How to Write & Illustrate Picture Books
How to Write & Illustrate Picture Books is an online course for those who have always wanted to create a picture book and want to know the nuts and bolts of how picture books are made and why they matter. Author, Eva Wong Nava will take you through the paces of writing a picture book, while illustrator and graphic novelist, Debasmita Dasgupta will take you step-by-step through the processes of illustrating your picture book. The award-winning author and illustrator duo will also answer questions on how to work with illustrators if you’re a writer and how to work with authors if you’re an illustrator. Packed with industry insights and expertise, this course is for those curious and passionate about picture book creation, and want to create their own. By the end of the course, you’ll have a first draft and storyboard of your debut picture book.
Week 1 (2 hours)
Eva: Basics of writing picture books
Smita: Basics of illustrating picture books
An overview of the basics of writing and illustrating picture book stories, focusing on narrative picture books. Let’s take a look at a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end, textually and visually. We'll also discuss the importance of identifying your target audience to ensure your story and illsutrations are suitable for the audience your picture book is aimed at.
Week 2 (2 hours)
Eva: Creating your Main and Secondary characters
Smita: Drawing Memorable Characters
In this session, we will create a memorable main character and the supporting characters that make the story come alive. We will look at some mentor texts to prompt you along. Come with your notebooks, pens and coloured pencils.
Week 3 (2 hours)
Eva: Drafting Your Story & Finding the Story Problem
Smita: Making Thumbnails & Storyboarding
Writing the first (awful) draft makes your story feel awfully real. Locating the Story Problem gives your story punch and propels it forward. And when you start storyboarding your scenes, you’ll be able to see your story come alive. You’ll see real-life examples of a draft and storyboard.
Week 4 (2 hours)
Eva: Emotions and Themes
Smita: Colour Theory and Composition
A good story leaves a lump in your throat. A great story opens the floodgates. Learn how to amp up the feels with words and colours to make your story unforgettable.
Week 5 (2 hours)
Eva: Understanding Voice & Tone
Smita: Finding Your Artistic Voice
Ah! That nebulous entity called ‘voice’. This week you’ll be hearing about how Eva and Smita took Voice by the reins to write and illustrate their picture books.
Week 6 (2 hours)
Eva: From Draft to Pitching your Manuscript
Smita: From Concept to Pitching your Illustration Portfolio
When it’s all done, it’s time to share it with the world! Let’s take a look at pitching your story to agents and editors. Includes tips on what agents and publishers want to see.
JOINING INSTRUCTIONS
We are really looking forward to welcoming you to How to Write & Illustrate Picture Books. The key details of the course are below, as well as the link you’ll need to join each class..
When: Monday 3rd November - Monday 8th December, 6:30pm - 8:30pm, Online (UK time)
Where: Online
Joining Link: How to Write & Illustrate Picture Books | Meeting-Join | Microsoft Teams
You can download Teams free on your computer, or join via the web: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ww/microsoft-teams/download-app
SLACK
Finally, we will be using Slack during the course, which is a free, easy-to-use platform that enables everything related to the course to be stored in one place. Please click on the below link to gain access to the Slack workspace that we’ve created for this course:
https://join.slack.com/t/howtowriteill-yys6979/shared_invite/zt-3gj8v1a5c-RxE6OKgRl56i38zd6hn8JQ
When you arrive in Slack you’ll see the workspace is called ‘How to Write and Illustrate Picture Books’, with several channels within that workspace. A quick bit of guidance on how these different channels will work:
- Course Etiquette: We’ve put together some course etiquette guidelines. Please have a read and comment to confirm that you’ve seen them.
- General: This is a general discussion board. We will all have access but it’s not something we’re going to get involved in. This is for you guys to chat amongst yourselves, discuss, share advice and book recommendations! A great way to start would be to introduce yourselves, share info about your writing journeys so far and let the rest of the group know what you’re working on and why you’re here.
- Picture Books Course: We will be sharing the homework in here each week for your reference, as well as recordings of every class.
Everyone involved in the course will have access to all channels by default. It’s therefore important to make Slack work for you, so please take a bit of time to manage your notifications. You can do this by right-clicking on the channel and then selecting ‘Change notifications’.
We will also be sharing recordings and homework by email, but this is a space for you guys to connect with each other and build your writing community. Myself and James will also be available via email so if you’d prefer to reach out to us via email then please do get in touch.
