Storyboarding: Fun as Snowboarding?

Your goal in this course may be simply to learn as much as you can about the craft of picture-making and, ultimately, to begin to market yourself as an illustrator of other people’s stories.

You may not wish to submit your own picture book story to a publisher. But sooner or later you’ll be called upon to make a storyboard. For a writer interested in communicating your ideas to an illustrator, editor, or art director, storyboarding will be an invaluable tool for you as well. It will serve you as your picture book diagnostic device. It will show you where your picture book story falls flat. If you haven’t got a little story to work on already,

I think that for this power home study course you should consider writing or finding one, whether you think of yourself as a writer or not.

If you’ve not written or are not already writing your own story, grab the lyrics of an old song or poem. Think about re-telling your favorite folk tale, fairy tale or nursery rhyme. Find something in the public domain. I’m not an Attorney and I don’t pretend to know anything about copyright law. But go http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page Try some verses from the Bible or the Vedas of India. Take your or someone’s letter written from summer camp. (Yes, it’s been done, but you can do it again.)

How about a diary entry of your own, or a relative or an ancestor….? Come up with a clever picture book way to present an errand list, a shopping list, a wish list…

Every year it seems another version of the Three Little Pigs or Little Red Riding Hood hits the market. It’s not unusual for these re-do’s of old favorites to win the year’s big awards! You would think the world had never seen these stories before

Dutch born American author Peter Spier turned Genesis Chapter Six of into the riveting picture book Noah’s Ark. He didn’t even use words from the Bible. He didn’t use words, except an antiquated, terse little Dutch poem that he put in the preface.

He made a similar book of the U.S. national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Spier

The late New England illustrator, Barbara Cooney re-fashioned one of the many yarns from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales into a classic picture book, Chanticleer and the Fox. It won the Caldecott Medal in 1959.

Of course she gave Geoffery Chaucer, who died in 1400, credit as the author. The Maine state legislature declared Cooney a “Treasure of the State of Maine.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Cooney

Illustrator David Wiesner, who’s won the Caldecott Medal three times was asked to turn a whimsical cover that he had done for the children’s literature magazine Cricket into a picture book. So he made up an account to “explain” his Cricket cover of frogs flying through the air on lily pads a la flying carpets.

The result was Tuesday, which won the Caldecott Medal in 1991. http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/authors/wiesner/books/books_tues.shtml Oh, he did a Three Little Pigs, too and it won the Caldecott Medal in 2002. Not everybody has to win the Caldecott Medal. I mention these books just to demonstrate that ideas for illustrated stories are all around us. To make picture books of them, you must squeeze them into “picture book format.” Which brings us to the 32 pages rule.

Why, you might ask, does everyone talk about 32 pages in a picture book?

Here’s why. A printer can print 16 pages on one side of a large, very larger, sheet of paper. And he can flip the sheet over and print another 16 pages on the other side.

A machine folds that sheet into 1/16th squares or rectangles and chops, trims away all of the folded sides but one.

This is how a printer produces a book from one sheet of paper. The 32 pages are then stitched (or sometimes stapled) together -- with end papers of a different paper stock -- and glued inside a case.

Case (for those of us outside the printing/publishing biz) is jargon for book cover. You see the elegance of the 32 pages. A book is produced from one sheet of paper. 500 books are produced from a ream (500 sheets) of paper.

There’s no waste. For the printer there’s no getting stuck with one-third-used reams that he may never use again. No warehouse clutter. 32 pages = tidy economics and good business sense. It’s not a rule like mama’s rule of the roast. You’ve heard that story, right? About the mama who traditionally cooked her Sunday roast with a lot of the meat trimmed off on both sides… Because that’s how her mama did it, and her mama’s mama, and her mama’s mama’s mama… and that

was because it was the only way the roast fit into great grandma’s peculiarly short roasting pan. It’s not a rule like that.

Not yet. Unless you plan to only publish your book in cyberspace. Not until the day that the world’s books are read on-line or on digital readers... As long as books are printed on paper, the 32 page rule probably is a sensible rule. This Draconian page limit could be what “makes the music” of the children’s picture book. “Brevity is the sister of talent,” said the Russian playwright (and wonderful short story write)r Anton Chekhov (with eloquent brevity.)

32 pages have become the aesthetic for many practitioners of the form.

Yes, you’ll find plenty of printed picture books that prove exceptions to the rule. Like The Invention of Hugo Cabret by acclaimed children’s illustrator Brian Selznick -- with 530 pages! But it’s not just Hugo. You’ll find plenty. But if an editor at a children’s press examining your submission package sees 32 pages between the covers of your picture book dummy, she’ll assume (correctly) that you know a thing or two about her business. And when your book eventually gets published (over that other writer’s longer story) trees will be spared. The brevity thing goes for the words in a picture book, too. There shouldn’t be many words.

To pluck a number from the air, 850 are good. 250 words can still make for a rich, satisfying, funny story.

Artistic limitations can result in beautiful works. Remember what the great American poet Robert Frost said about playing tennis without a net… Everybody needs a net…Especially tight rope walkers. Though these walkers had none: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Walked_Between_the_Towers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirette_on_the_High_Wire I forgot what Frost said exactly….

Wait, I remember, it was something like: “Writing a poem that doesn’t rhyme is like playing tennis without a net.” Rules rule sometimes So let’s move on.

It could fall to you, as the illustrator of another writer’s story, to figure out how to spread it around the 17 rectangles.

It certainly would be your job if you’re the author-illustrator. I know this is not a writing course, I know – but an illustrator is a kind of a writer. Certainly he’s writing with pictures, to proudly borrow the title of (Caldecott Medal winner) Uri Shulevitz’s classic textbook on the art and craft of children’s illustration. At the very least the illustrator interprets the text. And it’s his responsibility as much as the writer’s to keep the reader turning those pages. Starting with the first page -- usually on the right hand side -- and continuing with all of the following

pages on the right hand side. All of these pages must be “page turners.” Turning that page is part of the show, part of the art form and part of the reading experience.

Because under its disarming, pretty cover, the picture book is a crafty suspense delivery vehicle. Think hard on this fact as you imagine the words and passages marching across the rectangles of your storyboard. The answer to the child’s next question can only be found by turning the page. The only way to see what happens next is by turning the page. Hum along with rock ‘n roller Bob Seger, if you like, while you decide how to break up your story’s paragraphs and what goes where in your thumbnails.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe7yOccqdxI

Here’s another “good rule” for storytelling: As our reader turns pages to quell her growing curiosity/suspense, she must be pulled further and further into danger. Or calamity. Or trouble, at the very least. It’s not her trouble of course, but she’s following the character and unconsciously identifying with him. Maybe all readers are co-dependent. Anyway it is as if her trouble. And when she, like the character, finally admits that there’s a problem,

she/the character must decide on a course of action to solve or resolve it.

But to do this, she/the character must first get right with Reality first. Because results from this course of action could land either way. (In an exciting story, there’s never a guarantee of a good outcome or reward or even the personal safety for a character who acts.) The action must be a risk. The action + the chips falling where they may = the story’s climax. The character’s (and so our reader’s) end state + those settled chips = the story’s resolution. The picture book should lead us through this experience that is uncannily like real life (at its most worrisome.)

It should take us on a bit of snowboard ride. With the thumbnail storyboard, you can chart out where the ride will go. Across the hilly white topography of the character’s (and thus your reader’s) outer and inner adventure.

Which brings us back to those 17 rectangles. The story begins with a character’s want. It moves from his want to his crisis or dark moment. That trip can take a while in time and space (maybe three to five rectangles, or 6 to 10 pages.) It’s another whole slide (three to five rectangles, or 6 to 10 pages) for the crisis to evolve into a decision/action climax. And another bumpy few pages (a rectangle or two) for the chips to fall where they may and sort themselves out. The final page (usually a stand alone page on the left side) is the grace note, the epilogue, or sometimes the punch line that surprises us and makes us laugh.

If it, while knocking us over the head and tickling us, also illuminates the meaning of all that angst and action and chips flying and falling, then it really is a grace note.

So that’s what goes in the rectangles. Is this easy? About as easy as catching lightning in a bottle. Fortunately, for the illustrator, it’s not quite so bad. The lightning has already been caught. You just must make sure that everyone sees it and experiences the flash. You were looking for a challenge, right?

Your “homefun” for Session # 3: Choose one: 1.) Find a “story” – the one you’re working on, or a childhood memory, or a set of song lyrics, or a baking recipe -- anything that you can squeeze into a thumbnail storyboard of 17 rectangles. 2.) Keep your writer’s hat on. Dream up an adorable, but flawed character. Get him into trouble and let him figure his way out. 3.) Borrow an old fairy tale we all know and tell it your way. Choose one of these options for your “class project.” Whatever option you choose, try to find the je ne sais quoi Bob Seger quality in your incident…

… i.e. this happens, but then (turn the page) this happens, but then (turn the page) this happens, but then (turn the page…) I mean don’t be obnoxious about it but get that curiosity in there. Try on your writer’s hat. See if you can extract a meaning, insight, or epiphany from this sequence of events that is your “story.”

Take scissors and break up those lines of your story, or shopping list, whatever it is. Decide where the lines should go in your thumbnail storyboard. Be quite specific about which sentences and passages go where. (Number your pages if you have to, and ascribe the lines of text to those page numbers.) You really are being the storyboard editor here. Suspense, pacing, timing are all at your fingertips in this step.

“Homefun” Assignment # 2 Keep doing scribble sketches. (See Session #1 Draw the boxes first (pretend they’re pages) and scribble inside them. Remember it never matters what the scribble looks like. How could it? It’s the impulse -- the pre-action and action of the pose. It’s what the scene and subjects are doing -- not what anything looks like. Don’t worry about these scribble sketches, but just do a bunch of them.

“Homefun” Assignment # 3 Keep “scoping out” picture books and “checking in” (all right, pun intended) with your library. Study the books and see them fitting into 17 rectangles of content/imagery. Introduce yourself to the children’s librarian. Ask her about her favorite children’s picture books. If you live the U.S. ask her if she has a copy of School Library Journal and if you can look at it for a minute. SLJ carries entertaining short reviews of children’s books, including picture books, written by librarians all around the country. They comment on illustrations, too. Look at the display ads by publishers that are all

over the magazine. Mull the artwork on the children’s book covers you see in the ads.

Flipping through SLJ, can help us all become more sophisticated about what’s going on in the children’s book industry today. (We may not know the field as well as we think we do.) Do the same thing at a bookstore. Hang out in the children’s section. Visit with the bookseller and shoppers about their favorite books. It’s weird – everybody will have different opinions. If you haven’t done this in a while, put yourself through the experience of buying a picture book that you like. Do read it cover to cover before you give it to a little one as a birthday present.

“Homefun” Assignment #4 Explore the website of the Boston Globe’s Horn Book Magazine. https://www.hbook.com https://www.hbook.com/history/default.asp It’s a children’s literary review that takes very seriously the role of children’s books in our culture. Horn Book pays keen attention to picture books and illustrators. Your library may carry all the hardcopy issues. “Homefun” Assignment #5. Check out a link suggested by student Marsha Riti, a BFA grad and working designer

http://www.lookybook.com/index.php It’s Lookybook -- an impressive resource site that calls itself “The World’s Longest Bookshelf” and it really is like an online (searchable) home library.

Based in Mill Valley, California and co-founded by former Random House president and publisher Craig Virden, the site describes its mission:

“Creating a comfortable place where a curious and devoted audience can search, view, talk about, and buy from a diverse and rapidly expanding collection of picture books.”

300 so far -- and growing, reportedly. Books are displayed with their covers face up. You can go through them, examining the artwork, virtual page by page.

I know this session has been more like pushing the sled up the hill than snowboarding down it. Session #4 is coming up in just a few days. It will have a little more about laying out your book and drawing your storyboard. After that, in Session #5, we’ll be knee-deep in paint, using brushes and color. You’re going to learn some techniques. We won’t abandon drawing. We’ll be coming back to it later. But next month you’ll be on the crazy bobsled ride known as watercolor painting.

So get your ear-muffs, mitts, paint box and smock ready. You’ll need them.

Make Your Splashes; Make Your Marks: The power course on creating illustrations for

books, magazines and other media for children

Content © Copyright 2008 by Mark Mitchell