Moira Butterfield's Blog, page 67

An Ode to Libraries - Wendy Meddour

This month we are delighted to have Wendy Meddour as our guest blogger. Wendy spent many years teaching English Literature at Oxford University but took a little break so she could concentrate on writing children's books. Only (thankfully for us readers) that little break turned into a big break and, though she's back teaching at university, she still loves writing for children and really can't stop.


I wrote 'How the Library (Not the Prince) Saved Rapunzel' before they started shutting them all down! I hadn’t planned to write a book ‘with a message’. I was just writing a love letter to the places I loved:


The library was always a magical place for me. And on occasion, it was also my child-minder. I hated going into the city centre when I was little. All those stuffy shops, shopping bags and legs. So when Mum needed to go and wrestle with the crowds, I would ask her to leave me in the children’s section, cross-legged on the floor reading books. (What can I say? Things were different then). It was one of the highlights of my week. Shelves upon shelves of colour and thought – just waiting for me to jump in and get lost.
The library was my ‘Faraway Tree’: I’d climb its branches and know that it would always take me somewhere new. It was my passport and the place of my dreams. And I was allowed to take some of those journeys home. For free! Those childhood years, in which I sat cross-legged on the floor reading books (instead of being bruised by shopping bags) led me to where I am now ...  

I took my paper pockets of thought home and read them in the top of the airing cupboard. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a sociable soul and my outside-of-the-airing-cupboard childhood was a very happy place. But whilst I was curled up on the top shelf behind the towels, reading book upon book upon book, I learnt empathy, humour, compassion & escape! For a child in a fairly cramped space, my world became extraordinarily large. This undoubtedly helped me on my way. I did pretty well at school. I travelled. I married someone from completely somewhere else. I got a doctorate and taught English at Oxford University. I made a living out of reading and writing books! Libraries led to lots of good stuff. In fact, I hold libraries and their contents largely responsible for the shape and colour of my life! And my life to date has been rather colourful. So thank-you libraries - you were my Mrs Doubtfire. My Faraway Tree. My very own Nanny McFee. 
To conclude a post about libraries, it seems appropriate to end with 'Story Time'. So here's a little snippet from the end of my picture book. Beautifully illustrated by the very brilliant Rebecca Ashdown, it says all I want to say:
Now Rapunzel has changed and it makes her wince,to think that she used to just wait for a prince!That she used to just sit.That she didn’t move –with nowhere to go and nothing to prove!
For now she reads three books every nightUnder the beam of her bedside light:She can tell you the distance to the moon,    she can do Scottish dancing & play the bassoon.She can speak in four languages, skip and play chess,she can knit tiny egg cups and cross stitch a dress, She knows the difference between crows and rooks –And all because of ...
  ... LIBRARY BOOKS!
So don’t just wait for a prince to show, He might turn up, but you never know. Just pop to your library and borrow a book –There’s so much to find out if only you look:But don’t just sit and wait and stare . . .
When there’s more to life than growing your hair!

To keep up to date with The Bookseller’s campaign on Twitter, follow: @fight4libraries
To keep up with me (now I'm out of the airing cupboard), click here
To read a great article about libraries by Neil Gaiman, click here 
And to see a jolly photo of Einstein, don't go anywhere! 

Extra Tips On Writing Picture Books, by Paeony Lewis

At the Picture Book Den there’s a titanosaurus-sized mass of tips on how to write children’s picture books. So is there any advice left? Maybe! I’ve decided to pass on four slightly different, personal tips.

Titanosaurus (BBC)
Tip 1
Join an evening class on writing poetry. Yes, you did read that correctly! I spent a year attending poetry classes with a friend and after a few months we discovered that the quality of ALL our writing had improved. Writing poetry (not rhyme) for adults made us think harder about word choices. Revision is constant and clichés are shunned. It’s the attention to EVERY word that has left the strongest impression.
So if you join a course on writing poetry and have a tutor that won’t accept lazy writing, I suspect your picture-book writing will stealthily improve. However, I won't guarantee how long the influence will last - I think I need to return to writing poetry!
Tip 2
Looking at published picture books can be daunting to a new writer. Perhaps you wonder if you’ll ever be able to match the awesomeness of your favourites. If this is a problem and you lack confidence, then type out the text of a picture book (one that is understandable from the text alone). This makes the process of writing a picture book feel more manageable and may help with the analysis of the story.

Tip 3
As many of you know, picture book writers often divide their text into twelve spreads (a spread is a double page). Or sometimes writers follow the example of illustrators and ‘storyboard’ using twelve boxes to represent the twelve spreads. However, I’ve found that taking this a step further with a simple, physical mini book can help new writers think harder about the potential illustrations and story structure. Of course, the final illustrations may be completely different and if you don’t illustrate then they’ll be out of your control, but at this stage you’re just planning and moulding the story.



All you need to do is take a pile of 8 sheets of A4 paper and fold them in half. That’s it! You have a cover and book! Now sketch out your story and don’t worry that the drawings look pathetic – nobody else will see your stick figures. The aim is to help you visualise the story and page turns and see what might appear on every page. There’s no need to write the text – just use thick lines to represent the sentences. Perhaps you’ll discover there is too much text and the illustrations are too samey.

Tip 4
With character-led stories your characters must be REAL to you, because if they’re not then how can you expect your reader to believe in them? The characters aren’t just nebulous talking bears, bunnies, pigeons, dinosaurs or small children. They’re individuals with specific character traits and emotions. It can be tricky with picture books as you have so few words, but take a look at picture books with main characters that have birthed several in a series and study what makes them come alive on the page. What makes that character appealing and ‘strong’ enough for people to want to read more?


Happy writing, everyone, and do whatever works for you!
Paeony Lewis
www.paeonylewis.com

Unhappily Ever After? By Pippa Goodhart

Does horror have a place in picture books?

There’s been a lot of recent discussion as to whether or not there are too many unhappy and hopeless endings in books for teenagers. But what about unhappy endings in picture books?




Jon Klassen’s ‘This Is Not My Hat’ won the Kate Greenaway prize at the same time that Kevin Brooks’ controversial book 'The Bunker Diary' won the Carnegie. Both deal in horror. Both could be said to end unhappily.

‘This Is Not My Hat’ is a very beautiful book. It's a very simple book. It's a very powerful book. It’s truly dramatic and exciting. (Spoiler alert!) We are told the story in a few sentences narrated by a little fish who is boasting that he’s stolen a hat from a big fish, but the big fish is asleep and probably won’t notice. But we can see in the pictures that the big submarine shaped fish isn’t asleep: he’s awake! And he’s angry! And he’s going after the little fish into a mass of green weeds … before coming back out with his hat. And that little fish voice has stopped.




Why is that so powerful? Its power is in what is not said or explained. It is in that space left to be filled with the reader’s own imagination.  What most of us imagine is a horrible massacre of the little fish by the big one. So it is us, rather than Jon Klassen, making the story end with horror. Is finding horror in ourselves more powerful than being given it from the outside?

A lot of the reviews on Amazon say that this is a book for adults and older children rather than children of the usual picture book age. When I think of my daughters at, say, two to five years old, they would have made that grisly imaginative leap and been upset by it. But would they actually, at some level, enjoyed the thrill of that horror, or just been upset? I don’t know.

One Amazon reviewer took from that book a message of: find out the perpetrator, kill him and eat him. But it's more complex than that. The supposition that the fish has been eaten (and it’s only happened in the reviewer’s mind, remember, not explicitly on the page in any way!) raises the big and important question of fairness. Did the little fish deserve to die for stealing something that wasn’t his, and then cockily boasting that he’d got away with it? Small children have strong opinions about fairness. Where does fairness lie in this case? And is capital punishment fair? It’s all so interesting! I think it’s the interesting moral dilemma in this story that stays with us more than the horror, whereas it was definitely the horrors in Struwwlpeter that have haunted me and has stayed with me long after ‘nice’ books have faded from memory.



[image error] There is the view that childhood is a golden time of innocence, where the nasty side of life doesn’t yet have a place. For some children their early years truly are like that, and I think I’d hesitate to upset things for those children with too early a dose of unhappily ever after. There are plenty of picture book stories that deal in horrors (think of The Owl Babies raising the possibility that Mum has been eaten by a fox!) but in which things are brought to clearly happy endings. The difference here is that we are left still mid-horror, albeit in a way that many would take as black humour more than straight horror.



There are ‘unhappy’ books that are aimed squarely at addressing some real life horrors, of course. Rebecca Cobb’s beautiful ‘Missing Mummy’ shares the misery and misunderstanding and anger of a small girl whose mother has died. I wouldn’t offer that to a child who had no notion yet that a mother could die, but it makes a wonderful discussion point for children who have experienced the death of their mother, or for those who know another child going through that real horror. 

Different books are going to suit different children in different situations and at different times, and we adults have a role in guiding the right books to the right children at the right moment. We have the luxury of a huge choice, even within picture books. I think that’s wonderful. But it trips some people up.


Look at the reviews for Jean Willis and Tony Ross’s ‘Tadpole’s Promise’, and you’ll find much greater outrage than for ‘It’s Not My Hat’. I suppose that is because people have picked up what looks like a nice little love story about a tadpole and a caterpillar who promise to love each other for ever and never to change …. And they haven’t thought through the inevitable problems implicit in that set-up! Clearly people have bought the book, and not read it themselves before reading it aloud to a small child audience who are sometimes horrified when the frog eats the butterfly! An outraged adult reader is going to produce an upset child. Maybe some children will be upset even if the reader has warned that this is a story that isn’t going to end happily. But for some the kind of bright child who delights in following an idea through to a logical conclusion, that book is an absolute delight! Besides, the frog isn’t unhappy because it’s oblivious of quiet who it has just eaten. And the butterfly isn’t unhappy because it’s, well, dead. This is a great book to read out loud to students of writing. They tend to gasp and say, ‘but I didn’t think that children’s books could end like that!’


Should they? What do you think?

Let’s play! Some fast and fun writing games to try.

Moira Butterfield
  I’m in the midst of writing something that’s pretty off-the-wall at the moment. I hope it’s funny. It’s meant to be, and to do it I have to get into a different mindset away from my everyday concerns. To get into ‘anything goes’ mode I need to free up my thinking, so I’ve made a list of quick writing games to try at the beginning of writing sessions. I thought you might like a list, too, to have handy whenever you fancy a bit of writing play. I think of it as taking a lovely warm cleansing brain shower! Use the games to kickstart any kind of writing, from picture books upwards. Tailor them to suit.
In general the idea is to chuck away what you’ve written as it’s for pure fun, but if you decide you’ve hit on something, then good luck!
Add your own suggestions and favourites in the comments section and I’ll then create a document of creative writing games that we can all share as a writing resource in the free download section of this blog. When it’s ready we’ll tweet about it on @PictureBookDen.
I’ve found some of the game suggestions online. A couple I’ve experienced in workshops and a couple I’ve made up for myself. I haven’t tried them all yet, so I’ll be working through them and perhaps tweaking them a bit. I’ve not put them in any particular order, but I’ve given them my own names.
As a rule of thumb I reckon that none of these should take longer than it takes to sit and drink a cup of coffee. 
* Story photobomb Grab a magazine or a catalogue that you’ve got lying around. Open it and select a photo (do this really quickly - no going through the pages and making involved decisions). Now write one paragraph of story about it (for any age you like, depending on how you feel). Stop after 5 minutes (you could put your phone alarm on to stop yourself). 
* Snake eats bus Write down the numbers 1 to 12. Now quickly write the name of a character by 1. Then write a plot sentence by each number, taking this character onwards. It doesn’t have to be good because nobody is going to see it. It can be as mad as anything. That’ll be all the more fun for your brain. Here’s one I’ve just started quickly for the blog, as an example.  1.snake 2. eats bus 3. bus keeps driving 4. snake has to go where bus goes.      
You get the idea.  *  Brain takeover Open a book or a magazine. Choose a simple everyday word (point at one randomly with your finger). For just a couple of minutes at most write down lots of other ways of describing that word, and gradually just let yourself go off in any direction. Go as off-the-wall as you want. I’ve just done one quickly, and I began by pointing to ‘no one’. No one, nobody, no person, nix persona, lots of twos, all alone, no humans, hold on, there’s an alien, does that count? so if someone said ‘there was nobody there’ but there was an alien were they lying or not? I went an unusual way and ended up with a fun idea for a sci-fi short story (which I will probably never write but who knows).  *  Head yogaThis exercise comes from a psychologist, to encourage ‘thinking fluency and flexibility’ apparently. Maybe we need to keep exercising our brains this way to keep them flexible, hence my title. 
Begin by choosing a four-letter word. (The example I saw was IDEA). Now write three or four sentences using the four letters as word initials. Eg: I Don’t Enjoy ApricotsIf Dogfish Eat ApplesInterview Didn’t End AngrilyIndia Elephants Dawn Attack  
Then swap for another four letter word. It doesn’t matter one bit if your sentences are nonsense. It’s the word association that’s the brain-stretching part. *  Eureka writing Varying the words in a given phrase can bring about exciting problem-solving  breakthroughs and once led to a man inventing an entirely new type of food (a microwaveable egg cube). Or so I read in Thinkertoys. A handbook of creative-thinking technique, by Michael Michalko.His book is about solving problems using creative thinking, but I’ve adapted the idea to make it purely for fun. 

Write a simple sentence or find one from a picture book. Spend a little time substituting new words for the key words in the sentence. Do it fast. Here’s one I just tried: a teddy loses a hata dog finds a hat a hat finds a doga girl finds a dog
a girl finds a hat
with a teddy in it  I think I’d be happy to do this all day! It’s oddly soothing and it could go anywhere. The sentences could get longer or you could start a new sentence. It's your game! * DescribotronQuickly choose a noun, any noun. Spend five moments writing one word to describe it, thus: Door - big door, blue door, rotten door, ancient door, metal door, cold metal door Don’t give up if it gets hard, Just allow yourself to go a bit crazy:jelly door, talking door, lizard door (No idea where that lizard door came from!). * I’m little and I like…Make quick lists of three things you loved as a child: Food SmellsPlacesToys Pieces of clothing Activities Mmm, I’m thinking of the smell of clean sheets that billowed all day on the line…
*  AlphabonkersWrite the letters of the alphabet down. Then write a word by each letter that’s as silly and as personal as you like (it’s for you, nobody else). I’ve got one on my wall that says g for gaullimaufry!  It was created by Peter Chasseaud at his Tom Paine Printing Press in Lewes, Sussex, and I've got it on my wall, handprinted on lovely handmade paper. Here it is for some inspiration.

That’s it from me. Over to you. Have big fun and it'd be great if you added your own favourite writing game below.
Moira Butterfield  www.moirabutterfield.comNew picture book series: My Feelings. Published by Wayland.  
 

Can ET riding on a car inspire me to get on with my writing? Writing when you don't feel like it by Juliet Clare Bell

ET's head, riding on a car. And why not?

Writing is personal, whatever it's about. And that's a good thing -it's what gives the story or article or piece, voice.

There are times, though, when it's easier to get on with less personal work, like sorting out school visits, doing professional critiques, preparing SCBWI stuff for an upcoming conference...

Sometimes, it's easier not to pick up a pen and actually write, and now seems to be one of those times. But that's not always very convenient. So, what do you do when you're feeling more inclined to make your google calendar look really colourful and pretty?


Look at all those colours (but not at the chocolate wrapper)

or when those windows suddenly look in urgent need of a clean, even though you've been completely oblivious to the mini hand smears until now...?

How can I possibly write when my window looks like that?


I thought I'd better take a leaf out of my teaching book. I'm always telling students, adults and children alike, that ideas are all around you and that you just have to be receptive to them. I was reminded of this from a friend's recent blog post, written by her primary-aged children, last week. It was a list of all the things they'd seen on a walk

It's great. (I particularly like the two pigeons out on a romantic walk, and a mushroom looking like a curly wurly swirly poo, and falling leaves that we reached up to catch.)

I decided to try that, but the children were at school and I walked in a slightly different direction from my friends and felt less inspired...

and then I decided to clear out the loft.

Now that was more like it. I found loads of old photos (including ET, above), letters, postcards and best of all, old school books from when I was five and six.


My six-year-old reading my five- and six-year-old school books

But would it spark any ideas for stories?


Well, maybe not that story exactly, but it's reminded me of the incident and some things around it that might be worth playing around with (and it was certainly very funny).



"Someone else came and he is going tonight we think". Did he go? Is he still there? That got me thinking (though perhaps not for a picture book).


I'm not sure I'd get away with this kind of cheat any more...
("I wish that the queen was not dead. So she was not dead.") Would be nice...

and the goal might need to be a little harder for the protagonist to achieve than this

But there's something good about rediscovering an old preoccupation with magic pigs


and the dated work has an added excitement to it
I wrote this exactly 38 years and three days ago as I write...


It's been a good way of reconnecting with things a little, even if some of those things are pretty poignant
Letters and stories from my mum, who died last year

My mum as a young child (with a distinctly sinister-looking doll), out in India


And in the meantime, I'm trying to be more present, aware of what I'm doing -and open to how I could incorporate it into a story (ok, that kind of goes against the being present bit). At lunch, I started making a lentil soup and got half way through making it before discovering that I didn't have any lentils. After I'd added enough water for an ingredient that was now missing. What could I do to my watery soup? Well, I looked around and turned it into anything goes soup


which kind of got me thinking along the right lines for picture books (and tasted ok, in spite of the slightly unusual ingredients).

And it may not be relevant but I really enjoyed this recent picture by one of my children

and this spider who was stretched out along a light-coloured wall, possibly to make the most of the sun? There were three of them together and I'd never seen spiders do that before...


Unfortunately, what I REALLY need to be doing right now is editing various manuscripts. And all the fun idea-generating distractions in the world won't help me with that. So I need to get down to it and focus. And actually, that pretty google calendar is helping me prioritise, but maybe I should just change that green to purple...

What do you do to get yourself going again when you're feeling less than inspired to write or edit?

Juliet Clare Bell (always called Clare) is a children's author who's excited about PiBoIdMo, the upcoming SCBWI British Isles Annual Conference in Winchester (in which she's appearing as a panelist representing creative non-fiction picture books, and is overseeing the crazy but fun and useful Friday Night Critique) and the tasty preparation for her first creative nonfiction picture book (out in 2015) on the remarkable Cadbury Brothers. www.julietclarebell.com

Don't Get Caught in The Vanity Trap - Lynne Garner

A few months ago an ex-student contacted me to say she'd been offered a contract for the picture book she'd written. Needless to say I was pleased for her. However later that day this little voice started to tell me I should check into the publisher she'd mentioned. I did and was glad I took the five minutes to check. The publisher was a vanity publisher. If you've not heard the term before then:       "Vanity publisher is a term, nearly always derogatory, describing a publishing house that publishes books at the author's expense.....Because vanity presses are not selective, publication by a vanity press is typically not seen as conferring the same recognition or prestige as commercial publication…………While a commercial publisher's intended market is the general public, a vanity publisher's intended market is the author.”
From: http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Vanity_press
Vanity publishers have become very clever in the way they work and twice I've unknowingly submitted to one. However from the first reply I started to hear that little voice because their letter just didn't feel right: 
“Thank you for sending to us samples of the work you have written. This is currently now being scrutinized by more than one member of the editorial section and a subsequent joint evaluation carried out. We may then ask you to submit the full collection to us.”
But it does sound exciting, doesn't it? So I submitted my story. Just over a month later I received a second letter:
“I am pleased to inform you that after careful consideration our editorial section would now like to view the full manuscript of your work.”
Now they really have me excited. So off goes the manuscript and six weeks later:
“... I am pleased to say that I find your work to have considerable merit and would appeal to the reading public…”
Oh I have a deal…but…
“I have commended your work to the Publishing Board who are reluctant to take on the whole costs… and invite you to make a contribution toward the initial production costs. Please consider this offer carefully… the contribution, which would be a finite figure…”
Alarm bells are ringing, However out of interest I contact them and ask how much. Their reply £3,000! As you may have guessed I didn't bother taking them up on their kind offer.   
Just a month or so later I contacted another publisher who a few letters into our correspondence asked for a small amount towards costs. I knew they were a vanity publisher by this time but I wanted to take it a little further, so I asked what costs my money would help cover and requested to see a detailed marketing plan. Their response:
“I note that you would like some further information regarding your proposed book publication. You did not however, ask us any specific questions concerning ‘detailed financials related to proposed title.’ I have assumed, therefore, that you wish to know how much the contribution towards production costs for your book would be. This information is contained within the enclosed contract… A detailed marketing plan will be sent to you as soon as the contract is in place.”
So basically they wanted me to sign on the dotted line before knowing what I was getting for my money. Out of interest I read the contract. It contained all the bits on copyright, promotion, royalties etc. I then read the clause on advances. Now remember publishers pay an advance to an author, not the other way around.  
“It is agreed the author shall, in consideration of the undertakings, services and expenditures made on the part of the publisher, in accordance with the terms of this agreement contained herein, pay the publisher… The sum of £2,900…”
Again you'll not be surprised I didn't sign the contract. 
So my advice is if a publisher asks you for money know they aim to make money out of you and not the sale of your books. If you're ever in any doubt then visit the website predators and editors or if you'd like to discover more about vanity publishing and look at a list of known offenders click here. 
Regards
Lynne 
P.S. I have three courses starting this coming Saturday (4th November 2014):How To Write A Children's Picture Book And Get Published5 Picture Books in Five Weeks (Advanced Course)How To Write A Hobby How-To Book

New Life for Old Picture Books - Diana Kimpton

This month we're delighted to have Diana Kimpton as our guest blogger. She addresses the old question of what to do with a picture book once it goes out of print. So please read on and enjoy.


Having your picture book published is an exciting process. There’s the thrill of seeing your characters come to life in the illustrations, the excitement of seeing the story transformed into a book and the satisfaction of seeing your book for sale in the shops.
However, except for favourites like The Gruffalo, there’s another less pleasant step that’s not talked about so much. It’s when your publisher decides that the book isn’t selling enough to justify a reprint. Sometimes they wait until the print run is sold out, sometimes they sell off the last copies cheaply to get them out of the warehouse. Either way the result is the same: that book you worked so hard on is no longer available. It’s out of print.
At this point, you can get the rights to your book back. But what happens next? The answer is easy for authors of novels: they can bring new life to their out-of-print books by self-publishing them as ebooks. However, that route is much more difficult for picture book authors because picture books need pictures and, unless we illustrate our own work, we only have the text.
That leaves us with several options.Leave the story in the drawer and do nothing. (What a waste!)Draw some illustrations ourselves. (Definitely not viable for me. I don’t draw as well as my brilliant illustrators.)Work with the original illustrator or a new one to produce a fully illustrated picture book.
Option 3 sounds the most feasible but it raises other problems. How are we going to share the costs and the profits with the illustrator? Are we organised enough to pay royalties and will our heirs be able to cope with doing that for 70 years after our deaths? Life would be easier if there was a print-on-demand publisher who was willing to pay the author and illustrator separately, but I haven’t found one yet. (Please let me know if you have.)
As the proud owner of a drawer full of out-of-print stories and stories that have never been published, I decided earlier this year that I didn’t want them to languish there any longer. As I wasn’t in a position to self-publish illustrated versions, I started wondering who would want a picture book text with no pictures.
After a bit of thought, I realised that would-be illustrators need stories to practice on so I decided to give them a helping hand. The result is Stories for Illustration – a collection of five picture book stories that come complete with wide-ranging permission to use them in colleges, schools and at home. There are some illustration tips too, but absolutely no pictures.

The book is not flying off the shelves. It’s such a tiny market that sales are very low. But the book cost very little to produce so I don’t mind. I’m just glad that the stories are out of the drawer and available to read again. 
Diana Kimpton

What's it all about, Alfie? by Malachy Doyle

I was sent a list of questions the other day. They came from a publicist who wanted information in advance of my next picture book.  Most of them were easy enough:
Did you ever imagine you’d reach a hundred books? (it’s going to be my 100th book - whoopydoo!)

What inspired you to write it?What sort of relationship did you have with your grandparents?  (it’s about grandparents, sort of)`How many bobble hats do you have? (read the book and you’ll understand)

But one question stopped me in my tracks:What keeps you motivated in what is predominantly a solitary occupation?
Hmmm.  Interesting.  Here’s what I wrote back (with additional thoughts, for your eyes only, added here, in italics):
I love being a writer.  It’s far-and-away my favourite occupation. (beats packing Polo Mints on the night shift, anyway.  And ‘working’ in the British Rail laundry, reading Emile Zola behind an enormous pile of sheets.  Oh, and ‘teaching’ a bunch of unruly sixteen year old girls in inner-city Leeds, in the year they’d just raised the school leaving age. They did NOT want to be there!)
I love living in a world of imagination.
I love having total freedom as to when and what to write.

 Writing’s hard, but I love the buzz you get when you know you’ve cracked it. (even if, the next day, you realise you maybe haven’t)
I love that young children are so open to joy, to excitement, to wonder.  I love living in the mind of the four, five, six-year-old Malachy, of seeing the world through his eyes and trying to capture some of that joy, wonder, excitement (and silliness) on the page.
  I love making books, and working with illustrators and good editors. (not that there are any bad editors, of course, but we all have our moments!)
I love the first time I get my hands on the finished product.  (like last week – Pete and the Five-a-Side Vampires, illustrated by my very own daughter, Hannah. Whoopy-doopy-doo!) 

 I love reading my books to children (especially little Daniel, above), and watching them read the books  themselves.
Books have brought so much joy to my life – it’s a privilege and a continuing wonder to be a part of bringing some of that joy to the next generation.

So that’s what it's all about, to me.  That's what keeps me motivated.  Anything you’d add, anyone?

My latest picture book is called Peek-a-Book, illustrated by Rowan Martin (Parragon, August)My storybook, Pete and the Five-a-side Vampires, illustrated by my daughter, Hannah Doyle - it's her very first book - is published by Firefly Press (September)And my next picture book, Tadcu's Bobble Hat, my 100th book, illustrated by Dorry Spikes, is published by Gomer Press in October. 

Keeping your eye on the ball, by Jane Clarke

Last month I started golfing. I'm a complete beginner, so I've been looking for tips, and many are applicable to writing picture books. So here's the strap line and three top tips (in green text) courtesy of
http://golftips.golfsmith.com/golf-sw...
Anyone can start the game at any age… all you need to get started is some good advice.  Yup. I started picture book writing at the age of 40 and I'm starting golf at 59.  If you're getting started in the picture book game, join a group like The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators to get that good advice.  For golf, I'm currently being coached by my partner. Hmmm. We'll see how that works out…
Nice and EasyYou will find that it goes much better when you take it nice and easy...

That is much, much harder than it sounds. A good picture book text has to read nice and easy, too, so don't force the text, let it come naturally. With golf, I'm still at the stage where I tense up and get sweaty.
Square to the TargetAs long as you are pointing your shoulders and feet squarely at the target, you should be able to get where you want it to go.



Right. I attempt to start off square to the target, but things tend to slip and I miss. Picture book texts can get lost, stuck in a bunker, or ricochet out of bounds, too. 
Keep Your Eye on the Ball
You will find that if you practice this enough, your hand-eye coordination will improve dramatically and you will consistently make solid contact.




Well, here's hoping! But yes, in golf and picture book writing, persistence, practice  and application is all.   In his book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field.  That was certainly true of me and writing.
 So far, I've notched up about 50 hours of golf so I've got a way to go. But I'm having fun so I'll stick with it.
And that applies to picture book writing, too.
Jane Clarke Jane's at proof stage with 4 toddler board books, illustrated by Georgie Birkett, to be published next year by Random House, and having lots of fun writing a series for another publisher who won't allow her to tell anyone about it yet.

How to Write a Breakout Premise

First, think about all the books that you really, really love. WHY do you really, really love them?
If you really, really love a book, you want everyone to read it. You tell everyone about it, right? WHY?
One of my current favourite picture books is:

Every time I read it, I laugh and laugh! The bears are replaced by dinosaurs who make delicious chocolate pudding instead of porridge; there are three HUGE chairs, and the dinosaurs are out to trick Goldilocks into becoming a delicious chocolate-filled-little-girl-bonbon for supper.
Just look at the endsheets! 
from Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs by Mo Willems
One can imagine Mo sitting at his desk thinking about the story premise, ticking off the options until he settled on just the right mix of elements. 
An SCBWI interview asked him: "Were there hundreds and hundreds of these that you came up with and by a process of winnowing you picked the craziest 122? How do you judge what's funnier than what? Are you putting yourself in readers' shoes or are you choosing what YOU think is funniest and confident we'll agree?"

"I write as much as I can, then take the unfunny stuff out," replied Willems.

It's the process of working out a breakout premise.
Because really, really amazing books 
1. Hold you captive in a world – you wish you could spend time hanging out with those characters, living in their world. It is just so convincing, compelling, filled with unforgettable details, yet uncluttered in the simplicity of its language. And if it's funny or sad or joyous to boot, you've got a real winner!

2. Have characters you wish you could invite home for a cup of tea. They are funny and interesting and you have a strong affinity with them; or perhaps they are the kind of person you wish you could be. 

Here's another character that I really, really like: 
from Doctor Hoof by Diana Kimpton and Garry Parsons
Doctor Hoof (illustrated by Garry Parsons) really wants to help others, but he's new in town. He has to revise his expectations about what sorts of animals he can help, but when he does try, it makes him feel great inside. Plus he makes lots of new friends with animals he would perhaps not have met otherwise. 

I once asked the author, Diana Kimpton, where she got the idea:



<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Arial; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:10887 -2147483648 8 0 511 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Palatino; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} span.il {mso-style-name:il; mso-style-unhide:no;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-fareast-language:JA;} @page WordSection1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --"</style><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"With <span class="il">Doctor</span><span class="il">Hoof</span>, it was the name that came first. My grandson couldn’t pronounce <span class="il">Doctor</span> Who properly and used to ask if we could watch <span class="il">Doctor</span> <span class="il">Hoof</span>. When I told my agent, she suggested that would be a good name for a picture book character and a horse with a stethoscope and a stetson immediately sprung to mind. All I had to do then was think of a story!!! </span></i><br /><br /><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I decided early on that it would be good if he had just moved somewhere new, but the story didn't come together until inspiration struck in the middle of the night and I woke my husband to declare "He lives in a one horse town." After that, everything slipped into place quite easily."</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I love the final spread in the book - the world of this party has such a joyous, friendship-filled feel to it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-untFxGqKUGA..." height="220" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from <i>Doctor Hoof</i> by Diana Kimpton and Garry Parsons</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>But breakout worlds and characters aren't enough. A third element is essential:</b></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>3. </b><span style="background-color: yellow;">The <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">plot</b> is fizzy, bubbly and compelling</span>! The storyteller explores a topic that resonates with the reader, that is thought-provoking or dramatic –<b> in an original way.</b></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b> </b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Importantly, something <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">big</i> is at stake!  </b></span></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">You really care about what the author is saying and what is going to happen to those characters and their world. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The story is the storyteller’s vehicle for making the reader understand something meaningful. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">The dinosaurs stand to lose their </span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">delicious chocolate-filled-little-girl-bonbon for supper (well, they do because not all stories end happily ever-after!) . . . </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-buT371j7q_w..." height="261" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr></tr></tbody></table><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container"><tbody><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from <i>Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs</i> by Mo Willems</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">and Doctor Hoof nearly ends up friendless and unappreciated for his talent of helping others . . .</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fnRFFBz1JNA..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fnRFFBz1JNA..." height="320" width="280" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from <i>Doctor Hoof</i> by Diana Kimpton and Garry Parsons</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">When you read a book you really, really love, you are never thinking,<b> "So what?” </b>and, <b>“Why should I care?”</b> You don’t look up until you reach the end of the book. When you get there, you think, “<b>Wow!”</b> The words and the pictures are seamless.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></span></span> </span></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FhCygKlUsTI..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FhCygKlUsTI..." height="81" width="400" /></a></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">You don't want to just write any book that readers will skim and soon forget. You want to write and publish those books that readers will really, really love. HOW?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">To write a breakout book, we must like the characters and we must know them intimately. We must know what motivates them. Importantly, the character must care about what is going to happen in the story otherwise <i>we won’t care</i>! </span></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A breakout picture book must therefore have:</span></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3m5St7v2Heg..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3m5St7v2Heg..." height="133" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Sometimes, the first premise we think of is the strongest. But sometimes, it needs ‘baking’. Then what do you do?</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">You can build it up by:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4Jju2KlX-18..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4Jju2KlX-18..." height="83" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Observe. Look at the competition (then forget about it). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Write from the heart, from your gut.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And then ask ‘so what?’ again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino;">Natascha Biebow</span></b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Palatino;">Author, Editor and Mentor</span><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JUjF0_ceKFA..." style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JUjF0_ceKFA..." height="132" width="200" /></a><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.blueelephantstoryshaping.c... Elephant Storyshaping</a> is an editing, coaching and mentoring service aimed at empowering writers and illustrators to fine-tune their work pre-submission.  Check out my NEW <a href="http://www.blueelephantstoryshaping.c... group coaching courses</a>!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Natascha is also the author of <i>Elephants Never Forget</i> and <i>Is This My Nose?,</i> editor of numerous award-winning children’s books, and Regional Advisor (Chair) of SCBWI British Isles.  </span><span style="color: blue;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.blueelephantstoryshaping.c... class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span>