NEW WEBSITE!!!!

So there's one thing I've established with this whole blog escapade: I can't blog.

It could be because I'm lazy, it could be because I'm too busy or it could be because I'm just crap at it. 

Whatever the reason, I'm closing down this blog (though I don't seem to be able to actually delete this thing - I'm just officially giving up and not adding to it anymore. It will sit here for time immemorial, silently mocking me).

The good news is that I've finally sorted out a new website (sort of) over at shivaunplozza.com.

So if you want to know what I'm up to, find out more about my debut novel Frankie, or what appearances I'll be making in your neck of the woods in the near future, then visit me there. 

I won't be blogging on it but I will be adding news updates, the occasional video and possibly one or two pictures of my cat (and when I say one or two...).

See you there :)

What I look for in the first page of YA manuscript

What I look for in the first page of YA manuscript

The first three chapters of your manuscript are vital for attracting and holding onto a commissioning editor’s interest. It will generally only take a reader the first page – even the first few paragraphs – to make their decision. Creating an opening that forces the editor or publisher to read on is not only an art but it’s necessary if you want to take the final steps toward publication. When assessing YA manuscripts, I look for the following qualities from the first page.

Voice

The number one thing is voice. Is it strong, unique and distinct? I definitely have a preference for first person or a close third person POV as this allows the author to create a strong character-focused voice that is evident from the first line. I also think it’s easier for the reader to develop a strong sense of empathy for the protagonist or, at the very least, a sense of intrigue/interest in them when reading first- or close third-person POV. Examples of YA books with outstanding voice from the very first page include The Knife and Never Letting Go Philip Ness and How I live Now Meg Rosoff.

Plot impact

I like to get a sense of the plot from the very beginning. I’m not interested in the girl who wakes up, looks at herself in the mirror (so we can have her describe her long black tendrils and porcelain complexion – in a self-effacing manner, of course), eats breakfast, chats with parent/sibling/pet dog, realises she’s late for school, blah blah blah. But I might be interested if I’m allowed to start reading at the point where she stumbles late into her classroom only to find her best friend is weirdly absent/a broodingly handsome new kid is sitting in her seat/everyone is whispering about what our heroine supposedly got up to at a party on the weekend, etc. Start at a point of upheaval and conflict – start as close to the inciting incident as possible.

Not too much (if any) backstory

Backstory can be feed into the story as it goes along and only where necessary – opening with large slabs of it is dull to read. For example, if you’re writing an epic fantasy avoid opening with a lengthy history lesson about your world. All that stuff can be learnt along the way and will slow down the opening.

Well-structured sentences (lack of errors)

Your skill and writing style should be evident from the opening page. The fact is I’m making judgements about your abilities as a writer from those first few paragraphs – how well you craft your sentences, how imaginative you are at description, how effective your dialogue is at revealing character and driving the plot forward. If your writing is clumsy it will slow down my reading and create a block between me (the reader) and my engagement with the story/characters. Syntax errors can be easily fixed by an editor but where they inhibit a reader’s understanding and enjoyment of the story, then you have a problem.   

 

Hopefully not a prologue (sorry!)

I’ve developed a bit of an anti-prologue stance of late so I’d have to say what I’m not looking for in a first page is a prologue. Perhaps because I’ve read so many books with them – more to the point, so many books with unnecessary prologues. Make sure you interrogate your prologue’s place in your novel before you decide it stays – what purpose does it serve (that isn’t served elsewhere in the novel)? Is it really just a place to dump a heap of background information/set-up? Is it too long (no more than two pages)? How well does it relate to the main thrust of your story?

Happy writing 

How to make you Children's or YA book leap off the slush pile

I wrote an article for December’s The Victorian Writer on how to get your manuscript off the slush pile. There’s only so much you can say in 700 words so I thought I’d delve a little deeper into this topic here, but I also thought I'd focus a little more on children’s and YA.

Working the slush pile for a children’s and YA publisher is one of my day jobs so I read hundreds and hundreds of submissions and after a while it gets a bit frustrating to see the same issues pop up again and again. The thing is, I’m sure many writers don’t know about these errors and without knowing it, how can they improve the chances of their submission being one of the very few manuscripts that are plucked from the slush pile for publication? So while all the general advice from my The Victorian Writer article still stands (especially the bit about making sure your synopsis covers the key plots points and gives away the ending – that’s very important!), here are some more specific suggestions for all you children’s and YA writers out there:

Keep your author bio relevant and think hard about your point of difference. In children’s publishing, how often do you think people use the ‘I’m a mother’ or ‘I’m a father’ line to explain why they’re the right person for writing a children’s book? The answer is, without exaggeration, every single person. Being a parent does not necessarily make you a good children’s writer (it doesn’t make you a bad one either of course). There are plenty of highly successful children’s writers who were not parents and plenty more who couldn’t even stand children (I’m looking at you Roald Dahl!). The point is, being a parent does not make you unique or help you to stand out in the slush pile.

Quite a lot of submissions for children’s and YA come in from school teachers too. Again, being a school teacher doesn’t necessarily make you a good writer – you might understand what children enjoy but there’s a difference between understanding good writing and being able to create it. Think about what you’ve done as a teacher that makes you a good children’s writer. Be as specific as possible.

When you’re asked to identify comparison titles, avoid saying 'there are no books like mine'. This happens a lot. I once read a submission with exactly this line but the problem was the author had written a paranormal romance about vampires. Your work is not an island and it is, almost probably (read: definitely) not wholly unique. All books share something in common with other books – themes, character types, subject matter, tone, style, setting, etc. Acknowledging this is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a really good thing.

When you say there is nothing like your work, you make yourself look a bit silly (or ignorant. Or worse, a liar). Remember, the person reading your work is employed in publishing. They love books and they read A LOT. If they work in a specialised area like children’s then they will have read widely in this area. They will know there are books with a similar storyline, similar theme, or a similar style to your work.

When a publisher asks you to identify comparison titles, it’s not a trap to get you to admit that your book isn’t entirely unique. They want to know where you see your work sitting. They want to know that you understand the market and your readers. They want to know that you understand your own writing by being able to place it alongside similar titles. They want to know that there are other successful books similar to yours and that there is a strong, viable market for your book. You do yourself a disservice when you don’t answer this question in your submission.

Also, do not draw attention to the fact that the form or genre is new to you and that you ‘have no idea what other books are out there for YA/Children’ (I’ve read this more than you’d expect). You may literally have no idea what other YA/Children's books are like but do something about it. Go to a bookstore and browse the shelves. Talk to kids you know or teachers you know or corner a children’s librarian (they're wonderful people). Do research. You may discover that there are hundreds of titles out there far too similar to yours (the story of a high school girl who meets and falls in love with a vampire has been written so maybe shelve that project for a while) or that your work is similar enough to a few other titles but unique enough to be highly saleable. I would also like to add that writing a book in a genre and for an audience you know nothing about is rarely a good idea and almost definitely shows in your writing. Know your audience and know your genre.

Make sure you have a really clear understanding of the needs of the age group you are writing for. Partly, this means being aware of the form (have a close look at the picture books you might own and see how they’re structured – a picture book is pretty different to a short story or a chapter book – you can’t just write a short story and then call it a picture book). It also means choosing language and sentence structures that are right for the reader’s ability (avoid using complex sentence structures in picture books for example). I also feel that some ideas lend themselves to certain age groups so make sure you read widely in the genre to get a feel for this. Have a clear idea of expected word counts for age groups (a picture book should be no more than 1000 words for example).

Good luck!

The Art of the Dreaded Synopsis

Recently I conducted an interview with the truly incomparable Clare Allan-Kamil on the subject of synopsis writing. As the synopsis is the first example of your writing an agent, editor or publisher sees, it’s vital to get it right – if they don’t like your synopsis they might not even bother to read your sample chapters. As daunting as it seems, there are tricks and tools you can use to make your synopsis stand out. 

This interview is also available on the Writers Victoria website.

Why do publishers/agents need to see a synopsis? Can’t they just read the submitted novel?

You are asked to submit a synopsis because the commissioning editor (or equivalent) will assign the reading of your manuscript according to the genre. They’re matchmakers who like to ensure that the right person reads your work. So, they will give a literary manuscript to an editor who specialises in the literary genre and a crime manuscript to an editor who specialises in crime (do you really want someone who specialises in cookbooks assessing your historical fiction?). Commissioning editors do not have time to read your entire manuscript in order to decide who best to assess it. A synopsis allows them to sort manuscripts quickly and effectively.

Secondly, publishing houses receive countless manuscripts on a weekly basis; sadly, they do not have time to read every manuscript. A synopsis is a quick and effective way for them to sort through which manuscripts are worth their limited time.

Lastly, if you as the author can’t explicate what it is that you’re writing about in one to one-and-a-half pages then the book is likely to be just as rambling and unstructured. In a way, publishers are forming an understanding of you from the very first paragraph of the synopsis – do you know what you’re writing about, can you succinctly explain your work to others, do you know about structure? 

Why do you think the synopsis is so important to get right?

The synopsis is your novel’s flagship. It provides the assessor with a profound first impression of your work and you as a writer. So, your synopsis must be clear, it must show that you understand what it is that you’ve written, and must demonstrate a solid understanding of your readership and the market.

As editors have less and less time to spend trawling through the slush pile they need the synopsis to help them determine: where your book sits in the market, who the readership is, what genre of book it is and what it’s about. And they need it done five minutes ago!

Also, a publisher needs to know that the person they are considering giving a publishing contract to is cogent and clear about their writing. A publisher can’t afford to have an author incapable of speaking about their book at book launches, in interviews and at festivals.

Importantly for the author, a synopsis can help focus your work – it’s a great way to check if your structure is sound, if there are any lulls in the action, or if your characters have a weak emotional arc. In this way, the synopsis is a blueprint – an architectural plan – for your novel. It’s not just for your pitch; it provides a structure for you as you’re writing. It’s a good idea, therefore, to write a synopsis at the beginning, the middle and the end of your writing process. 

It’s important to realise that you can have a fantastic book that will languish in the slush pile simply because the synopsis didn’t sell the quality of the book well enough.

What are your top tips for writing a good synopsis?

Engage immediately

You absolutely have to engage the reader in the first two lines as well as capture who you’re writing for. You can, for some kinds of books, start with a question derived from the thesis of the book. For instance, for a non-fiction submission about starting up a small business you wouldn’t say ‘this is a book about small businesses’ (because that would be dull). However, you might start with a question: have you ever considered opening your own business? Are you tired of working for other people? This kind of opening is already informing the assessor that you know who your audience is and you know how to engage their interest quickly. Also, bring to the fore a sizzling quote and place it straight after the introduction. This will also help with immediate engagement.

Your tagline needs to be perfect

The tagline for your book needs to come at the very beginning – a succinct and captivating sentence that sums up your book’s thesis, audience and uniqueness to the market. It’s worth spending a lot of time crafting this one sentence. You need to find the sentence that makes the reader go: oh, that’s interesting, I’ll read on. Revise your tagline until it’s perfect; this will take time.

Choose your comparison titles carefully

At the end of the synopsis, it’s a great idea to link your writing to comparable titles. When doing this think carefully about who to compare yourself and your work to. If you compare your work to Margaret Atwood but you actually write spy fiction in the vein of John Le Carré, this does not reflect well on your understanding of the industry, of genres and your own writing. If you are lucky enough to have a publisher contact you, they are going to want you to talk about why you liken your work to Margaret Atwood. If you listed her because you thought it would look good but you’ve never actually read her, this will not go down well. Be honest and do your research.

What are the key mistakes authors make when writing a synopsis?

Telling the ENTIRE story

The synopsis, while it does need to cover the basic storyline, should focus on the themes or thesis at the heart of the story. This is why it’s a great idea to have your five second pitch well-practiced; if you’re fortunate enough to bump into an editor at a party, instead of panicking and then launching into a rambling retelling of the entire story, you know what the key narrative arc of your story is and can express it in a way that reveals the novel’s broader themes (and you can do it in one or two captivating sentences). You can apply this thinking to your synopsis – it isn’t a retelling of every event in the novel. A synopsis covers the broad brushstrokes, the pivotal turning points and the character’s emotional arc.

Poor spelling and grammar, and other errors

The minute an editor spots that you’ve misspelt the name of the author you’re comparing your writing to, that one of your main characters appears to have an unexplained name change half-way through and that your use of punctuation is random at best, they will not look at your work favourably. The synopsis is a professional document and you are approaching a publisher with the desire to do business with them – so treat it like a business document. Have a trusted friend (who is good at spelling and grammar) look over your work. In fact, have several trusted friends look over it. Errors make your work look amateurish and indicate that you don’t care enough about your work to get it right. Lots of errors also signal long hours for a copyeditor and a drain on the publisher’s limited finances.

Not telling the opening and closing of your story

Publishers are not going to steal your work. They’re just not. So you don’t have to worry about holding back on the good bits. In fact, you must tell the publisher the good bits – you’re trying to sell your work to them so why would you leave out what makes your writing special? It’s like trying to sell a new medical treatment without revealing that it cures cancer. You must reveal how your novel opens, what the central plot is, what the biggest twists are and how it all ends. The publisher wants to know if your book is any good and where it’s going to fit in the market so they can’t be ill-informed by a patchy synopsis.

Is there a perfect structure for a synopsis?

A perfect structure involves getting to the point quickly, giving an indication of the audience early on and keeping it brief. No matter what, your synopsis should never exceed the publisher’s requirements on length: if a publisher asks for a one page synopsis then they mean one page. In particular, the character arc should be made very clear in the synopsis – how does the main character/s change over the course of the novel? What do they learn?

How long should a synopsis be?

Ideally a synopsis should be kept to a minimum but different publishers have different requirements. Some publishers want a three page synopsis while others only want half a page. Stick to what the publisher asks for. It’s a good idea to have more than one synopsis prepared, from a single paragraph to six pages. 

Is there anything you think should not go in a synopsis?

The belt, buckle and braces

Avoid overloading your synopsis with unnecessary details, especially biographical. Some people make the mistake of providing their full name, place of birth, where they went to school, what their fifth grade teacher wrote in their school report, the time their bike was stolen from out the front of the supermarket and they had to walk home in the rain … you get the picture. Even the fact that you’ve always been interested in writing, ever since you wrote that poem in primary school, is just not relevant to the publisher. You’ve only got a small window of opportunity where the publisher is focused on your proposal – sometimes as little as five seconds. The information you include has to be relevant and instantly engaging.

Excessive boasting

While you do want to sell yourself, there’s a fine line between promotion and arrogance. Be careful with boasts such as: ‘my work is better than anything Shakespeare ever wrote’, or ‘this will win the Man Booker so you better think seriously about publishing me’. Excessive boasting will not endear you to publishers.

Not including comparison titles

Be careful about saying you don’t read books, or you can’t find any books out there that are anything like your work because you’ve ‘broken the mould’. This is very, very rarely the case (even the most genre-bending books can be compared to aspects of other works) and being unable to list comparable titles makes you appear lazy, ignorant or arrogant. Some people are loathe to compare their work to others in case it makes it look like their writing isn’t unique – this isn’t why a publisher wants you to compare your work. Publishers like to know that a prospective writer is well-read, understands the market and understands themselves as a writer.

What’s the difference between a synopsis and a blurb?

The blurb needs to reveal the highlights of the plotting, or the key themes. The blurb teases the reader and gives them a broad sense of the story, leaving it tantalisingly unfinished – the reader should have no choice but to open the book and begin reading, desperate to find out what it’s all about. The blurb is often derived from the synopsis but it is purely a selling tool. By comparison, the synopsis is a selling tool but it’s also all the other things we’ve been talking about: a time-saver, an indication of intended audience and your book’s position in the market, your quality as a writer, the key plot points succinctly explained, etc.  The most important difference is that a synopsis must give away all significant plot details including how it ends while a blurb should never give away the ending.  

Any tips for making a synopsis stand out? I.e.: should it be funny? Should it be written like it’s from the main character of the book?

Publishers don’t want to see quirky fonts, a kaleidoscope of colours, pictures (unless you’re an illustrator and you’re submitting a picture book – in that case, draw away!), designs for the front cover, or glowing quotes from your best friend, hairdresser, niece or grandma (unless your grandma is a Miles Franklin winning author – in that case, quote away!). Your synopsis doesn’t need to have gimmicks – it just needs to be succinct and immediately engaging. Find the human element in your story that readers will identify with, the thing that touches the central nerve, and put it right up the top of your synopsis. 

Does the genre of a book affect the synopsis? I.e.: is there a certain way to write a synopsis for a crime novel that might not suit a literary novel?

It’s all much the same. Some genres lend themselves to opening with the character (versus the themes). A synopsis is more about the mechanics of the book – revealing what makes the book tick – so in that sense the genre is evident in the structure itself. For example, crime novels often use the discovery of the first dead body as the inciting incident and have plenty of twists and turns. Of course, the genre will also be evident in any quotes you use and your sample material (so choose sample chapters carefully). 

Why I Love Picture Books

The keenest pleasure of reading a picture book is in the conversation. Because that’s what a picture book is – a conversation. In a picture book, text and images jointly offer up ideas, broad and inspirational enough to necessitate the reader’s response. It’s a conversation that wouldn’t be complete, in fact could not be complete, without the reader’s involvement in bringing the text to life.

          Picture books convey meaning through the interplay of visual and written communication. The images within a picture book are complex iconic signs that describe or represent the ideas narrated by the conventional signs (the words). The linear narrative is suspenseful – it should demand the turning of the page. But the nonlinear image is aesthetically pleasing – it should slowly reveal its nuances of mood, character, story and emotion, and demand the reader stop to absorb its details at length. The process of decoding both complex iconic signs and conventional signs is a source of tension and pleasure for the reader. As the reader splits their attention from picture to words and back again, their understanding of the overall text is enriched.

The most important aspect of any picture book is its textual gaps: the space between the words and pictures big enough to necessitate imaginative leaps. There are gaps in the text, gaps in the illustrations and gaps between the way the text and the illustrations relate to one another. These gaps create possibilities – they are pauses in the conversation where the picture book waits for the reader to respond. Drawing from prior experience and knowledge, each reader brings an infinite number of possibilities to the way they decode this unique interaction between word and image.

Most of my favourite picture books make use of counterpoint, where the verbal text suggests one thing while the image works to contradict or deviate from the text’s meaning. The reader’s relationship with such a text is one of an active participant. As contrasting information is being presented, the reader is challenged to find the meaning of the text by analysing opposing meanings, playing one meaning off against another. In a picture book, the challenge is always going to be striking a balance between a reading of the images with a reading of the text. Counterpoint picture books provide unmet expectations, suspending one of the core functions of reading: predicting. There is immense enjoyment to be gained from unmet expectations, of being pulled-up short when our predictions are proven to be misguided. This kind of reading practice is vital for building critical literacy skills and for developing the ability to engage in resistant readings. Being an active participant in the meaning-making process, being able to read against the intentions of the text and being aware of the ways in which texts can be misleading, frees the reader from the general constraints of reading a culturally constructed object like a book.

Image and text do not have to contradict one another for a picture book to be sophisticated and rewarding; illustrations can be used to enhance the meaning suggested by the words. Enhancement works on the principle that the gaps in a verbal text can be amplified (but not fully explained) by visual language. Thus, images in picture books do not have to provide a symmetrical or literal interpretation of the written text, rather they can expand the meaning of the text, add nuance, provide a springboard for tangential thought, add emotion, and provide the text with more adjectives than words can provide. Often the written text, while evocative, can only function as an indication of the larger story. Because images can generally evoke a wider range of emotions, illustrations capture the mood of the text as well as provide a deep-level emotional narrative, which a preliterate or emerging reader may not be able to grasp from language alone. The combination of fragmentary, open-ended verbal text and deeply evocative visual text invites the reader to create their own narrative – and a key function of learning to read is exploring language, playing with meaning and attempting to create meaning from visual or verbal clues. Given the abundance of space between text and image, what the reader brings to the text is necessary to complete the experience.

While the best children’s books can be understood in simple terms they should not be simplistic, they should allow for more complex reading by more sophisticated readers as well as encourage more complex readers – children should reach up, not down. One thing I do feel very strongly though is the text and the illustration in a picture book should never say exactly the same thing – this for me is an unsuccessful picture book because there is no room for gaps, no room for conversation.

Faced with such a complex task of decoding abstract and fragmentary narratives, children will invariably make mistakes. As adults, we are often afraid of this, of letting children ‘fail’. But as Stanley Fish said: ‘the meaning of the text includes all of what a reader does as (he or she) moves through the reading process. This includes the misunderstandings and erroneous judgments a reader makes in the course of reading, since the wayward steps are part of the experience of the text and, therefore, part of its meaning.’ As any teacher, librarian or parent will tell you, there is no way to adequately predict the wonderfully weird, creative and imaginative ‘readings’ children will bring to a text, many times moving fully away from the intentions of the writer, illustrator and adult reader. What is encoded may not be what is decoded and this intellectual play is an important part of a child’s growing awareness of literature. Show a child a series of pictures and they will happily narrate the events; in fact preliterate readers often do this with picture books, ignoring the written text and voicing a verbal narrative of their own creation, revealing a growing (but limited) understanding of narrative structure and a (surprisingly sophisticated) ability to create stories from static pictures – this is another way a picture book encourages children to be an active participant in the picture book conversation. Children learn through play – it is the core principle of preschool and early primary education.

What is perhaps worth making a note of is the important role non-moving illustrations play in picture books. It is precisely because the pictures in a picture book are static that they are a springboard for imaginative play. Faced with well-constructed two-dimensional pictures, a child is motivated to think beyond the page – what went before, what comes after, what happens in the inbetween. Think of Where the Wild Things Are. The series of double spreads which depict the ‘wild rumpus’ of Max and the Wild Things are snapshots of the event, leaving room for the reader to fill in the blanks. Importantly, Sendak has enough confidence in his readers and his story to know that words are not needed to narrate this part of the story – the reader can, given the right amount of inspiration, hear and see and imagine the out-of-control revelry for themselves. And for those that walked away from Spike Jones’s film adaption with bitter disappointment, we know that what is imagined is infinitely more powerful than what can be physically created by moving images and sound. The way the child animates the images themselves (through fantasy or play-acting) makes them a truly active participant. In this sense, the pictures in a picture book position the child as the prime mover – how the text comes to life is in their hands or rather their imagination.

It is also vital that the picture book is an unchanging product to which a child can bring multiple interpretations. Through repeated readings, the child becomes familiar with the language, can find new ideas in the interplay of text and image and can bring their growing understanding of the world to a familiar text, enriching their understanding of it each time they return. Each time a child rereads an identical text they bring a new interpretation to it and move deeper and deeper into its potential meaning. This includes becoming increasingly familiar with new or difficult words. The language of picture books is often sophisticated, more so than chapter books, and children need to hear this sophisticated vocabulary in context as well as practice it (and make mistakes along the way). They need to sound out and attempt to use or contextualise new words. It is more rewarding and effective in the long term if a child is encouraged to problem-solve language acquisition this way.

However, due to the nature of picture books, meaning is conveyed through more than the interplay between text and image. Often, a child is exposed to a picture book through co-reading, through an adult reading the book to them. In the process of hearing a book read aloud, the child picks up on auditory clues – tone, pacing, pauses, etc. But it is not simply an auditory experience, the child is also able to read the adult’s facial expressions and their gestures. We can therefore add a fourth story being told, the one the child reads in the performance of the text, one that is no doubt determined by the kind of relationship they share with the ‘performer’. What is perhaps most interesting about this is how, in repeated readings, the child is exposed to multiple and ever changing ‘interpretations’ of the text depending upon the mood of the performer, who the performer is (teacher, father, mother, sister, etc.) and how the child is feeling themselves. They will invariably experience the story read to them by different adults and thus begin to question or at least notice the differences in performance. We can begin to see, perhaps, how the picture book reading experience is important for the child’s ability to decode human behaviour.

There are many reasons why I love picture books and why I see them as being invaluable to a child’s development. It always concerns me when I hear parents bragging about how their child has moved ‘beyond’ picture books and onto chapter books. Chapter books serve an important function; they offer the child their first independent reading experiences, giving them confidence and a sense of achievement. But because of their nature they need to be a great deal less sophisticated than a picture book. This is why I don’t believe children should be encouraged to put away picture books when they are ready to pick up chapter books. In fact, I’m not sure there is even a time to put away your picture books – the picture book conversation can be had at any age (at least I’m hoping so; if not, I don’t have an excuse for the amount of picture books I read!)

The Perils of Rhyme

In one of my many incarnations I’m a manuscript assessor. This means I trawl through a publisher’s slush pile assessing, rejecting and occasionally, only very, very occasionally, passing a manuscript onto an in-house editor for closer inspection.

I’ve been reading a lot of submissions for picture books lately, and if there’s one thing I’m finding that’s common for almost every picture book manuscript I’ve read, it’s problems with metre and rhyme.

I know it’s a bit of a cliché – kids love rhyme but editors hate it – so I’ll come right out and admit that yes, picture books that rhyme don’t really appeal to me.

I know, what a party pooper. Call me the Grinch*.

So I’ve just had a look at my bookshelf and very few of my favourite picture books rhyme. There are some notable exceptions of course, and I’m pretty sure there are a few sneaky ones on my shelf that are so well done I don’t even think of them as rhyming. But the fact remains that I have to work especially hard not to read prejudicially when faced with a rhyming picture book. And it almost never fails to send me on a ‘is this me or is there really a problem here?’ tail spin when I read a text that rhymes.

I should also say that I found bad rhyme and metre a problem when I worked as a teacher too, back when I was a public performer of picture books and the ability to read a text effortlessly was very, very important.

So I’ve been thinking carefully about this and I’ve come to a conclusion. While I’m happy to admit my prejudices, I’m still confident in my assessment that rhyme is actually a very, very difficult thing to get right. And when it’s not done right, it reads very badly indeed.

And that’s the thing about rhyme: it’s all too rarely done well. And to me, bad rhymes unravells an entire work.

For it to be good it needs to be seamless. It needs to feel like the rhyme is just a coincidence, that each word was always going to be in that order – I need to feel like there was no other word that could have finished the sentence and it just so happens that it rhymes with the last word of the previous line. I don’t want to get the sense that sentences were constructed around the rhyme and that having to rhyme has directed the course of the plot (you need a rhyme for cat so you have the cat sit on a mat, etc.). Too often rhyming appears contrived and irrelevant to the story. And don’t forget that, while a picture book can be far more sophisticated than a chapter book, you still need to make age-appropriate word choices – just because ‘capillary’ rhymes with ‘quietly’ doesn’t mean you should use it.

To me, if you’re going to rhyme, the rhythm needs to be structured too. This is where metre comes into it. Not only do the syllables in each sentence need to be in some kind of regular pattern, but also the stresses need to be well measured too.

If you want to write rhyming picture books (and please, please ask yourself if the rhyming is necessary to the story) then taking a class or two in poetry is one of the best things you can do. Maybe read Stephen Fry’s excellent The Ode less Travelled, or find a book that works for you. Read existing picture books and copy their rhythm to get in the right habits. And when you’ve written it, have a friend attempt to read it out loud and, with a copy of the piece in front of you, mark wherever they stumble. This will give you a good indication of how well the rhyming and metre is working.

Good luck!

*Yes, I am being ironic ;)