The other day I was helping a friend edit a fiction picture book and we were talking about how layout of the language can give a different feel.
To demonstrate I opened up my quote file and found this one by Tana French, “Don’t get discouraged if you’re hammering away at a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter, and it keeps coming out wrong. You’re allowed to get it wrong, as many times as you need to; you only need to get it right once.”
Look at it written as a poem:
“Don’t get discouraged
if you’re hammering away
at a sentence
or a paragraph
or a chapter,
and it keeps
coming
out wrong.
You’re allowed
to get it wrong,
as many times
as you need to;
you only need
to get it right
once.”
– Tana French
I loved the quote in the first place, but I love it as poetry even more.
Let’s think about this specifically in regard to picture books. Will a poetic format add to your story? (I’m not talking about rhythm and rhyme particularly, although that is a possibility.) Or is there another format that will benefit your story?
One that comes to mind is Gretchen McLellan’s No Party Poopers! where the story is only written in dialogue with no tag lines, beats, or description.
Or an oldie Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters from Obedience School by Mark Teague. The opening has a newspaper clipping, then come the hilarious letters. These books are called epistolary.
Author Doreen Chronin has a series of bug diaries. Will journal format work for your story?
I was stunned when I read Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer where you read the poems one way and then the opposite.
Then there’s the cumulative story where each line builds from the line before. The poem “This Is the House that Jack Built” may have inspired this type of tale.
You might find Karin Lefranc’s list of picture book genres interesting.
I like stretching my mind about how stories can be written. If you know of different picture book formats, please share in the comments.