Writing right
Where we won't think about the pictures. At least, not yet.
This is part ONE of what looks like will be a three-part series about writing. Specifically, writing for picture books. But it won’t be “how you should do it” or even “here is what works for me.” Rather, in this series of posts, I am asking the question: “Why am I writing wrong, and what can I do differently to make my writing right?” Parts two and three will follow, hopefully next week and the week after. Unless I just give up.1
Back in November, when I first considered writing this newsletter, I didn’t really know anything about Substack. I’d read some Substack posts by various writers and artists, and I knew of some popular channels through the cross-posting on Instagram. As I found newsletters written by book illustrators, I was surprised to find that a number of them were coming at this newsletter thing from the angle of “let me tell you how I do this so you can do it too.” Among these were topics such as:
Five steps to getting your book published!
Don’t make these mistakes while illustrating your first story!
What to say to editors!
What not to say to agents!
So you might forgive me if I started wondering whether Substack was, in fact, some sort of epistolary offshoot of Skillshare. Is everyone here reading about illustration so that they can all learn to be an illustrator, too? I wondered who would want to read what I wanted to write. At the time, I had exactly zero subscribers on Substack, so I didn’t even know who my own audience might turn out to be2.
I didn’t know much about Substack, but I’ve illustrated (counts) 74 books over (looks at calendar) 20 years, so I thought I knew what I was doing there, at least. It was therefore surprising to read the ten steps one must do for this, or a list of six things one should never for that, and realize that I have never done any of the first things, and I always do all of the others!
This led to some professional-level navel-gazing. Maybe I really don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe my occasional frustrations with an editor *not understanding me* is due to the fact that I forgot to do number three when I wrote that email. Sure, I know, we all do it differently. If I lined up ten writers and illustrators and asked them how they make a book, I’d get seventeen answers.3 Which I guess is my point. While all external metrics tell you that I should know what I am doing, I made the decision early on that this newsletter would never ever explain why you should do something I do the way I do it. Instead, true to the inquisitive spirit and curious intent of this newsletter, I’ll write a post about something I’ve come to realize I barely know how to do at all.
I’ll write about writing.
You might be thinking, Brian, you’ve written about writing. You wrote two issues of this newsletter about that novel, remember?”
Yes, of course, sure, I remember… But you’re wrong. Those two posts were about a novel that I’ve spent five years thinking about and, so far, not writing. This is about something I have actually written, but I wrote it wrong4.
My journey begins...
Two years ago I had an idea for a story that excited me.5 This story is about a bug, and stuff happens to the bug. Danger, turmoil, the bug does some things, meets other bugs, a big lesson is learned, situations get resolved, the end happily ever after.6 I knew it would make a great picture book. I could see the illustrations, right there in my head. I could imagine the turning of the pages. I could hear the laughter of the children, even!
Less than two days after having the initial idea, I sent a Word doc to my agent, then sat back and awaited the bidding war. To his credit, he didn’t fire me. Instead, he wrote a nice reply that said, generally, this is a cool idea but it needs work. The ‘work’ he suggested it needed went something like this:
That bad part near the beginning needs to be better.
That boring part in the middle needs to be funny.
The unresolved ending should probably be resolved.
He’s not getting it, I thought. He’s not seeing the illustrations in his head, like I am. He’s not hearing the page-turns. I made a second draft, leaning into the rhythms of what I imagined the pictures to be, and clearly demarcating the page-turns. He still didn’t get it. In fact, I think he liked this one even less. In his reply, he kept talking about the story. And I kept thinking, this is the story. This is what happens.
But I knew what it needed. It needed pictures! It’s a picture book! I decided that I wouldn’t send him anything more until I’d sketched it all out and made a dummy7. I sketched out the pictures, put them in order, designed the little pages.8 All it needed now were the words. But when I added the words, the words didn’t work. In some cases, it just didn’t read well. In others, the mechanics of the book put some words on the right when they needed to be on the left. I cut words to fix this. I added words in other places so a page wouldn’t be blank. I rewrote, again to the pictures and page-turns.
And it was all wrong.
The text felt jumpy. It was abrupt. Inconsistent. The story-telling was sing-song and decorative here, then sparse and matter-of-fact there. It read the way Elaine on Seinfeld dances. You know what I mean — kind of weird and jerky. I think that’s a good analogy. That’s how my story sounds.
My wife and I were discussing this while walking to dinner one night, last week. I was trying to describe my process of writing, the process I’d used in all my other picture books. Everything Goes, the Tinyville Town series, The Space Walk, and My Hero. Even my graphic novels back in the 90’s. They were all written this way, and I feel all of these picture books have similar issues.9 We discussed the possibility that maybe this wasn’t a picture book, anyway. And she asked me how it might change if I just ignore the pages and the pictures, and focus on the words. Just tell the story.
JUST TELL THE STORY!
My god. It’s so simple. And it had never occurred to me. What if I just focus on this story, and I write it. How do I do that? Can I do that? Is that what others do?
I thought about all the writers I know who don’t illustrate their own books. Are they thinking about the eventual illustrations? Probably not10. And I wondered, what do other writers who do illustrate do? Are they thinking about their illustrations as they write? Maybe! And how do editors know when a script is ready, without the pictures to tell them?
Well, I know a few illustrators who write picture books, and writers who don’t draw, and I know editors. I should ask them!
And so, I did.
To be continued.
A note about the illustrations: All three parts of this series will include some of the now-hundreds of drawings of bugs and other animals I have made of the characters that populate the story in question. Some are from May 2022. Some are from this morning.
And if that’s the case, I’ll write about that.
I’m four months and ten issues in and have 270 readers right now, and I assume you’re all very nice people.
Which I did, by the way. But that will be in part two of this series.
When I wrote that sentence, I first wrote “wrote it bad.” But I realized what I think is good or bad is different from you think is good or bad. “Wrong” focuses on the process, which is what this is all about, and which you have no say in. So, believe me, it was wrong.
rule number one: be excited. if you’re not excited about whatever it is you’re writing, or drawing, stop writing or drawing it and write or draw something else. Something that excites you.
Generally, a good formula for any story, it’s true.
A dummy is a kind of a sketched, test version of a book, used to see how it’s working.
I write this as if it all happened in a week. But between the 2nd email from my agent (August 2022) and making this dummy (last week) were nearly two years of starts and stops and joy and frustration. Welcome to being a writer.
I say picture books, because I think the graphic novels are fine, and in fact might be the culprit here. Writing these stories set a precedence that I continued. More on this in part two or three.
I have seen these manuscripts, written by writers who are not illustrators, and I can 100% guarantee you that almost NONE of them are thinking about the illustrations. Often, they read like abstract beat poetry. But they almost NEVER read like Elaine from Seinfeld dances.
I’m on the edge of my seat!
We are very nice people, yes.