My answer to this question was so long that I recorded it, if you want to listen instead of read:
Nolan asks:
What’s the process of going from having a bunch of ideas for picture books to a published book? I know there’s a lot of work in there, but what is the work? How do I get there?
Hi Nolan! This is a great question. You have ideas for books, and you see what a finished book looks like, but it feels like a mystery, how does the idea get from scribbles in your notebook to a book someone can buy?
First of all, write down all your ideas, always. You may choose to have a dedicated notebook for your ideas, or you may keep track of them some other way. Write them all down.
Then, see what ideas are the loudest. Which ones either have layered and compelling lead characters or a clearly-defined concept? So it might be a voicey main character who could conceivably be in many different stories, but that character is strong enough that they are talking to you now, in your head. OR it might be such a strong hook/concept/premise that you’re getting tangential ideas for what can happen on each page.
Choose one of those ideas. And start writing. I write my first drafts longhand in a notebook, because then they look messy, not like books yet, and I can be more freewheeling. I might write a beginning, stop after the first scene, and then start to ask myself questions. I might get halfway and stall and then start freewriting about different ways it can end. But I generally try to sit there for 30-60 minutes and come up with at least a framework for how the story might work.
You might have a different process. That’s fine. Figure out how to write a version of the idea as a story, from beginning to end. Then put it aside for a little bit, and try another one of your ideas. Get that feeling of going from story beginning to story middle to story end.
When you have some distance (a few weeks, at least) from that first draft, go back and revise it. Critique it like someone else wrote it. What’s working? What’s not? What’s the story about? Is anything happening? Maybe see if you can write a pitch as a sort of mission statement to write toward, knowing it will change (I have a video about writing pitches, here). Do you need a plot? (I have a post about plots, here.) What’s the heart of your story? Is it about friendship, or loneliness, or wanting to be alone, or finding yourself, or about making the world’s best pot of soup? Pick one. If that doesn’t work, pick a different one. Play around. It’s a picture book! You have freedom to make cows fly if it makes sense for your book, and you have freedom to play with points of view and tense and plot while you’re revising.
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