Writers are the most information and inspiration hungry
crowd of people, always looking for ways to improve their craft, see things in
a new light, learn new techniques for plotting, building characters, beginning
a story, ending a story. That thirst for knowledge endears them, but may drain
the checkbook from time to time.
So why would a novelist waste those very hard earned dollars
on a picture book writing workshop?
They probably wouldn’t. There are plenty of other workshops
out there for novelists to take. Yet, a trip to the “Bunny Eat Bunny” world of
picture book writing could shake up things a bit, and give a writer a new
perspective.
Picture books are very short, as short at 500 words. I can
barely write a 500 word blog post. Writing an entire story, with a beginning,
middle and an end in so few words is breaking down a story to its very core.
The choice of words is crucial. With so few words, each word
is debated as to whether it is the best one. If you want an exercise in
building your vocabulary, this could be it. You can spend days trying to find
the right word for “jump.”
The writer must keep the reader engaged in a picture book.
Every page needs a picture, and it needs to be different than the other
pictures in the book. Picture books are often 32 pages, which means the story
needs a lot of action or twists and turns to fill out every page in an
interesting way, while still needing to flow from one to the next with little
explanation (remember there are few words allowed).
There is often a rhythm to a picture book. I took a rhyming
picture book workshop at the Iowa Summer Writer Festival a few years ago. It
was very eye opening. I didn’t realize the brilliance of Dr. Seuss and Karma
Wilson until I started counting syllables in their sentences and which ones
were stressed. Rhyming isn’t only about matching the sound at the end of the
sentence and having the same number of beats per line. There is a meter
involved, with the rise and fall of language being measured and repeated. That
is hard!
The most important thing I got out of those picture book
writing workshops was the sense that novel writing was so much easier. My
picture book writing friends would disagree, thinking a novel is much too long
and complicated to keep organized. But it gives some space to tell the story,
which is not allowed in a picture book.
It also gave me a very big appreciation for picture books. People
often think they are easy to write, because they are simple, engaging stories
that read very well. It takes hard work to get them there. I know that now.
