Writing Picture Books
Need help with your picture book manuscript?
From the introduction to the updated e-book version of Writing Picture Books: What Works & What Doesn’t:
Many books aim to help writers write better books, but not many with the specific purpose of helping writers write better picture books. Why is this?
Because writing picture books is too easy for anyone to need help doing it?
Because what makes a picture book successful is its pictures?
Because what makes a picture book appeal to readers is too elusive to grasp?
Anyone who has tried writing a picture book, and with a vague sense of dissatisfaction with the result relegated it to the bottom of a drawer, knows that writing a picture book is not easy. Anyone who, with confidence and high hopes, has sent a picture book manuscript to a publisher, only to see it returned with a form letter saying, ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ knows it, too. Anyone with a collection of such manuscripts and rejection letters certainly knows that writing a picture book is not easy.
Writing any book is not easy, but picture books present unique challenges that make the task more difficult than most people expect, given how short and apparently simple they are.
Just what are the challenges? How can you successfully meet them? Order the book now for less than you may have spent submitting (unsuccessfully) your picture book manuscript.
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Kathy Stinson is the author of the classic Red Is Best and the award-winning The Man with the Violin. Her wide range of titles includes picture books, non-fiction, young adult fiction, historical fiction, horror, biography, series books, and short stories. She has met with her readers in every province and territory of Canada, in the United States, Britain, Liberia, and Korea. She lives in a small town in Ontario.
