Creating a distinct voice in your picture books ...

If you are writing picture books it is important not to neglect 'voice', the unique personality of your story-telling that provides the meat on the bones of your tale, and forms the connective tissue between the story and the reader. Voice is what delights us, adds depth to the story and elevates it to a 'must read'.

Folk often say there are no new stories, only new ways of telling them, and a big part of the telling is the voice you choose to use. Voice helps you stand out with publishers and readers. It brings a story to life, animating it beyond just a collection of familiar words. A strong voice will draw readers in - sure, not all will have a taste for every style of voice but if you consider your favourite picture book writers - Lauren Child, Oliver Jeffers, Dr Seuss, Mo Willems, Margaret Mahy, John Burningham - all have a distinctive voice that colours all their stories and has given them a loyal readership.

How is voice achieved? Primarily through reading a lot of picture books and seeing how the best writers achieve it and then practicing a lot with your own stories. It doesn't have to be heavily applied, it just needs to be there.

Technically though it's about:

1) Word choice - what is the 'character' of the words you've selected to tell your story with? Look for the extraordinary, but aim for minor surprise rather than shock. We are going for 'the road less travelled' rather than potentially having your reader get lost. Don't push down (baby talk), pull up (with words that are a little ahead of where your reader is at) - don't forget the pictures will help with meaning. You want little explosions of pleasant surprise, using words that add layers and depth to your themes and meaning. Use words that tie in with the techniques you are employing - the assonance, alliteration, rhythm etc...

Sometimes it is not the words themselves that surprise, but the unexpected way they are used. Repetition can also be very effective, especially when unexpected. Repetition does not have to be immediate either, potentially having more impact a page or two later in the story.

2) Sentence length - this influences the pace and rhythm of your story. Is your story jaunty, dreamy, melancholic, intense? It can be cool to vary the sentence length in a repeating pattern. Different sentence lengths can be used with different characters, or different events within the story. The pagination also has a role to play here - think of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.

3) Rhythm - like voice, rhythm is an essential component of all good picture book stories. It should have an effortless flow so the reader, or the reader-out-louder is naturally drawn through the story, subconciously anticipating the next word... I've always found the best test of this is getting someone new to the story to read it out loud to you. 

4) Tone - this is mostly about the flavour of the words supporting the mood of the story. Is your story funny? Or scary? Your word choice and sentence length need to support this. But also is your story conversational or a bit more formal? Is it old fashioned or full of contemporary idiom and contractions? Does it break the fourth wall? (Check out Mo Willems, We Are In a Book, and Oliver Jeffers' Lost and Found). Does it have an accent? (Read Cicada by Shaun Tan for effective use of an accent).

Please note: Voice is not sufficient on its own to carry a book. Nothing can 'stand in' for a great story - you need both!

If you are struggling with the concept of 'voice' a good book to read is Anthony Browne's, Voices in the Park which literally gives voice to four different characters over the course of the story. 

Also if you need examples of some of the things I've mentioned or you have question - let me know in the comments section below!! I hope this is helpful :-)

And my manuscript assessment competition winner is ...

Crikey that was interesting. I am heartened to see all my suggested topics get a request so I'll work my way through them all beginning with the most requested to the least. And no one correctly guessed my favourite Harry Potter movie. The correct answer is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Dolores Umbridge is a terrific villain and her detention punishment is breathtakingly clever and nasty. I love Luna Lovegood and Dumbledore's Army and how Harry and Dumbledore are finally vindicated. Anyways ... a number of you did pick my second favourite, Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, so I put all your names in a hat and the winner is ......

....  AB who commented here on the blog. Woohoo! Congratulations! AB, if you contact me at melinda@tale-spin.com, we can make arrangements for the assessment.

And in the next few days I'm going to talk a little on the most requested topic - developing a distinct voice in your picture book writing. So stay tuned!!!

Talk to you soon!

A manuscript assessment competition for picture book writers ...

I've started this post several times and abandoned all the different iterations. None feel right for the current zeitgeist and if you folk are feeling anything like I am, being creative right now is a bit of a struggle. I should be revising something I finished a while back but I can't bring myself to open the document, and although I have been puttering along with a new picture book idea (which feels exciting), it is super slow progress. Usually by now I would have had it done and through several revisions. These are strange times.

It's hard to feel creative when we are all in a kind of limbo. My creative space is full of other people, their noises and interactions. There are worries, and I can't help but wonder how the world in general, and the publishing landscape in particular, might look when lockdown rules are finally relaxed. We can't know until we get there. Limbo.

So, anyways, I thought, like those 'pick a path' books we used to love, I'd ask you, dear reader, what sorts of things you might like me to talk about. Should I discuss...

1) How to develop a distinct picture book voice?
2) The good language techniques you should use (and the bad ones you shouldn't use) in picture books?
3) Survival techniques for the zombie apocalypse a.k.a. keeping your chin up while you still have one
4) or a topic of your choosing ...

And also I am running a competition. I will provide one free picture book manuscript assessment (usually $125) to the person who correctly guesses which is my favourite Harry Potter movie. Two entries only per person. All guesses in the comments here, on facebook or twitter will be accepted. This competition closes at 5pm on Easter Monday. All correct guesses will go into the hat and the winner will be picked by a random family member currently in lockdown with me. If no one guesses correctly, I will ask a new question. If no one enters I will cry myself to sleep after eating all the easter eggs :-)

The picture book gospel according to me ...

A couple of weeks ago I had a pretty rubbish week. Rejections, failures on several fronts, and it was all a bit depressing. Then last week was a good week. Some good news about a submission, beautiful pics to look at for my next book Moon and Sun with Upstart Press, and some more good news for another family member. Now this week is just plain weird. I'm a bit 'all at sea', wondering if I'm doing enough in response to Covid 19, wondering how Covid 19 might affect me healthwise and book wise, wondering where this will all end, wondering if I dreamed last week's good fortune. And it's only Monday.

I'm an asthmatic with high blood pressure so I'm immunocompromised when it comes to an illness like Covid 19. I'm sticking at home as much as possible. You might think this is a great thing for a writer but all the developments happening around the world are making it difficult for me to focus on my writing. And I just finished the first draft of a new project and I'm not at all hopeful I've nailed it. I'm trying to read as much as possible. Especially as I have a few reviews to write. Maybe this is the time I finally make a dent in my tbr pile.

My good news about a submission (fingers crossed this isn't compromised) means there will be a tenth picture book by me published. I think I might have the hang of this picture book writing thing. I also recently judged a picture book writing competition. I have thoughts. Maybe if you have down time and want to use it writing picture books these thoughts might be helpful. Here are ten of them. Please note these are just my opinion rather than hard and fast rules.

1) There should always be a penguin.

2) Don't write at children, invite them in. Your story should make them feel centered (whether there are children in the story or not). They should be part of the fun - like a juvenile conspiracy. It should make them feel respected too.

3) Yes you can be too silly. Be restrained with your made up words too, although they do have their place. Some picture books that appear to be complete nonsense actually have an underlying sense or meaning or value. Roald Dahl and Spike Milligan are a lot harder to imitate than you might think.

4) Good picture books only look effortless, but make no mistake, the language has been carefully crafted. This is where our youngest readers learn to love words, stories, books. Give them great language and they'll be readers for life, and probably good at expressing themselves too. Don't stint on the words. Passive, monosyllabic writing should definitely be avoided.

5) If you are going for a more old fashioned style of story or storytelling, you are competing with all the classics which are already readily available, and have already stood the test of time and survived many previous book cullings. Old fashioned is a hard sell. Look forward, not backwards.

6) Make sure you are reading some recently published picture books. Read some prize winners. And some best sellers. Have a good think about why they are winners and/ or bestsellers, or just made the cut in general. And yes some published picture books defy explanation, but that is not what we are aiming for.

7) Find some recent books with writing you really, really like. Have a go at imitating their style and voice with some of your picture book ideas. The underlying goal is to move toward developing your own distinctive style and voice. This is also a good way to refresh your writing if you feel you are stagnating. I have definitely tried to incorporate some of the stylistic tendencies of some of my favourite writers over the years and I think this has made a significant difference.

8) Struggling for ideas? The natural world is a good place to start. What are hot topics for today's kiwi kids in the natural world? Some successful titles over the last few years have included natural disasters like oil spills and earthquakes, endangered species like the hector's dolphin and kakapo, also rainbows, fantails, and kiwis. Natural topics I have written about recently include the Moon, the Sun and the Rain.

9) There is nothing fresh about a fairy.

10) Don't think you can get away without a proper ending. That's cheating.

How to Train Your Patience ...

2020 seemed rather unformed when it started back on January 1st, but I am happy to say things are beginning to take shape and give some structure to my year.

One of my picture books, Sharing with Wolf, (with the lovely and talented Nikki Slade Robinson and published by Scholastic) is off to the printers and oh-my-giddy-aunt, it has endpapers!! You know what that means!! :-) This book is set to take off on June 1st and tells the story of a lamb keen to rent a room at Wolf's place. It is very gratifying when you have tried to write something funny and you hear people laugh out loud as they read it. And there is humour and much more in the illustrations besides.

Look how delicious it is!! I can't wait to show it to you.

Illustrations are also coming along for Moon and Sun (illustrated by the amazing Malene Laugesen and to be published by Upstart Press). I have had a sneak peek and they are dreamy and divine and just right for a story of sibling rivalry and sisterly relations. This book could not be more different to Sharing with Wolf. Was it written by a different part of me? Maybe. You will need to judge for yourselves. I hope to give you a glimpse of this soon. It is all very exciting.

In other news, I was approached by an Auckland Council Community Group to run some creative writing workshops for intermediate and high school aged students and this is now all on at Te Oro: Music and Arts Centre for Young People in Glen Innes. There will be five 90 minute workshops covering different aspects of writing, run weekly on Mondays at 5pm, starting March 2nd. I'll be running the course again in May as well. You can check out details here

And I am now the New Zealand Soc. of Authors representative on the Book Awards Trust. I'm also working on a new junior fiction project which is a very different form to anything I've written before. Please hold caller, while my old brain works out these new tricks. Crikey, folks, it's all go in the muppet labs.

I still have manuscripts out with some publishers both here and overseas and as always I remain hopeful of a good outcome from someone. I mean, why submit if you don't have hope, eh? The challenge, as always, is to keep the career alive. You might point out that I had a book out last year and I am about to have two books out this year, but I would then remind you that publishers are working two years ahead and whatever is accepted now is unlikely to be out until 2022 (or maybe even later). And an acceptance, if it happens, may still be months away or perhaps even years. Or it just might not happen and whatever I am working on now needs to be finished and polished before it too can begin to try its luck out there, rinse and repeat. Training your patience is one of the best things you can do for yourself as an author. So, how do you train your patience?

1) Your patience will function better if it has deadlines to work to. Always ask when a response/result can be expected and keep your patience informed. Although once deadlines have come and gone I have nothing for you and all bets are off 

2) Your patience can sometimes be talked down with a mantra of rational reasons for delays, silences and deadline blowouts. Memorise this mantra

3) Distraction is a useful tool that will help your patience remain up to the task. I find frequently shouting 'over there' and pointing into the distance can keep your patience disoriented enough to perform twice as well as it thinks it can

4) Reward your patience regularly. Your patience will work harder for you if it feels loved and respected. 

5) That ugly relation impatience is always lurking, trying to muscle in on the action. Be vigilant. A good treatment for impatience is to give it something else to do - for example, when will my basil seeds sprout?

Why I changed my mind about trying to get to Bologna

The past few weeks have been a little busy. I ran a Write Like an Author camp for school students last week at Ponsonby Intermediate School, and the week before I had the opportunity over several days to meet with some Chinese publishing representatives. They were here on a whirlwind visit and it was just by chance I became involved. It was nerve wracking, not least because every culture has its own etiquette for conducting business, and I wanted to get off on the right foot. Enormous thanks to fabulous fellow author Maureen Crisp, who metaphorically held my hand, gave me some great info and shored me up when I wavered over the two days. I'd learnt a lot by the end of that week, and had many subsequent thoughts about international publishing deals and book fairs.

Last year I had been considering a trip to the 2020 Bologna Book Fair (in conjunction with some other travel we were planning). I have my short story collection from last year, and two picture books coming out this year which I had thought would be at this fair (they're both a little delayed so it might be 2021 before they make it to Italy). I thought I could support those books, and tick the BBF off my bucket list. And I was still wrankled by the comment an Australian agent had made at a children's writing conference I'd been at in 2009 - that taking an author to a book fair was like taking a cow to an abattoir. I talked to several folk experienced in the ways of the BBF about the whys and wherefores, and emailed a Bologna contact that I'd got from one of my publishers.

Our travel plans changed. But that happened after I'd already dismissed Bologna as a destination for me. And here's why, although I disagree with the Ozzie agents notion/rubbish joke, I think a traditionally published author like me going to a book fair is not the best use of my resources. My thoughts and opinions on this are my own, but they are an objective response to what I have observed and been advised.

1) For book fairs, generally, you must be in a position to sell the rights for your work. Otherwise you can't do business there, or support your books (this is just not an arena you can support your books in -  publishers and agents are not there to talk to authors, they are there to recoup their investments - this is probably where the abattoir comment comes close), you are just an observer. 

2) For book fairs, generally your work must already be in published form in one territory, and you are looking to sell rights for other territories. Agents and publishers might be able to sell a manuscript at a book fair, but the odds of an (unknown outside your own region) author doing so, I imagine, would be very slim.

3) If you are an author and/or illustrator, you will only be in a position to sell the rights to your already published work if you are self-publishing, or if you have kept all those rights back in your arrangement with a traditional publisher (uncommon), or have had them returned

4) They may like your content, but the unusual design/format which helped your book stand out in the local market may make it difficult for them to take your already published work on

5) You may feel your content is universal, or at the least, general, but cultural differences and topics/themes of interest vary hugely, impacting on your ability to be picked up in other territories. For example, the differences in the role of parents in picture book stories in New Zealand compared with in China, are vast. 

6) One other way to attend a book fair, like the one in Bologna, is as a speaker. But your international currency needs to be sufficient, and you need good public speaking experience and a spot of good luck to get this kind of gig. And it is difficult to say how much this would help my books. 

7) It's expensive to get and stay there, which must be weighed against any benefits accrued to me as an author, through sales of rights and/or books. I have a number of skills, but selling is not amongst these. It is better (and significantly less costly), for me to pass this task to someone with these skills, with a track record of successful sales, for those rights under my control. Bologna is a trade fair for publishers and agents - a marketplace for trading rights for publishing and translations. Everyone there has paid a lot of money to be there, and they want to recoup their investment by buying rights they can make money out of, and selling rights to other territories. Selling rights is nothing like submitting a manuscript. Here it is likely your books will sell better without you.

The need to be hopeful...

So, as much as it is dominating social media and msm and conversations everywhere, I'm not going to talk about the current state of the world. It is an existential nightmare and I intend to help where I can, but better minds than mine are highlighting the issues involved and I can't improve on that. What I can say is that creating beautiful things that help explain the world or give relief to people is still vital. Now more than ever. So I am trying to stay updated and informed.

When the world is a bonfire and you write for children there are extra challenges in reflecting their world back at them. They are growing up into this world and need hope and practical strategies to navigate their future. How do we explain things without freaking them out and giving them anxiety about what lies ahead. They need reassurance and advice. Leavened with fun and wit. And hope. So it's important that creators like you and me keep our own hope alive. Some days I'm not sure how to achieve this. At the grass roots we have so little control or power. Perhaps focusing on how we can help our audience is one way we can maintain hope and do our bit to contribute positively. 

I guess though that maintaining a hopeful front when you feel anything but, can be a bridge too far. Self care is paramount. This is where reading can be a good strategy. If children can find relief in literature, so can we, while simultaneously being reminded of the power words (and story) have to give us the support, tools, and ideas for surviving whatever is thrown at us, and the hope we need to keep going, including with the writing. Don't stop now people, the future needs us.