Bedtime Monster News!

Raven Tree Press has put up the media kit and activity sheets for Bedtime Monster! There's an interview with me in which I give too much information--does everyone really need to know that I write in bed? What was I thinking! The activity sheets include a game of Hang Monster and a super cute coloring sheet from the book, which is illustrated by Bonnie Adamson. Exciting stuff. I feel so official now. If you want to check them out you can download them at the Raven Tree Press website.

Obviously

Yes, I have been a bad blogger lately. Truth be told, John Lechner held up this blog last month and if it wasn't for him there wouldn't have been much of anything going on. I had big plans for when John was here. I was going to post all sorts of things about writing and querying and such, but sometimes life gets in the way.

So here I am, half way into the month of May and I've got nothing. No new Illustrator of the Month, no Unread interview lined up. Apparantly I need a break. I've been hesitant to say anything here because, what if I suddenly want to post something? Maybe I'll post this and then become super blogger woman(okay, that's highly doubtful.) I have lots of things to catch up on, in my writing life and in my regular life, and I suppose I need to focus on that. I've been paying for webhosting for at least 6 months now and have yet to create a website, and most importantly(as far as writing goes) I want to make a big push to get my material out into the towering slush piles gracing editor's and agent's desks. I mean, I'm not going to sell a thing if I don't get anything out there!

So yeah, I'll still be around, posting sometimes, twittering too much, and maybe facebooking every so often. I think I'm going to let the interviews go for a couple months until I can get back into the swing of things, or for as long as I can stand it. I love asking writers and illustrators about what they do!

Tips On Writing & Drawing Comics for Kids

I've been stoked to feature John Lechner as my Illustrator of the Month for April. John is a fabulous illustrator, writer, animator, and designer with tons of experience and expertise. To wrap up his frolic on my blog, John is sharing some tips on writing and drawing comics for kids, something he knows a lot about. John has two comic style books for kids published by Candlewick Press, Sticky Burr: Adventures in Burrwood Forest, and Sticky Burr: The Prickly Peril. He also posts an ongoing Sticky Burr web comic, which is lots of fun.


Tips On Writing & Drawing Comics for Kids
by John Lechner

All comic artists have their own ways of working and theories about comics. I'm going to share some of my own thoughts and ideas, drawn from my own experience.

To write successfully for children, you need to apply all the rules of good writing, but even more so. The same applies to comics. When you write and draw comics for children, you need to strive for the most clear, well-scripted, well-paced and dynamic story you can create. I don't mean that comics for kids should be constrained or conventional, only that they should be good.

Comics and picture books have a lot in common, they both use words and pictures to tell a story, and the words and pictures usually share the load. The main difference is that in comics, the story is depicted in real time -- that is, the time it takes to read one page is roughly the time it would take for the scene to actually occur. The drama plays out in front of you like a movie or play. This requires many images, so the page is divided up into panels which are read in sequence; hence the term "sequential art".

Because of this unique quality, not all stories lend themselves to comics, just as not all stories make good picture books, or poems, or films. It helps if the story is not too wordy and has some “visual drama” -- that is, scenes that are especially dramatic when you see them played out in front of you. A comic about people having conversations is harder to pull off, though these can work well for older readers if the dialog is good. For younger children, visual action and humor that take advantage of the "real time" nature of comics can be very effective. (For instance, showing cause and effect, or a progression of events.)

Speech balloons are another key ingredient of comics. They don't merely show what is being said, they control the flow and pacing of a page as well. Their placement is just as important (if not more) than that of the images and panels on the page. When reading a page of comics, the eyes should be able to follow a simple and logical path from one balloon to another. If the order is difficult to decipher, it slows down the reader and brings them out of the story. When drawing your comic pages, if you find that your word balloons don't follow a logical path, you may need to change the artwork. And if you find you have so many words that you don't have room for the characters, you may need to trim.

So what distinguishes a comic for kids, as opposed to a comic for older teens or adults? Partly content, and partly simplicity of form and layout, just as a picture book or early reader uses well-spaced text and easy-to-follow pages. Believe it or not, simplicity is even harder to achieve with comics, because you have to convey so much information visually, and perhaps this is why comics for young readers are so hard to pull off.

And just as traditional books often bend the rules and make readers stretch, so can comics as long as you don’t lose your reader in the process. Every word, panel and line should contribute towards telling the story, there’s no room for anything superfluous in comics. It’s an amazing and versatile medium that I’m still learning about myself, and hope to be exploring for a long time to come.

A huge THANK YOU to John for taking the time to share his work here throughout the month. You can read more from John at his Illustrator of the Month interview and read his post on Creating a World in a Picture Book. Plus, you can learn all sorts of things about John and his work at his website http://www.johnlechner.com/
I'm certain we'll be seeing lots of great things from John. I can't wait.

The Road

When you live on a dirt road, you tend to drive slowly. Dirt isn't the best surface and when there's only room for one car on the road half the time it's good to be careful. I can't even tell you how many times I've come around a corner and about had my heart jump out of my chest because there's a big 'ole car heading straight for me on my side of the road. Today I came across this big grader. The county grades the road twice a year. Once in spring and once right before hunting season so the hunters will have a nice smooth driving experience while they're pointing their shotguns out their car windows. (Okay, I don't like hunting season if you can't tell. They should at least go walk to hunt for their kill. I mean, come on. I think car hunting is illegal anyway, but I digress.)

When they grade the road they basically scrape off the top of the road and then smooth it back on. Sounds silly, and it kind of is, but it definitely takes out the washboardy bumps and makes my neck a little less sore for a while. It takes about a week for the road grading to be completed in which time I have to drive the hump.



Being a one and a half lane road there isn't always enough room for the car to fit on the side of the dirt hump the grader makes. It's lovely when the pile in the middle is so high that it scrapes against the bottom of the car. It gets really exciting when there's a boulder. And so go the days on the mountain. Pretty exciting, huh.

A Different Way to Dummy a Picture Book

When writing a picture book it's good to dummy it up to see if there are enough unique scenes and good page turns. I've done it lots of times, torn a bunch of pieces of paper up into squares, stapled them together into a little book, cut and pasted my words onto the pages. It's fun and informative, but can time more time than I have, so I've come up with a different way to "dummy" my books.

Needing to write down a story real quick one day, and having ideas of where I wanted the art and page turns to be, I decided to get a few pieces of blank paper. I drew 32 squares. Number one by itself, number two and three together, and so on until the last page, 32, as a single square.(This is because 32 pages is the standard for picture books and the first and last page generally stand alone.) Then I wrote my story in the boxes.



Yes, I had to write small, but it fit just fine. I used pencil so I could move text around. I drew little sketches of the artwork I saw in my mind. No, I would not send it out with artwork, I'm not that good. But I can see the possibilities. I can see my words as a book, as a whole, on just a couple of pages. I can see where the writing and imagery are good and where the story needs to be improved.

It's nothing fancy, but it works. If you have even less time(as seems to happen periodically in life!), you can number your words according to page number. But I think this works better, and really doesn't take any extra time. Drawing the squares and doodles gives you something to do while you think.

If you have a different sort of way to dummy picture books I'd love to hear about it!

Creating a world in a picture book

by John Lechner

How does an illustrator create a world? There are many ways to do this, and every illustrator has their own individual tricks and techniques. Here are a few of the methods I use to create a world in my picture books.



1. Establishing Shot
This is a term often used in filmmaking, but pertains to books as well, and helps create context for your story. In my book A Froggy Fable, the setting and the frog's place in it was very important to the story, so I wanted to establish it early. You don't always need to do this at the beginning of the book, as long as it comes at a point when it's important to the story in order to give continuity to the world.



2. Time of Day/Year
When does your story take place? A specific time of day or season of the year can really help make a world come together. My book The Clever Stick takes place in the springtime. My first Sticky Burr book takes place in the summer and the second one in the autumn, and I tried to draw each scene accordingly.



3. Different Perspectives
Different viewpoints – high/low/near/far – not only add variety to scenes, but allow the viewer to see more of your world, and can heighten the drama. Looking down from above, up from below, or from the viewpoint of your main character, can completely change the flavor of your story. But don't go crazy, try to use perspective where it helps the story.



4. Atmosphere
By atmosphere I mean both the physical and the psychological one – are you depicting a happy scene or a scary one? Giving the viewer an emotional reaction to a scene draws them in and makes them a part of it. In this image from Sticky Burr: The Prickly Peril, I used a limited palette and jagged lines to enhance the mood.



5. Continuity
It's important to make your world and your characters look consistent from page to page. But consistency of style is often even more important than consistency of character. If the overall style of your drawings is consistent from page to page, your world will feel like it all fits together. Style is not easy to develop, and is best when it comes naturally. I find when I focus on the story and climb inside of it, the style follows on its own.

Those are just some of the ways an illustrator can create a tangible and believable world in a picture book. Can you think of others? Leave your suggestions in the comments!

You can learn more about author/illustrator John Lechner at his Illustrator of the Month interview and on his website www.johnlechner.com

Unpredictable

Life is unpredictable. Yes, we all know that but I've really been experiencing it lately. The sheer amount of weird things happening in my life is bordering on comical. And really, when life seems bad what can you do but laugh and be thankful that things aren't worse?

Sometimes such random things can happen. Things you would never dream of and certainly not expect or watch out for. It, of course, makes me think of writing. In good books unexpected and seemingly random things can happen, but they work in the context of the story to help the character grow. And we're never done growing. There's always more stories to tell.

If things can get worse, they certainly can get better. Here's to positivity! And perhaps a few good book ideas.