Three Ways Reading Picture Books Helps Me Write Better Novels

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I love reading picture books. Yep, I’m turning 49 this year and I read almost 200 picture books every year!! I teach a graduate writing class about picture books and an after school club on writing picture books. But I also read them for pure enjoyment because I love picture books.

I write picture books, but I also write longer middle grade and young adult manuscripts. And reading (and writing) picture books help me write better novels.

There are three things I practice when I write a picture book, and getting good at writing these things make better books of any length. But the reason to practice these when writing picture books is because it’s arguably harder to write picture books. You have to refine and perfect all the story elements very quickly, because you should not write more than 500 words, ideally. And you need to leave room for illustrations. It’s not easy.

Here are the three elements:

  1. Voice – Creating a unique voice is key. Can you do it quickly in a picture book? Working on this, by choosing words or sentence syntax, will help you do it well in your novels when you’re juggling lots more character and dialogue.
  2. Plot – Does something happen in your story? If not, you don’t have a picture book OR a novel. So figure out the beginning, middle, climax, and resolution. Learning how to do this well in the tight page limit of the picture book is perfect practice for the longer story. Even better is working to add a B plot to your picture book. You can do it!
  3. Showing character change – Your character better change in any story you write, and in general, your character should change for the better. The character should have a happy resolution in a picture book. That’s essential for the main audience of this type of book. Older readers can deal with more complex character change, but there should always be an element of hope.

Work on these three elements in any story you write, no matter how many words. Strengthen these skills and you will write stories that readers love, and you will love the feeling of knowing you’ve written something great.