Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are is a great picture book to read for inspiration. It’s got a simple but enticing story, and gorgeous visuals to back it up.
Picture books are most often written for ages ranging from 1-8 years. Keep that in mind while you formulate your story. Children aren’t likely to appreciate highfalutin references to Marcel Proust so much as pure, straightforward storytelling. [3] X Research source Recognize the limitations of a picture book. Your story is going to have to be very simple to fit into a picture book, which may prove a challenge if you’re used to longer forms of writing. If you’re struggling with finding the perfect idea, go for a walk or read some existing picture books. Failing that, talking to a child can sometimes result in surprisingly handy creative input.
It’s much easier to write a picture book if you clearly know what each page is supposed to be about from the get-go.
While you’re concocting characters, you should also be thinking of the way they’ll look in your illustrations. Visually drab characters with a rich psychological profile probably aren’t suited for a picture book. Animals are very popular to use in children’s picture books. Animals have a universal appeal, and anthropomorphizing them to fill human role makes them less offensive to some readers. Speaking generally, animals are also more interesting to draw.
Keep your word count around the 500 word mark. Anything more will be difficult to fit into the book and will distract from the illustrations. It’s best to be tactical and efficient with your word choice.
Use simple, effective language that benefits the illustrations you’ll be including. Simple rhymes are helpful, but don’t build your writing around them specifically. A mediocre rhyme is worse than no rhyme at all. Alliteration is an easy trick, and makes the writing sound more melodious.
Doing a double-page illustration (where one panel of the story encompasses two pages to make a larger image) is an ambitious move if this is your first time making a picture book, but it’s perfect for climactic parts of the story that somehow warrant more than a single frame.
Try to keep a consistent tone and style throughout the book. A picture book that goes all over the place will stand a much weaker chance of making an impression than one that drives the same point consistently.
Visual design is incredibly important for characters in picture books. If you have trouble visualizing what your story’s characters look like, try meditating and letting the story play out in your head. Failing that, studying the character design in other books may give you the inspiration you need. [12] X Research source
If you take a liking to this type of crafts work, you could do your entire illustrations this way. Smaller details with tape or construction paper will take a much greater degree of skill to pull off however.
Practice is super important before you start drawing the book itself. If the images get progressively better as the book goes on, it’ll show the reader that the book was more of a learning process than a finished product. Whatever you do, keep your illustrations consistent in tone and relative quality. Be sure to be as colourful as you can, unless the content of the picture book somehow suggests against it. Picture books need to be eye-catching above all else, and monochromatic sketches are going to leave less of an impression than full-bodied, coloured-in images.
Professional picture books have a front cover and title page separately. For the sake of an at-home book, these two should be merged into one. Adding your author’s credits near the book title is always recommended, even for at-home creations.
If you’re making the book with the specific intent of getting it physically distributed by a publisher, you need not worry about your own package. Just make sure the pages are as well maintained as possible, and digitally scanned if necessary.
Finishing your book off digitally offers some benefits. For the title and text, you’ll be able to type it out over the scanned image if you haven’t done it by hand already. Provided you have a basic understand of graphic design programs, you can also edit the size and dimensions of your pictures.
