Masterclass D: Picture Books with Essie White

Storm Literary agent/partner Essie White is passionate about creating beautiful and meaningful books for children. Her passion started as an educator when she learnt that providing children with exceptional literature was imperative in education.

Five years ago, Essie made the seamless transition from educator to agent – both careers harbour a true love for children’s literature.

“YOU NEED GRAB CHILDREN’S ATTENTION FROM THE VERY BEGINNING”

Essie’s masterclass was generous and thorough providing all participants with important takeaways.

• Title – make it good and alert the reader to the concept. The title must also set the tone, introduce the character and setting.

• First sentence – make it better than the title. It must snag attention and hold it immediately.

• Narrative Arc – start with a great plot and begin with a ‘bang’. Immediately alert the reader to the crisis and establish the character’s motivation. Motivation drives the story forward. The protagonist responds to the crisis or cause which results in ACTION. The Protagonist then overcomes!

• Create a satisfying ending – bring the story full circle. It must also resonate deeply.

• Unforgettable Characters – ensure they are fully developed and they are authentic, memorable and create merchandising opportunities.

• Language and word choice – Be selective – 500 to 750 words or less. Non-Fiction can be longer.

• Verbs – Vivid, Active, and Visual!

• Cadence – rising and falling of voice.

• Convey emotion – be authentic to the character

• Avoid rhyme (it does work occasionally).

Essie outlined some Universal Themes in picture books.:

• Firsts: First day of school, first pet, first birthday, first unicorn costume!

• Momentous Events: New baby, new pet, Doctor visit etc.

• Relationships: Parents, siblings, grandparents, neighbours, teachers, community members

• Animals and more!

“A GOOD BOOK EMPOWERS AND GIVES PURPOSE, IT KEEPS KIDS THINKING.”

The necessary collaboration between author and illustrator

Author –

1. Provide illustration notes but give artist room to breathe

2. Share research/background info

3. Offer feedback on sketches (when asked)

Illustrator –

1. Do your research (especially non-fiction)

2. Accuracy is imperative

3. Be selective

4. Sometimes your vision needs to be flexible.

Illustrations should:

• Help children understand what they are reading.

• They should enhance the text and move the narrative forward.

• Stimulate imagination and allow children to analyse.

• Help create the mood of the story.

• Must have storytelling capabilities and establish the primary character…especially in wordless picture books (very popular in the US right now).

Essie also spoke about the use of shapes and colours to create mood and feelings in illustrations.

• Yellow – hope

• Red – anger

• Blue – calm

• Grey – gloom

• Circle – warmth, completeness, wholesome

• Rectangles – ridgity, inflexibility, enclosed

• Triangles – Hierarchy, power, strong, solidarity, substantive

Click on the video for a visual snapshot of the session by Roving Reporter, Giuseppe Poli.

Essie’s final message was so important.

The goal of picture books should be to:

Provide a beautiful experience that leaves the reader impacted, empowered, challenged and changed. Good children’s literature is transformative!

by Rachel Noble

#SCBWISyd

Masterclass C: Writing Great Dialogue with Zoe Walton

How to take your MG and YA dialogue to the next level

Zoe Walton’s practical masterclass on Writing Great Dialogue provided an excellent opportunity to learn, reflect and ultimately improve our dialogue writing skills. Zoe mentioned that the dialogue in a story is often one of the first things that makes a book stand out to a publisher.

Zoe Walton with some of her favourite examples of books with great dialogue

Zoe’s top tips for writing great dialogue:

• Punctuation is important. Revision of basic punctuation rules and styles were addressed regarding attribution tags, when to use a full stop versus a comma.

• Currently, publishers generally prefer simple attribution tags as they essentially disappear and don’t intrude upon the story. For example, ‘said’ is most preferred, but also ‘asked’ ‘replied’ etc.

• Zoe recommended the book Self-editing for fiction writers and discussed the preference for strong verbs, and few/no adverbs.

• You don’t always need a dialogue tag, as long as the context clearly indicates who is speaking, however, it may be preferable to use especially with younger readers who are still learning the conventions of language.

• Use beats (actions to break up dialogue) effectively – to illuminate your story, control pacing, show context and who is doing what. Don’t overuse or insert irrelevant actions and keep consistent (e.g. if remove hat early in the dialogue, remember to pick it up on the way out)

• Find a balance between simple dialogue tags, no tags and beats.

• Search your writing for your bad habits in beats – e.g. actions you frequently overuse for your characters, such as everyone nods or shrugs or sighs or has many ways of smiling or you always talk about what people’s eyes are doing.

“THE PURPOSE OF DIALOGUE IS TO REVEAL CHARACTER AND SHOW INTENTION”

The purposes of dialogue include to reveal character and show intention in all our scenes. However, dialogue is not real speech, it is designed to give the illusion of real speech. Real speech has all sorts of filler words, half-finished sentences, interruptions, etc. Also, people don’t always say what they mean, or they lie. Use the things we do in real life speech, but wisely and sparingly, so that it sounds real (not like a pre-memorised speech). When writing dialogue, ask yourself:

• How can dialogue inform character and plot?

• What characters say (or don’t say) and how they say it tells a lot about them

• Can use dialogue to foreshadow, throw red herrings, propel plot, build suspense, precipitate the climax, etc.

• Authenticity

• Dialogue needs to be authentic to the character, e.g. age, era, socio-economic class, education level, etc

• What does the character like or dislike?

• What do they eat, wear, do, etc?

• Aim to write dialogue that shows a rounded character, e.g. not just bossy or formal etc, different elements just like in a real person.

When revising your dialogue, ask yourself:

• Would this character say this?

• Would a teen or child say this?

Zoe also recommended another book called The Magic Words by Cheryl Klein.

Zoe getting class members to ‘speak easy’ aka write dialogue

Exercises

There were many opportunities to practise skills during the masterclass. For example, attendees were asked to consider their protagonist and how they would have learned the language they use:

• What was the environment and household like that they grew up in?

• What is their favourite book, band, movie, song on the radio?

• Who do they hang out with – e.g. peers, adults, younger kids?

• Do they have distinct characteristics from their influences?

• What do they like to do? Remember characters like people, have multiple aspects, e.g. do they run marathons but also hide chocolate in the cupboard?

• Remember, your characters likes and dislikes will inform their dialogue.

Now create two columns:

1. in column 1, list things about your character (from the questions above and more)

2. in column 2, write some dialogue they might say that stems from the point in column 1.

Final tips

• Don’t overuse accents

• In general, don’t use odd phonetic spelling for a character’s dialogue – it can confuse younger readers and not always be interpreted as you intend

• Find words or phrases that are different from how other characters speak.

• Remember, the same character will act and speak a bit differently when they are with different people (e.g. with parent, friend, teacher)

• Be wary of using slang and do not use stereotypical language, e.g. if someone has English as a second language, do not use language that could be seen as insulting, in fact they may be more likely to have a formal manner of speaking depending on how and where they learnt English.

• When displaying a character’s thoughts, either keep in normal font or in italics, never in quotation marks.

• Be very aware to never use racist, sexist or ableist language (e.g. words like crazy, dumb, idiot, etc).

• Make sure your characters are unique individuals, not stereotypes. Never portray characters in a way that may be harmful to readers.

• Avoid info-dumps – weave back story in or remove it.

Zoe recommended another book called The Art of Editing.

The masterclass concluded with a reminder to listen to conversations all around us and some advice based on the work of Joseph Conrad: every word must carry the story forward, and it must be carried faster and faster and more intensely.

by Cherri Ryan

#SCBWISyd

Masterclass B: Picture Book Illustration 101: Bringing My Dead Bunny Alive

Learning how to bring illustrations alive and their impact on the visual narrative is key to successful picture book illustration. James Foley used his CBCA shortlisted book My Dead Bunny as an example of picture book illustration in this captivating master class.

James talked about how character design, choice of media, colour, line, typography, image boundaries and composition all affect the visual narrative, and how you can control these variables in your own work.

Research:

• All books begin with research.

• Use reference photos to help develop characters, setting and colours.

Character design:

• Sketch and re-sketch the character in many different ways.

• Try a variety of styles: realistic, cartoon etc.

• What size and shape will their body have? tall, short, solid, circles, triangles, squares

• What type of body language or mannerisms wills they how?

• What colour scheme, patterns, line work style will be used for the illustrations?

• Develop Character Reference Sheets showing the character from the front view, three quarter view and profile.

• Develop Cast Sheets to see all the characters next to each other.

• Check to see if the characters are identifiable from one another. As a silhouette you should be able to tell who each character is from their outline.

Planning - storyboards, dummy books:

James shared a few of his storyboards and dummy books. He described this step like jigsaw pieces coming together to make a complete picture.

Storyboards and dummy books show:

• Pacing and page turns.

• Illustrations with the text placed on the page.

• That the important information is not in the gutter or bleed area.

• How the extra story layers work with the main story.

• That eye movement pathways from left to right for both the text and images.

Media Testing:

James used a range of images from books to highlight how media choice creates the tone of the story. Media may include but is not limited to; watercolour, acrylic, pencil, pastels, paper collage, digital, mud and food.

Take a look at some of the books James showed the masterclass and the media they were created with:

• Flood by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley

• I’m a Dirty Dinosaur by Janeen Brian and Ann James

• Water Witcher by Jan Ormerod (out of print but accessible in Story Box Library)

• Harry and Hopper by Margaret Wild and Freya Blackwood (out of print)

• Quentin Blake illustrations from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

• The Last Peach by Gus Gordon

• The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

Final Artwork

The last step of creating a picture book is creating the final artwork. The typography has been chosen and the visual narrative is cohesive. All the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are in the right spot.

Now it is your turn to create using this illustration process. Participants had a short amount of time to develop characters using the process and the story Ugly Fish written by Kara LaReau.

Happy Illustrating!

Leanne Barrett

#SCBWISyd

Extras - Video Links:

Ann James Painting with Mud is my Medium

Quentin Blake How to Draw Willy Wonka

Bruce Whatley Drawing Your Characters with Bruce Whatley

Gus Gordon Meet Gus Gordon, Story Box Library

Eric Carle Eric Carle on the illustration of the Brown Bear Series