Developing a Picture Book Idea

Next steps with that sticky, pesky, and possibly exhilarating story

In our last paid subscriber deep dive, we talked about having a practice to slow down, catch, and record the story ideas as they fly by.¹ If you have a daily habit it gets easier to notice the many, many story ideas around us. Most of them are crap, but that doesn’t matter. Catching everything means includes sifting the duds from the gems. It’s this big net, full of everything that we start with.

Eventually, you stumble on something that may be, possibly — a great idea for a picture book.

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Hey! I’m an author and illustrator of books for kids. Drawing a Blank is about getting better at <waves at everything in the studio> out loud and as authentically as I can muster. Every Friday, I send out 5 things from my studio that week. It’s the kind of ground level “here’s what I’m thinking about and working on.” It’s free. Every other Wednesday, the paid subscribers go on a deep dive like this one. I hope it’s an encouraging and practical stop on your own creative journey. Let’s get better together, bit by bit. Also I use a lot of bad analogies.

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Then what? What do you do when you have a sticky book idea? The one that won’t leave you alone because its potential is that special? It’s soooo funny/serious/heartfelt/creative/new/simple yet powerful/awesome that it keeps you up at night? You dream endlessly of sharing your manuscript or book dummy with an agent or editor and then being whisked off into a dream creative cocoon on your way to sure fire success, of course. This is the logical and only first step when encountering a great idea.

But then what?

Here are some thoughts on next steps for developing that picture book idea: