Tips for Picture Book Writers: Researching an Idea

Since I'm participating in PiBoIdMo (30 picture book ideas in 30 days, started by Tara Lazar), I thought I'd pass along this tip.

When I want to find out what other books have been published that relate to one of my ideas, I check out the Children's Picture Book Database at Miami University. This free resource allows you to search by keyword to find books written on your topic. It's also a great resource for teachers looking for picture books to address a particular lesson topic.

Do you know of any good resources for finding out about picture books?

November is Writing Month

I'm not usually too fond of November. It's cold, dreary and follows fun-filled October (otherwise known as the Month of Treats in our household because of all the desserts, with Thanksgiving, 2 birthdays and Halloween). But this year I'm excited about November, because of my writing goals. I'm sure I'm being overly optimistic about what I can accomplish, given all the craziness in my life right now, but I've decided to work on two different writing goals:

1) I'm doing a mini NaNoWriMo, where I focus on writing a new story and try to get as much writing as I can done each day, with no pressure to complete a novel. I'm not going to sign up for anything but I will keep track of my progress so I can see how much I'm getting done.


2) Since I get lots of story ideas while I'm teaching, I'm going to also try PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month). The goal is to think up a new picture book idea every day. For me, that mostly means being more vigilant about writing down the ideas I already get, so I decided to sign up for it.

I love the idea of having a notebook that contains nothing but ideas. My usual writing notebook is filled with so much more, sometimes ideas for new projects get lost in there.

How am I doing? So far, so good. I've started writing my novel, even though there's something important I haven't worked out yet, and it scares me a little that I don't know where it's going. And I already have 2 picture book ideas in my notebook.

What are your writing goals for November? Have you made a start on them?

Time for Brainstorming Anyone?

Major brainstorming sessions are part of my writing process, but they don't occur too often. At the beginning, I spend a lot of time thinking about different directions the story could go, until the outline takes shape. I also have a major think when I get stuck and the writing stops flowing. I spend hours considering possibilities for what might happen next.

In Plot and Structure, James Scott Bell suggests writers have a regular time that's just for generating ideas. Interesting.

I can see how it might help me to move beyond the obvious and find the unique. What's hard would be to make myself take the time, when I already feel that I don't have enough time for writing. But for the next few weeks I'm going to try it: just take 15 minutes once a week and brainstorm about my next novel. I'll get back to you about whether it's useful or not.

How often do you just brainstorm ideas?

Plotting (Part 1): The Early Stages

A while ago, one of my blog followers, Susanna Leonard Hill, asked about how I plot my novels. That’s an interesting question, because I feel like I still have a lot to learn about plotting. It’s definitely not my strength. Sometimes, I think my writing is so much better than any of my plots (except maybe for my most recent story). But I’ll share some of my thoughts on what I've learned so far.

In the early stages, once my mind has been consumed by an exciting idea, there I are few things I do to work on developing a plot:

List possible situations or events. Basically, I just brainstorm different things that could happen in the story and record them in random order. 

Write a one-sentence summary.  I find this really helps to focus my thinking on what the main problem will be in the story. I don't always stick to this summary, and often find I need to re-write after the first draft, but at least it gives me a starting point. As well as some confidence, if I think it sounds good.

Describe the characters. I don't usually do a lot of in depth thinking about my characters. I like to find out more about them as they react to things that happen in the story. But I do like to have an idea of what their role will be in the story, their strengths and weaknesses, and their relationships to other people in the story. I also really need to know their names. For some reason, that tells me something about their personalities.

Focus on the main character. I spend more time thinking about the main character than any of the others. After reading about plot from The Plot Whisperer and Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, I see how essential it is to make the main character's goal something really important to them. This needs to come through in the writing early in the story. So, I spend a lot of time thinking about what my main character wants and how to bring that out in the story.

Talk to my kids about my ideas. Since I'm always trying to write stories that my kids will want to read, I find it helpful to get their take on my great idea. Hopefully they don't say, "That's lame." If they do, they often make suggestions that turn out to be helpful in shaping the direction of the story.

What things do you do in the process of developing a plot?

In the Deep, Dark Corners of Your Mind

I've been busy with writing an alternate ending for my yet-to-be-titled Novel #4, so I haven't even been thinking about my writing goals for this year yet. Or so I thought. One of them was to revise Novel #3. [In case you were wondering, it actually has a title: Wild Genius.] Even though I got some positive feedback from an awesome critique buddy and some regulars at Critique Circle, I struggled with it and put it aside. For months.

A few days ago when I was waiting to fall asleep, the story for Novel #3 drifted into my mind. Except it wasn't the story I wrote. It was better! After a few minutes of mad scribbling, I now have a new structure for the book, a better ending, a feeling for the tone of the story, and who my main characters are and want.

The brain is a mystery. It would be cool to know what makes it work like this, so I could make it happen more than every once in a year or so.  Have you ever found that something lurking in the deep, dark, corners of your mind turned into a brilliant idea? Did it work out?

Dreaming Up an Idea

This morning, one of my daughters told me about a detailed dream she had in the night. I immediately thought, Wow! What a great concept for a MG novel!  I wrote it on a scrap of paper (the back of a phone message) to be glued into my notebook later.

Do you ever dream anything useful for your writing? I know that Stephanie Meyer said the idea for Twilight came to her in a dream. Unfortunately, my own dreams are rarely that useful. The closest I get is having ideas while I'm lying in the dark, waiting to fall asleep. I root around, trying to find my notebook and pencil without turning on a light and waking up my husband. I'll scribble a few words, in the dark, on what I think is a blank page. In the morning, I may or may not be able to read it.

P.S. Have you heard about Angela Ackerman's awesome contest over at The Bookshelf Muse? Check it out!

Was It All a Dream?

Why do I always get good ideas when I'm too busy to write them down?

Yesterday, I wrote a whole outline for a non-fiction article in my mind while I was on the way to the farmer's market. Of course, I didn't have any paper with me. When I got home, I tried to jot down the details but only managed to capture about 40% of it.

Acually, that happens a lot. The idea is perfect in my mind, I can envision the entire story. But when I try to write it in words, it ends up being a poor shadow of what I conceptualized. It takes weeks or months to get it to the place where it was when it sprang into my mind, if I can even do it. Does this happen to you? Why is it that "mind writing" can be so much better than the real thing?

Keep 'Em Coming - The Ideas, That Is

People often ask, where do you get your ideas? I usually answer that they come from everyday life—things the kids do or talk about, things I notice, tidbits that make me stop and think when I’m reading the newspaper. But in reality, they're always around me, popping out of thin air when I'm doing anything. A few places where I’ve gotten ideas this week:

1. Watching my daughter's swimming lessons at the community pool

2. Out looking for snails (for my classroom) in the garden

3. In the middle of the night during a thunderstorm, when I'm trying to stop the dog from digging a hole in the hardwood floor under my bed

4. While I’m rushing around trying to do 101 things and I can’t find a scrap of paper or a pencil that isn’t broken

5. Writing in my book journal in the perspective of the character in my novel

Where's the weirdest place you've gotten a writing-related idea?

Writing is Not Always Writing

People who are not writers often think that writing means you have to be sitting at your desk, scratching out brilliant lines of prose. Not so. I was thinking today about all the valuable writing-related things that help in creating my novels:

1)  Staring off into space, wondering about what comes next. This can lead to making notes of possibilities, journalling about my story, or even working on an outline.

2)  Trying out activities that my characters do to make sure they actually work. (Okay, not all of them, but some. If my character is only a few cm tall, could she hold a raspberry? Or, could a character build walls using popsicle stick squares covered with paper? My kids love helping with these investigations!) Maybe this is why my latest WIP involves cooking.

3)  Checking out baby name books and sites to find the right names for my characters.

4)  Reading lots of fiction to find examples of how other authors use POV, structure their plots, develop their characters etc.

What non-writing activities help you with your writing?

Don't forget to enter my contest for a chance to win a free book!

I Started Writing a New Novel!

I started writing a new book today (or maybe two)! Before writing, I spent a couple of weeks trying to sketch out the plot. I find it really hard to revise a story later if I haven’t thought enough about the plot before I start, because sometimes it seems that when I change anything, the whole story unravels. So, I decided to do more thinking before I leapt into writing. What I did:

1. Brainstormed.

2. Shaped the ideas into a long summary of the story and gave it to two very critical kids in my target age group to pick apart. Revised based on their feedback.

3. Wrote some brief descriptions of main characters and the setting.

4. Used the “nine box” technique to help organize some main plot points (for more info see Suzette Saxton's Feb post at QueryTracker).

5. Wrote a one-sentence summary. (Thanks, Christy, for your suggestion over on MiG Writers).

I have two great ideas for separate novels that have kept popping into my mind from time to time, and I didn’t know which to choose first. So I followed this process for both of them. Still don’t know which one to choose -- I’m working on both. I expect soon one will take over. Today I started writing Novel A.

I don't usually write novels this fast, back-to-back, but I figure I'll be on a break from teaching in the summer, so I can do revisions then.

Living in the Moment

12. Carpe Diem by Autumn Cornwell

On the advice of friends in my writing group, I recently read Carpe Diem by Autumn Cornwell. Quite entertaining, especially the humor and unexpected plot twists.

It reminded me that to be creative, sometimes you need to explore wild ideas and see where they lead. This week, Ive been doing a little of that in my own writing, and it's led me to a much better ending for my work-in-progress. The challenge is to present the wild idea in a way that makes it seem perfectly logical within the story.

My Brain Has Been Taken Over by Aliens

I haven’t been sleeping well lately, and that doesn’t usually work to my advantage when it comes to my writing. For me, a tired brain usually leads to a day that’s devoid of writing ideas. Or words that come out stilted and are extraneous to the story, like a long, unproductive detour. But strangely, yesterday I got an idea for a picture book. And not just an idea – I had whole phrases, vivid visual images, and a full-blown character. It spilled out as I was driving (fortunately my daughter didn’t mind being a note-taker) and later, refused to let me sleep again.

It’s almost scary the way the writing part of the brain takes over your mind when you least expect it.