Have you got a great idea for a picture book? Writing consultant Renee Gray-Wilburn (pictured, via) offered some advice for working with the form.
Gray-Wilburn urged writers to avoid offering parental guidance to young readers in a picture book. She also talked about incorporating repetition, the five senses, and fun words into your picture book manuscript.
Here’s more from the blog post: “Kids love nothing more than to know that they were responsible for solving a problem. So whatever conflict or crisis situation you’ve set up in your picture book, allow the child character to be the one to figure out a solution. It’s OK to have parents in your picture book; this is a normal part of a child’s world, so they’d probably be expecting them.”
In an interview last year, Priddy Books publisher Roger Priddy defined the best picture books as the ones that are “beat up” from entertaining their kid owners.