I’ll let you in on a secret—I’m not really an author. Actually, I’m a poet who has managed to trick a bunch of people (including some very nice editors and a terrific agent) into believing I’m an author. I’m sneaky like that.
For me, the work of writing prose is hard. All those words! My novels tend to shrink a lot, before they grow. I revise and edit myself so heavily that the pages melt away. My background in poetry, and my love of precise language, doesn’t lend itself well to the mad dash—the word-sprint—you have to do when you draft a novel.
But picture books? Ahhhhhh, picture books! Picture books are so much like poems. With their economy of language and their image-heavy text, picture books do much the same work poetry does. I actually enjoy the feeling of trying and failing and shelving an idea, because with picture books, you can just start over again with something else. I love seeing art come in from my illustrator, finding out what my words looked like inside an artist’s head. But best of all, I love the beginning of a picture book, the burst of a new project.
I have a huge junk file on my laptop called JUNK, and it is absolutely filled with documents that are “new beginnings.” Empty documents with only a title or a single line in them.
See, as a poet, I don’t really come up with “ideas for picture books” so much as I dream up little spurts of language, lines of text from which a picture book can grow. For me, the beginning is more about the way a few words sound together than it is about an “idea.”
Let me explain. I’ll use as my example my first book. INSIDE THE SLIDY DINER grew out of my career as a waitress, so if I had begun with an idea, I’d have written down, “make a picture book about a diner.” Instead I wrote down, “Inside the Slidy Diner, the Greasy Spoon of stuck.” I didn’t even know it was a picture book when I began it. At first I thought of it as the first line of a prose poem. I had no idea that I’d invent a character named Edie, or that the diner would be a kind of pseudo-magical place, or that there would be a funny cast of characters. I only had the internal rhyme of “sliiiiiiidy diiiiiiner” and the alliteration of “ssssssspoon of sssssstuck.” But the story sprang from that language.
Likewise, the JUNK file I mentioned earlier is full of lines that I’m not sure about yet. In each case, I don’t know what my idea is exactly, or what the story is about. I only know that I liked the way a few words sounded in my head. Maybe you can help me puzzle them out. Here are a few:
1. Doctor Delete
2. The spoon of wishful thinking
3. What the wind wants
4. The Boring Book
5. My Iffiest Scritch
6. Dirty Curls
7. Boy Who Caught His Death
See what I mean? These are not ideas. They could still head off in a million different directions. They’re just words, that sound nice, in the right order.
So now, as an exercise, for other folks who are equally language driven, I might suggest that instead of trying to think up a picture book idea every day, you can also try to revisit the way you describe things each day. You could spend the entire month describing the same thing differently, day after day.
Because each description might, in the end, give way to a different book! Language drives tone and voice, and those things can drive your idea and your story instead of things happening the other way around. For me, it’s much easier to make up a story to match a voice than it is to find a voice for a story.
Make sense?
Try it right now! It’ll only take a second. Go look at something—a squirrel, maybe, or the ground at your feet, or your closet door, and instead of trying to think of the idea it might lead to, try to think of different sets of words for what you see.
That squirrel? How might you describe him? Don’t try to be smart, just think of different ways to talk about him. Using as many different words as you can. It’s okay if they’re lame. Maybe that squirrel is:
1. A fidgety bit
2. A tree rat
3. Too loud
4. Fluffytail, the adorable poufypie
5. The fattest squirrel in the tree
6. The squirrel who lost his tail
7. A nut-thief
8. A nuisance
9. The one who wouldn’t leave
10. Harold
See what I mean? By the time you revisit your titles, Fidgity Bit might be a funny board book about a kid who can’t sit still, and Tree Rat might be about a rat who moves from New York to the country and wants to fit in with the squirrels, and Harold might be about a geeky squirrel who wants to study for the LSAT instead of finding nuts all fall.
For me, it is hard to think of new ideas, and far simpler (and more fun) to think of new ways to say things, and then figure out what they might mean.
Give it a try! Or a whirl! Or a go! Or set your pen scratching! Or dive into your dictionary! Or head off into the word mines! Or take a dip in the language lake.
Or… or… or…
Oops! There I go again…
Laurel Snyder is the author, most recently, of a picture book, BAXTER, THE PIG WHO WANTED TO BE KOSHER, and a novel, PENNY DREADFUL. Her next book, Nosh, Schlep, Schluff: BabYiddish will be out in January. She is also the author of a book of poems (for grownups), THE MYTH OF THE SIMPLE MACHINES. Laurel lives in Atlanta and online at http://laurelsnyder.com and she tweets obsessively, if haphazardly. Follow her @laurelsnyder!
BAXTER art by David Goldin, SLIDY DINER art by Jaime Zollars (who also did the cover for MYTH). PENNY DREADFUL cover by Abigail Halpin, NOSH art by Tiphanie Beeke
27 comments
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November 22, 2010 at 10:51 am
Frume Sarah
What amazing insight into the brains behind the work. There was a certain point in Penny Dreadful when I did think to myself, “she sure has a magic touch with words.”
I am so glad that you are able to take prose and make it so poetic.
November 22, 2010 at 10:55 am
Laurie
Great ideas on applying poetry word-play to picture books! *heading off to dig around in own junk folder*
November 22, 2010 at 11:05 am
Megan K. Bickel
I’m a huge fan of word play leading to ideas! I love these suggestions and I’m going to get right to it!
November 22, 2010 at 11:42 am
kathy stemke
Thanks for this great way to come up with ideas.
November 22, 2010 at 11:45 am
pam Jones
I love da words!! This approach is so playful and creative! Thank you!
November 22, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Sheri Dillard
Oh, my. Love, love, LOVE this. Thank you!
(Hmm…Dirty curls? Is there a hair salon next to the Slidy Diner?) 🙂
November 22, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Marcy Pusey
Love it! Im a language-oriented person too…. Im going to have fun with this one! Thanks for that advice, the tidbit, the words of wonder, the 411, the helps, the redirection, the……
November 22, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Elizabeth Dulemba
GREAT post Laurel! 🙂
November 22, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Debbie Levy
Wow, Laurel. Wow. A year’s worth of workshops in one blog post. Talk about economy of language. This is such great stuff!
November 22, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Catherine Johnson
Great idea for story creation thanks! I also think your no. 7 would go very well with your no. 1 🙂
November 22, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Rachel
Great tip, Laurel. Thanks!
November 22, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Dana Carey
Thanks so much for great advice and for sharing it in such a fun way. I’m printing this out and taking it for a whirl.
Your books sound/look wonderful.
November 22, 2010 at 4:20 pm
ccgevry
Wow! I loved this post. I’m definitely going to need to put this to use.
Cheryl
November 22, 2010 at 4:58 pm
katswhiskers
Now this I can relate to, Laurel! Maybe that’s why poetry is so liberating. Because it frees our minds to play with words, rolling them around tasting the sound.
November 22, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Catherine Denton
Fantastic post Laurel! Playing with words is so much fun and I haven’t thought about it LEADING to ideas in this way before. Thank you!
https://taralazar.wordpress.com/
November 22, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Diana Murray
Excellent! I’m going to play with words more. I do it with short poems all the time, but not so much with picture book ideas. Sounds like a great way to come up with unique concepts. Thanks!
November 22, 2010 at 8:09 pm
Heather Kephart
Laurel, I love it! You explained yourself so clearly. I kind of do this already – formulate pb ideas when a phrase hits my ear just right. But I haven’t used your squirrel technique. I can’t wait to try it!
P.S. I swear, when I first read the squirrel list I thought #5 was “The fartiest squirrel in the tree”.
November 22, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Beth MacKinney
Relished the language of your post! Even the fidgity bit.
November 22, 2010 at 8:34 pm
Lynne Marie
Made perfect sense. Thanks so much, Laurel!
November 22, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Romelle
I love your approach! It’s very ingenious. Just reading your post gave me a lot of ideas to work with. Thanks so much for opening up my mind to new ways to create.
November 23, 2010 at 4:45 am
Ellie
This is just how my brain works too!
Great ideas in your post – thanks!
November 23, 2010 at 6:55 am
Christine Poreba
This is my favorite post so far. As a poet too, of course, I am biased. But now I don’t feel so bad that one of my daily ideas was just the expression “man of the cloth” and then “man of the piano” written below…thank you Laurel!
November 23, 2010 at 8:15 am
Louann Brown
Thanks so much, I really enjoyed your post! fence post, post a note, post office, postal worker…It works!
November 23, 2010 at 8:46 am
laurasalas
I love this (maybe because I’m a poet, too…). This is my favorite post of the month so far. Thank you! I’m going to give this a go…
November 23, 2010 at 9:59 am
laurel
You guys are so awesome. Thank you for your fabulous energetic responses!
November 23, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Ishta Mercurio
Simply fabulous. Fantastic. Eye-opening. Mind-bending. Ideas-a-swirling.
Thank you.
November 28, 2010 at 2:59 pm
rebecca shoniker
I love the way you play with words and the way you look at the world in new ways… I think I will join you in the “language lake”! Thanks for such an inspirational post 🙂