I suppose every picture book author has a different place of beginning a picture book project. And that place may change with the book.
When I wrote both “The Little Spider” and “Waiting for Fairies”, I wrote the story years before doing the illustrations. Although I had ideas about the illustrations, I wanted to find someone more expert than I to do them.
Writing the Story
I seem to like writing out the story first. This isn’t the actual text for the book, it is more like a storyboard to help me picture what the book will be like.
This method seems to be popular, at least with those advising people how to do this. It is possible to do this mentally, but writing it out is the best as changing order, adding and subtracting elements is much easier. Remembering all of it is easier too.
Decision Time
Picture books range from those with only pictures to stories with illustrations of some of the story. I prefer to work primarily with illustrations and keep the text at a minimum.
The storyboard approach also allows planning of how the illustrations will tell the story.
Many picture books have full page illustrations. Others have several sequential ones on a page, almost like a graphic novel. Still others have smaller illustrations with text sharing the page.
Beginning a Picture Book
In three previous picture books each page had an illustration. The fourth one had mostly smaller illustrations with accompanying text. What about the next one?
My first Opal and Agate book tells about when they were born and how they grew up. Agate was a bottle baby who spent time in the house. Opal was raised by her mother.
Why start here? Because bottle baby kids have different challenges than the others. There is no one to protect them, show them what to do, keep them company.
What about the illustrations? They will be a mix of single pages and sequential ones. My storyboard is taking shape.
