really makes me
want to read this book, or the opening scene gets
right into the action, or just make sure
you give somebody some feedback and some
encouragement along the way. And we're done with this class, I'll see in part four.
DK Ryland, Illustrator, Surface Designer
