Writing a Children’s Book Series: Focus on One Idea

I have seen a lot of picture book manuscripts coming through and they all seem to have one thing in common – they lack focus.

The thing is children’s picture books aren’t very long. They range from 500 to 1,500 words and this is why the writing has to be very tight.

New writers think that writing a children’s book is easier than trying to write something longer but they don’t realise the amount of work or the expenses that are involved in producing one.

The main problem that new picture book writers seem to have, is having too many ideas in one story. For some reason they think having all these different ideas included will keep the reader’s interest. What they don’t realise is that focusing on more than one idea in a children’s picture book can produce the opposite effect on the reader.

Instead of having one well developed idea, the writer has two or three ideas that aren’t developed enough.

The reader doesn’t have enough time to become involved in the story because they are forced to consider a new idea before the old one is fully developed. Sometimes the old and new ideas overlap each other and make the story confusing.

If your children’s picture book manuscript is suffering because of too many ideas, you need to take a step back and think about the picture book as if you are yet to start writing.

What? I’ve already written it, why would I start again?

Yes, that’s right, but to fix this issue you need to go back to the development stage or if you just wrote the story without any planning, now is the time to think about it.

So go back to your original notes on the picture book or grab a fresh sheet of paper and pen and really think about what the main idea of your story was. If you don’t know which one was your main idea, write down all the ideas you have in the picture book and look at them.

Which one is most important for you to tell in this story?

Are the other ideas something that should have their own story instead of trying to crowd them into one story?

Once you have figured out the main idea, go through your manuscript and highlight only the parts that relate to that one idea. This is your main story material. Go through and remove anything that you feel no longer belongs and then read the story out loud to see if it makes sense.

You may need to further develop this idea before it is readable, but writing a children’s book is a art in itself. Put in the effort and your book will rise above the thousands of average children’s books on the market.