6 Tips to Writing and Illustrating a Book

Have you ever said, I want to write a book, but just don’t know how to get started? Or, I wonder how writers and artists come up with ideas?

I’ve written a lot on these topics over the last few months and wanted to pull everything together in one place to make it easy for you to access. For each below, you’ll see the title of the original post, along with a bit of the post. You can click each title to read the full post with images.

Inspiration Behind the image

How do the images end up in the book?

Each time that we do a book reading, this question emerges, usually first from a child, but, if you glance around the room, you’ll see the adult’s heads nodding as well. There is a general understanding that the images don’t just end up there, but how they get there seems to be a mystery. We’ve all typed words and then printed them on a page, but, most people, haven’t created an image and seen it appear in print on a page. I’d like to change that.

You have magical ideas and beautiful stories, so let’s explore how to get them onto the page. Throughout you’ll see images of the original artwork + what it looks like in the printed book. However, I want to be honest, this doesn’t show the mess of cut paper and abandoned layouts, those didn’t get photographed. Let no one fool you, there are ALWAYS countless drafts of text and images that are thrown to the side in my case, piled on the floor.

I’m sharing how I go from original work to the printed book, and this isn’t the only way to do it. (There are other posts where I go into more detail about determining page breaks and what will be an image and what won’t)This is one way. One way that works for me. You’ll want to experiment and find out what way works for you, and sometimes that means copying someone else’s way first, and finding out what you like and what you don’t.

How to Illustrate Text

Author of Fixed, Amy Herman talks about the need to start with a draft whenever you’re trying to solve a problem. ” Problem-solving, like creating art, involves making a coherent narrative out of materials- or information- that one has gathered. The artist may begin with nothing more than raw materials, but the process quickly turns into putting those materials together in a way that conveys meaning. It’s the process of creating order from disorder. This is the stage where the artists begins drafting.”

Often, problem-solving is viewed with two narrow of a scope. We think of problems as negative things that only need solving because we need them to go away, or we need to find the answer to pass the test. If you only view problem-solving as a negative thing, you’re missing out on all of the fun.

How to Bring Your Creative Book Idea to Life

I talk to a lot of people that have dreams of writing a book, but that’s where the dream ends, because they don’t feel like pitching publishers, but also find the steps to figure out how to self-publish overwhelming. That was me. Until, I committed to figuring it out, and now 10 books later, I’m here to share the steps with you.

Yesterday, I shared about the process of determining what illustrations you want to add, so if you have words on a page, but still, need images, check out that post first, and then come back. And, since a lot of teachers read this site, even if YOU don’t have dreams of publishing a book, this is a great way to teach your students about writing, interpreting words into images, and career options.

Let’s get started.

How to Illustrate a Children’s Book

If you enjoy drawing, making images, or even looking at children’s books, it’s probably crossed your mind at least once, that it would be fun to create a book of your own, but then you realize all of the things that you would need to learn in order to make this happen, and move onto a new daydream.

When I started working on the illustrations for the first book that I did with my brother, How the Bear Met the Bee, I had many of the same feelings, and in fact, I started and stopped working on the project many times. I also started over A LOT.

Now that I’ve illustrated a few books, I have a pretty solid system. So, let’s learn how to illustrate a children’s book.

Step 1: Determine the page breaks.

Whether you wrote the story or you’re illustrating a story that someone else wrote, you need to determine where the text breaks for each spread.

2 indicators that I look for when determining spreads.

• Look for nature breaks, where does a thought or sentence end?
• Where is a place that causes pause, but also will make the reader want to turn the page to find out what happens next?

What I learned from Illustrating a Children’s Book

What do you like to create?

While I spend a lot of time helping others uncover their creative process and how that connects to the type of work that they create, sometimes, I forget to do the same for myself.

While studying Art Education at Messiah University, I realized that I enjoy creating beautiful function objects, which led to many years of designing and selling one-of-a-kind handwoven scarves.

2020 and 2021 were years filled with many unplanned transitions. Moving, changing job titles, and surgeries. These unplanned events seemed to take up all of the open spaces that I used to fill with creating, and as time passed, I forgot how much joy creating brings to my life.

Where Does a Story Start?

Where does the story come from?

How do you find your inspiration and ideas?
These are not easy questions to answer and the process cannot be boiled down into a simple list, but I will attempt to allow you to peek into the window and get a glimpse of the process.

My children both have enjoyed a wonderfully goofy book entitled “Because a little bug went ka choo.” My wife has recited it to them by memory in order to get us through rough patches on long hikes and bike rides.  At some point I decided that it might be fun to write a book of similar inspiration; where one event directly leads to another event which often seems unrelated and crazier than the last.

I settled on the bee and bear characters for their obvious alliteration as well as the fact that in real life their shared love of honey often brings them together.  Now I simply needed to bring them together in an unusual and unexpected way.