WHAT CAN TANK YOUR PICTURE BOOK?

What Can Tank Your Picture Book?

There are two main suspects:

One - a bad story.
Two - bad illustrations.

“Duh,” you’d say. “Pretty obvious.”

And you’d be right.
Yet you’d be surprised how often authors get so used to their own story that they stop seeing its flaws altogether.

So what actually makes a bad story?

How hard can it be to whip up a 500-word picture book? It’s not a novel, after all.
Pretty damn hard!
Very, very hard!

You have to be surgical with words, precise with meaning, able to evoke emotion - and more often than not, sprinkle some humor on top of all that.

One of the most common mistakes aspiring authors make is failing to mute their inner lecturer. Instead of telling a story, they start dispensing cliché “wisdom,” usually wrapped in cute (at best) illustrations. Kids are allergic to this. If the “lesson” is sitting right on the surface, chances are your book is DOA.

Another frequent failure: non-memorable characters.

We don’t remember everyone we meet in life, but we do remember the ones who are interesting, surprising, and a little different. The same goes for your characters. Don’t be shy! Make them quirky! Give them odd habits! Create contrast! Otherwise, your book heads straight to Yawnville.

And while I don’t believe you can’t go past 500 words, picture books that cram every page with too much text rarely perform well. Space matters. Silence matters. Let the illustrations breathe - and do some of the storytelling for you.

Making your book too vanilla won’t earn you any extra points either. The picture-book world isn’t all cute daisies and happy unicorns.

Don’t get me wrong - you can write about daisies and unicorns. But there’s a big difference between a story about a unicorn who loves smelling daisies and watching sunsets with his friends… and a story about a unicorn who eats all the daisies in his friend’s garden and then suffers the consequences (explosive rainbow diarrhea, anyone?).

Personally, I’d choose the second one.

Kids love chaos, contrast, and consequences. They enjoy things going a little wrong. A bit messy. A bit uncomfortable. That’s where you can be funny, and that’s what makes a story memorable.

Safe is forgettable.
Make your story stick!