SCBWI Conference Notes (Episode#4)
To wrap up my winter episodes, since it is April already, I thought it was only fitting to compile some of the helpful information I gleaned while at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators NY Conference.
Jane Yolen (Author)
20 Writing Rules:
- Get ride of the “!” – The statement should have enough force all by itself.
- Go easy on the adverbs.
- Don’t let your characters float – anchor them in action. Show us who your characters are, don’t just tell us about them.
- Have fun writing/illustrating.
- Be diligent and disciplined (but still enjoy what you do).
- Remember you may never be the best but you can always get better.
- Passion not fashion – Don’t write what you don’t like even if vampires are all the rage right now.
- No one outside a fairy tale expects a happy ending.
- Fall through the words into the story. The story doesn’t have to be about your life for it to be about you.
- Sometimes simply simple is best. Sometimes it’s not – save your drafts.
- Find the right word/phrase even if it takes a while.
- The first line better have the DNA of the story in it.
- What we need and what we want are not always the same thing.
- IMPORTANT: Money flows toward the author. You shouldn’t have to pay to get your work published.
- Don’t ignore the landscape in your writing. Children’s literature is very visual.
- Read what you’ve written aloud.
- When writer’s block sets in, start a new project and come back to the current one later.
- Accept the fact that there are some projects that you will never complete.
- Exercise your creative muscle everyday.
- Read everything – fiction, non-fiction, adult literature, poetry. You never know what might inspire you.
Jim Benton (Author/Illustrator)
Twelve years worth of Writer’s Digest articles distilled into these two main pieces of advice (As a Writer’s Digest employee and cartoonist, he personally read them all):
- Rewrite it. There are no first drafts on the bestseller list.
- You are not your work. If someone rejects your work, it doesn’t mean they are rejecting you.
Other Tidbits…
- Do what you do EVERYDAY. Be a “compulsive creator.”
- If you are having a hard time getting started experiment – Start with a character, a setting or an event. Most stories are about somebody who wants something but is having a hard time getting it.
All About Picture Books…
Allyn Lane Johnston (VP and publisher of Simon & Schuster’s Beach Lane Books)
Reading Aloud:
- Especially for young readers, picture books are primarily emotional. (Because most children ages 0-5 are being read to, the book facilitates the emotional play between two people)
- The page turn is crucial to the flow and feel of the story. Often it sets up the narrative arch. (Try writing down the words from a picture book and read them apart from the pictures to get a feel for the natural pauses in the text.)
- The form of the writing: the repetition and rhyme must be intentional. When used properly it determines the pace. (ex. Goodnight Moon)
- The opening line must be superb. It sets the feel of the entire book so it can’t be obscure like a chapter-book opening nor can it be clunky.
She recommends that all picture book authors/illustrators read:
Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever
by: Mem Fox
Laurent Linn (Art Director for Simon & Schuster)
The Real Deal About Visual Story Telling:
- Make your characters unique by giving them distinctive attributes: There is no such thing as just “a duck” in children’s stories. There is however a Donald Duck. Characters must be individuals.
- Borrow from the best – Anything from art history can be used as source material.
- Scene/Environment – Everything can be a character of sorts. The trees can describe the tone (the details complete the environment).
- Keep in mind: Because most children 0-5 are being read to, an adult mediates a book’s words. However the pictures are experienced directly by the child.
- Action should flow from right to left across the book’s pages (like reading).
- Each image should portray some sort of action or at least beg the question “What will happen next.” Unlike a fine artist’s portrait, illustrations can not afford to be still or static. It is not the illustrator's job to document the story. It is the illustrator's job to bring the story to life. (for example compare:)
Paul Zelinsky (Illustrator)
Portfolio Feedback
- If you are thinking picture books, then portfolio pictures of single subjects, isolated in the center of the page without a background, don't show enough of what picture book art has to do. The more narrative the picture is, the more it looks like it could be part of a sequence of drawings, the more it looks like it is depicting a moment in a drama, the more it will feel like picture book art. Single subjects isolated in the center of the page with a background may or may not be better. There's nothing wrong with seeing one picture like this, but one after another starts to give a wrong impression.
- Make sure you are as selective as possible in what you put in. Going through many of the portfolios felt like "Wow, good, really nice, good, whoa--what's that doing in here? Hey, here's another one like that." Those last two put a very different complexion on the artist.
- About variety of styles: Friday morning at the end of my talk someone asked about putting a variety of styles in a portfolio, and I think I answered in a way sympathetic to the questioner's wish to include lots of styles. But when looking through great numbers of portfolios, I found that a portfolio containing a lot of styles became confusing and hard to remember. So I would say now that:
- If one of your styles is stronger than the others, don't include the others (you can exercise your wish not to be pigeonholed later, in person, by talking to an art director after you've done a book together).
- If your styles are all equally strong, organize the portfolio with labeled divisions according to style; it would just make the presentation seem more in control.
- After a certain point, more work is not better. If after ten drawings it is very important to include an eleventh and more, perhaps the first ten weren't strong enough. This is pretty much like my second point, but even if everything in the portfolio is as good as everything else, you don't want to get repetitive, and you don't want to induce fatigue in the viewer.
- Method of reproduction: The items in the portfolios were printed in all different ways, but I found personally that the ones printed on good matte paper with an inkjet printer making extremely rich, velvety hues and values, could be arresting in a way that the ones offset-printed on coated stock just weren't. Obviously no art director is going to choose an artist just because the sample art was printed in this way, but based on my own reaction, I would think that there is some subliminal effect there-much more of an effect than I felt from snazzy printing and binding of whole portfolios into a book, for instance. That kind of highly-produced presentation could conceivably backfire, it seems to me.
Final Thoughts…
Jaqueline Woodson (Author)
Passing on something Madeline L’Engle said:
‘As we write we should remember the children we were rather than try to portray the children of today because the essence of childhood, the emotional stuff, doesn’t change.’
For more about the conference, see the SCBWI Blog
Comments
Post a Comment