Writing your first children’s book can be intimidating. From now until the release of your book, you will face a vast number of different challenges. That’s why today, I want to give you some advice on “How to Brainstorm Your First Children’s Picture Book” and discuss the process we went through, having recently completed a brainstorming phase for our first book.
Follow This Process
The very first thing we did was brainstorm story ideas, we already had some basic goals for the book laid out, but overall, we had no clue what story we wanted to tell. We knew we wanted to tell a story that had a clear lesson to be learned, one of course, that would be useful for the rest of the reader’s life.
This initial process can take some time and it’s extremely important that you don’t rush past it. This is the foundation of the book you will be building, and if built on a weak foundation, it may fall all apart.
Having done YouTube in the past, I learned this very valuable lesson firsthand. You can spend hours editing a masterpiece of a video, it could have everything done perfectly, but only if your foundation is built to last.
From music to the recording, to a tireless marketing campaign, but if the idea for the video is basic or uninteresting, then the video is very likely to reflect that in how it does. This, of course, goes for children’s picture books as well.
You need to ask yourself various questions about the concepts you come up with, “Does this story serve a purpose?”, “Does this story stick out from the possible millions I will compete with?”, “Am I adding something new, exciting, or valuable to the children’s picture book space?”.
If your book is bland, not unique, and hasn’t anything valuable to contribute to the world, this will reflect in your sales. No traditional publisher will be interested in your book and you won’t have much more success taking the self-publishing route.
So spend as much time here as you need, the more unique, more funny, more inspiring, and more valuable the story, the easier it will be to get your books in the hands of many. Also, a great concept does not necessarily take a long time to come up with if you’ve come up with a concept you really like, but it was one of your first ideas.
Then ask yourself these questions to see if it passes the “value” test. For our in-progress book, we went through these steps. I believe our story is extremely valuable, from humour to being fun to read aloud, to interesting characters, lessons learned, exciting adventure, and beautifully all put together with amazingly detailed illustrations.
Once you’ve settled on an idea you love, it’s time to start putting all the smaller pieces together to build this puzzle. What is the problem of the story? How do we get there naturally and what will the resolution be? What lessons will be learned?
In a children’s story, you may be dealing with a series of problems. In our book, our main character makes multiple mistakes throughout the book, learning a new lesson each time.
If your book doesn’t feature a problem and resolution, then it likely has some sort of other climax. You need to have something that pushes the reader toward the end, making them turn the pages, and if done well, the ending will also be satisfying, making the reader want to read more of your books.
With these core concepts, you are ready to start writing your book. Whether you rhyme or not will be up to you, what size your book is will also be up to you, all these little nuanced things matter a whole lot, so it is very important to do your research and figure out which path is best for your story.
It’s very important that you document as much as possible during the creation of your book. These won’t only act as a guide reminding you of the “whys?” of your book, but they will also be useful for the future marketing of your book.
In the future, you may want to tease concept art, or do what I’m doing here, and have examples for an audience you want to teach/share with. Whether you write/draw digitally or physically is up to you, but make sure you store all of this somewhere safe, as you wouldn’t want a “my dog ate my homework” situation.
I love analogies, so let’s make one. Pretend you are building a house instead of writing a book, you will live in this house (no “buts” about it). How does this change the way you put the foundation together? Are you really just going to leave some of the nails partially hammered in?
Are you really using eyelash glue instead of gorilla glue to put it all together? Everyone can and will tell how much work was put into your book, so build it with every little bit of your heart.
Once the foundation is built, going back and changing it later on will be extremely difficult, so don’t run this risk. You wouldn’t want your house to fall apart with you in it.
With all of this being said, I hope this acts as a useful tool for any other aspiring children’s picture book creators. My last word of advice is to have fun because as long as you’re having fun, you will naturally give your all and more.
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