Picture Book Text Format

Picture books follow a particular technical format.  This is because books are made by printing on enormous sheets of paper which are then cut and folded into 32 pages. (Longer books are made by glueing those 32 pages together - if you check the spine you can usually see the folds.) 

With a picture book the first couple of pages will be taken up by a title page, and the publishing information page, the end pages will be perhaps more information on other titles. That leaves between 24 and 28 pages to play with, which translates to 12, 13 or 14 spreads. 

You have to work out how your story fits into those spreads.  It can be useful to make a dummy book - 8 sheets of A4 paper folded in half will give you 32 pages (page 1 is the front, p 32 is the back). So, pages 2,3,4,5 have title info etc, Spread 1 is p6 and p7, Spread 2 is p8 and p9, Spread 3 is p10 and p11 and so on.  The text is presented like this:

Spread 1

Jennifer heard a noise outside the window.  She looked out and saw an enormous dinosaur.

Spread 2

It ran towards Jennifer saying "I'm going to eat you up!"

We also have to imagine the reading experience. So each spread should invite the readers to continue reading.

Spread 1

Jennifer heard a noise outside the window.  She looked out and saw....

Spread 2

An enormous dinosaur! It ran towards Jennifer saying "I'm going to eat you up!"

You don't need to give the illustrator instructions unless it's not clear what should be in the picture.  For example, it's clear from the text that Jennifer sees an enormous dinosaur so you don't need to tell the illustrator this.  It's not relevant to the story what colour the dinosaur is, so you don't need to tell the illustrator that.  It is relevant that Jennifer is a wart hog, and not clear from the text, so you do need to tell the illustrator this.

Spread 1

Jennifer heard a noise outside the window.  She looked out and saw....

(Illustration: Jennifer is a warthog)

Spread 2

An enormous dinosaur! It ran towards Jennifer saying "I'm going to eat you up!"

And we have to think in pictures.  If Jennifer is inside, the dinosaur is outside, how are we going to show this?  Will we see the dinosaur running towards Jennifer from Jennifer's POV or the dinosaur's?  And will it be that scary if Jennifer is still in the house and therefore protected from the dinosaur outside?  (That Jennifer is a warthog and living in a house is just fine by picture book standards.)

Spread 1

Jennifer heard a noise coming from behind the termite mound.  She looked up and saw....

(Illustration: Jennifer is a warthog)

Spread 2

An enormous dinosaur! It ran towards Jennifer saying "I'm going to eat you up!"

(NB I'm assuming in the above scenario that the illustrator will read 'termite mound' and 'wart hog' immediately place the scene on the plains of Africa, not on Willesden High Road, so it doesn't need mentioning.)  

And so on until you've told your story in 12, 13, or 14 spreads, no more, no less. Add a word count and your contact details at the end, and you're done.

I think picture book texts are the hardest form of writing EVER, and the editing process is gruelling - with so few words to play with, everyone can have their say about whether it should be termite mound or ant hill.  Added to that, because the form is short, lots of people try it so competition is stiff, and because full colour illustration is increasingly expensive to produce and print, fewer picture books are being produced.  

If you want to try them, why not, but it's a long journey from having an idea to getting the text right, to getting that phone call from an editor.  100,000 word novels, in my opinion, are so much easier. 

Format for Picture Book Texts

Picture book texts are a marriage between words and illustrations - there's a clue in the name. If you've written a text, you have to be aware of how it will appear on the page of the real thing. You have to be able to see it, the pages turning as a parent reads to a small child.

So that's the first thing. Although you're not going to illustrate it yourself, you have to be able to visualise how the finished book might look. When the book is open, you'll be looking at two pages at a time, the left and the right page. That's called a spread. Books are made by printing on enormous sheets of paper which are then cut and folded into 32 pages. (Longer books are made by glueing those 32 pages together - if you check the spine you can usually see the folds.)

With a picture book the first couple of pages will be taken up by a title page, and the publishing information page, the end pages will be perhaps more information on other titles. You have between 24 and 28 pages to play with, which translates to 12, 13 or 14 spreads. You have to work out how your story fits into those spreads - you might find folding up some sheets of paper to make a dummy book is useful.

Then you present the text in spreads....

1

Fergus lived with his mother in a cave on the edge of the deep dark forest.

One summer evening, Fergus was busy chasing butterflies.

'Time for bed,' said his mother.

'No, it isn't,' Fergus said, jumping higher. The day was still bright outside the cave.

'Time for bed,' his mother said again, scooping him up.

2

But Fergus wriggled out of her arms.

'I'm not going to bed,' Fergus said. 'I'm going to find an adventure.'

And he ran from the cave out into the forest.

3

The trees were tall and made long shadows across the path, but the leaves danced and rustled in the breeze.

'I don't need a mummy,' laughed Fergus as he skipped along. 'I'm going to have an adventure on my very own.'

(Illus: Mother Bear is in the background, hiding behind a tree)

(Illus: Dusk is falling)

And so on, keeping each spread together ie don't split them between pages. Add a word count and your contact details at the end, and you're done.

Illustrations Not Required

Although I write novels for adults, the Great Publishing Send Off (update coming soon) was with some picture book texts I'd written. I'd had a go because recently I've got to know a few illustrators - Lu in Kissing Mr Wrong was an illustrator - and become interested in a very different aspect of publishing. And also picture book texts are short, 1000 words max, which has a certain appeal to a novelist.

I'd thought about writing a picture book story before - I guess any parent who reads to their children does at some point - but hadn't done anything about it because I can't draw, and I thought you needed to provide the illustrations. But hoorah! You don't.

The only person who should ever include illustrations along with a text is a professional illustrator. If you've written a story, you simply send that in using the proper format, and the publisher will match you with an illustrator. This is an important aspect of the publisher's job - think of good matches, like Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake.

What you need to do is present the text clearly, and give an indication of what the illustrations should contain if necessary. Necessary means if the illustration contains stuff that isn't in the text, but is necessary for the story, for example, if Red Riding Hood is skipping along the path into the woods in the text, the illustration might need to show the Big Bad Wolf hiding behind a tree. You put the information needed in brackets at the bottom, for example...

1

Fergus lived with his mother in a cave in the deep dark forest.

'It's time for bed, his mother said, but Fergus pretended not to hear. He was too busy having adventures.

(Illus: They're bears in a cave, Fergus is playing with his toys.)

And that's all you need to do. Simple. The number 1 is about formatting the text, which I'll do tomorrow.

The Great Publisher Send Off - Update Part 1

You may remember about a month ago as an experiment I decided to see how easy it was to find out the names of editors and, because I already have an editor myself, I decided I'd do it for picture books as I had some stories I'd written a couple of years ago and not done anything with.

The result was, after three hours, I had a list of fifteen publishers who published picture books. Most of them did not accept unsolicited material, but I had the names of thirteen editors. Number fourteen had a special submissions department, number fifteen I couldn't find the name of an editor, got bored with the whole thing and gave up at that point.

I sent them all off, expecting either to not hear anything for at least three months, or for there to be an immediate turnaround from the 'we don't accept unsoliciteds'. Neither has happened.

I've had two responses. One is from a publisher who accepts unsolicited material where not only I had a named editor, I could drop in a reference to a talk they had given in my covering letter. The other from the publisher who doesn't take unsolicited material and I couldn't find an named editor.

One was a brief, standard thanks but no thanks letter that could have been written to anyone and was signed by an editorial assistant. One was a phone call from the editor telling me she liked my work and that my submission was going to the main editorial meeting.

Guess which response I got from which publisher....