Story Mastermind: Picture Book Mini-Mastermind

Story Mastermind is our small group writing workshop. We welcome two cohorts a year, one every six months, and we'll tell you a little bit about the program, but mostly we will be talking today about picture book premise, and how to make sure that your story has strong bones and how to tell a compelling picture book story in today's market. at the end of the program, you will have six or more—it is very possible to do more—fully workshopped picture book drafts, including those submission materials for those drafts. So this is a great way to get a picture book portfolio workshopped, pressure tested, ready to go out.

Then, we have had some brave volunteers who have shared their pictures with us, and we will workshop them, kind of, in the style of what you might expect in a Story Mastermind workshop.

Working on a picture book or story? Want to get it done—yes, done—in just six months? Get ready to submit, launch and go to market with Story Mastermind.

Transcript

Mary: All right. Hello, welcome, welcome. I am here with my co-facilitator, Amy Wilson. Hi, Amy. Looking lovely today. And we are here with the Picture Book Mini-Workshop done in the style of Story Mastermind. So, Story Mastermind is our small group writing workshop. We welcome two cohorts a year, one every six months, and we'll tell you a little bit about the program, but mostly we will be talking today about picture book premise, and how to make sure that your story has strong bones and how to tell a compelling picture book story in today's market. Then, we will go through... We have had some brave volunteers who have shared their pictures with us, and we will workshop them, kind of, in the style of what you might expect in a Story Mastermind workshop. Amy, are you ready?

Amy: So ready.

Mary: Okay, let's do it. So I'm going to go navigate over to the slides. We'll talk about the slides, then we will do the workshop. So, just as an overview, what is Picture Book Mastermind. We start with ideas or existing drafts for at least two picture books. So those writers who are ready for a more rigorous program like Story Mastermind, we'll have a couple of ideas that they would like to bring to workshop to start.

It's about five months of a small group workshop intensive. It runs twice a year, as I mentioned, January to May and July to December, zoom meetings every other week, and a publishing editor, agent, or author, guest speaker more than once sometimes will bring in their insights to the group, and the deliverables at the end of the program, you will have six or more—it is very possible to do more—fully workshopped picture book drafts, including those submission materials for those drafts. So this is a great way to get a picture book portfolio workshopped, pressure tested, ready to go out.

Access to our Discord community. We have a very lively community in which writers from our novel cohorts and our picture book cohorts participate. You can find community there as well as a pitch festival that we do for all Story Mastermind alums. So that's what the program is, but we want you to get as much as you can out of this workshop. So this will not be a heavy sales pitch or anything like that, but we do want to talk about the program because we are so proud of it. But let's dive in.

So, for all of you picture book writers listening, these are, kind of, the types of picture books that we have broken down. So of course there are exceptions to everything that we say here or everything we will discuss, but these are, kind of, the broad strokes types of picture books. We need to figure out what kind of book you're interested in writing. The most common options are the narrative. So that one very simply is a picture book anchored in story. It usually features a character, a beginning, middle, and end. That character goes through something. This type of readership is usually just the general trade market. So whatever you see on shelves that you pick up, narrative picture book fits very well into that category.

There's also something... It's a little bit of a weird category. The concept book. This is, kind of, a catch-all. It features books that don't really fit elsewhere. Maybe your ABC, counting, coloring books, or your humor books, other ideas that may be seen as a bit of a risk. The reader is in the general market or in the institutional market. The institutional market is one that caters to schools, libraries primarily.

And that is where our final broad strokes category is, the non-fiction book. So the primary aim there is to teach the reader an idea, or about a concept, a person, an event. There's more of an educational tone. The reader is generally in the institutional market, schools, therapy, offices, but can also be in the trade market. A lot of non-fiction books have, sort of, broken into the wider trade readership, and the manuscript does include often supplementary educational materials, a teacher/parent guide, an afterword, resources, glossary, that sort of thing. So these are the broad strokes types. Amy, anything to add here?

Amy: No, that's perfect. Just to note that these are not necessarily exclusive of each other like you can have a non-fiction book that's told in a narrative style and so forth. But we'll get into that as we go on, I'm sure.

Mary: Yes, that is a great point. Sometimes these categories do overlap, but I think when you're starting to think about your picture book idea, what it is, what it will be, who the reader is, it's very, very, very important to, sort of, consider where it fits in the larger landscape. And since Story Mastermind is a workshop geared toward writers who will want to submit at some point, who are starting to think very, very seriously about their careers, it is important to look at market, not just sort of the creative aspect, that we do spend a ton of time on craft.

So, in the interest of looking at the market, here's a bit of a snapshot. I would say word count is one of the most crucial metrics that we really work with when thinking about the picture book market. Your narrative book will not want to be much longer than 600 words, I would say. Concept books tend to be shorter. I mean, an alphabet book could be 26 words, for example. They do tend to be a little bit shorter, a little bit leaner on text, especially if it's an illustration-heavy concept. So we put up to 400 words there just as a benchmark. non-fiction for the younger side, the preschool side of things, about 1,200 words. And then for the elementary, so some non-fiction really does thrive in the elementary school environment, so the readers are a little bit older. You can get up to about 2,500 words. These are ballparks, but I would say if you are very far outside the range of normal, that is definitely something to look at for your picture book text.

And I would say just market trends overall. Humor, read-aloud potential, characters that stand out as unique, proactive, diverse cast of characters, and contemporary values are also key. And what I mean by that really is we're seeing a lot of values celebrated in picture books now about celebrating the individual, about the value in every person, for example. Those are things that we see played with a lot, and a lot of our students do come up with picture books in those veins.

That being said, picture books that preach and teach are not necessarily desirable if it has a very overt message, which is very different from a non-fiction book that wants to teach a concept or about a person and about an event. But books with a message are very different. That's something that I would discourage just because if you think about your readership, they're learning every day, but they're being told what to do, too, by parents, religious leaders, teachers, older siblings, sometimes even younger siblings. And so books that also hit a reader over the head with a message, not necessarily very successful.

Rhyming picture books can be done. Publishers are still picking them up every day. Rhyme is very appealing to kids who are not reading yet because they feel like they can get to know the flow of the story. They can participate. They can anticipate what's coming next. They can memorize it and read it back. But they have to be exceedingly well done. There is a really high barrier to entry, I think, for rhyming books.

And another thing to consider is that manuscripts are also a dual creator art form or picture books, I should say. They're a dual creator art form. You invite an illustrator to your story. So there should be a lot of room in your manuscript for the illustrator to come and practice their art. And one of the reasons that we do a focus on developing a portfolio of more than one picture book in Story Mastermind is that agents and publishers, they always want to see more than one idea, more than one manuscript from those writers that they're interested in working with. So developing a portfolio is a really key consideration to entering the picture book market.

Amy, do you have any additional thoughts on that?

Amy: On this slide... So the only thought that's, kind of, been running through my head is, as far as word count goes, I feel like sometimes authors feel really handicapped by that when they're writing a picture book and they're like, "I only have 600 words, I only have 600 words." And it can, kind of, keep you from telling the story sometimes. And so it's just fine when you're at the... I mean, we're talking about premise here, right, and how to craft a premise that's going to be successful. And it's just totally fine to write something really long. Maybe your first draft is 2,000 words and maybe that's what it takes to then condense it and get it down to fit within market norms or to figure out, "Okay, this story is too big. I need to tell a little bit of a smaller story." But I guess that's just something that I always want writers to think about when they're thinking about their premise is that the word count is something that can be adjusted afterwards.

Mary: I think it's better to overwrite. You may not get to hold onto all of those words in the final draft, but it's always better to overwrite, get a lot of ideas on the page, get a lot of character development on the page, and then go in and revise rather than, "I have 15 words here. I think I'm good, you know?"

Amy: And we don't see that very often.

Mary: That's true. That's totally true. But it's okay to overwrite, especially in an earlier draft. That's a really good point, Amy. Okay, so narrative premise. This is for that first type of book, very, very common. The story structure of a character going through something. That fits into that narrative bucket. The premise is the answer to the question of what is your story about. You've also maybe heard it called the elevator pitch, the log line. In its shortest form, it's sort of a one sentence hook that you include in your query letter. It generally gives a hint about the characters and the central story or maybe even the climax of the story, the heart of the story.

For example, the Eloise books are about a spunky girl who lives in the Plaza Hotel and is very much left to her own devices, which involves getting in trouble. So that gives you a little bit of a sense of the character, the tone, what the central driving story is gonna be, what the character's circumstances are. The premise for our purposes can be also expressed in the form of a what if question. So what would happen... "The Cat in the Hat." What would happen if a strange, magical cat visits two, bored children? So you get a sense of the characters that are involved and the idea that magic...this is, kind of, a fantasy-driven story. Basically, whenever you sit down and put pen to paper or fingers to keys, I would like to see you considering what is at the heart of your story, what is it really about.

And then we also talk about themes. So the theme is the emotional core of the story. What does the character learn? How does the character transform? How does the plot push the character to change? And, kind of, what is the substance of that change? What universal idea about being alive does your story play with and how this changes? How the actions and obstacles affect the character? Those are all part of the theme, but it's important to know. As I mentioned, you will not explicitly discuss the theme in the manuscript itself. We want to avoid that heavy-handedness, that morality, the lessons, especially for picture books.

So ideally once the reader reads your story, they see your character, they see your character go through a plot, they finish the narrative, that theme of what it was all about, what it was all for will be created in the reader's mind. They instinctively know what the point is once they finish reading the story. So, for instance, "Everyone Is Special." As I mentioned, I can change the world, the, sort of, importance of the individual, family love, friendship. These are, sort of, themes that are very attractive to this age group. Amy, do you have anything here?

Amy: Yeah, I mean, I know we said a couple slides back that we don't want to preach and teach in a picture book. And this is really important that the theme is it's kind of the heart of the book. It's what it's really about. And yet it's not going to take a whole ton of words on the page. It's, kind of, what informs the story that goes along. And it can be, kind of, tricky when you're in a planning stage to see how that's going to work sometimes because you don't want to be like, "Okay, I'm going to teach a kid it's okay to be themselves or whatever," but there's a bazillion picture books that that's the message without coming out and saying that.

Mary: Yeah, it's all in the execution. I think the theme is something you really need to know. The theme is something that you can sort of use as you're pitching, but for the actual craft of the manuscript, the theme fades into the background. It informs everything that you do, but it doesn't point to it right on the page.

Amy: That's exactly [crosstalk 00:13:58].

Mary: It can be a really, really tricky balance. But you'll find that, at their heart, a lot of picture books that have been really successful, their themes are really simple. Especially in a picture book, this is not necessarily where you want to get complex. So in terms of the character, for a narrative treatment, you want to think about what the character wants in the opening pages before the, sort of, inciting incident rocks their world. You want to get a sense of what they want, their conscious desire, and I would love to see you focus on a character who doesn't have the opportunity to be passive. Their desire should be something that informs their actions and is something actionable. So that means, you know, a character can want something within reach that they can actually go for. Consider the character's emotional state at the beginning, the midpoint and the end. And you might notice that series characters tend to be rather static. For example, "Curious George" doesn't necessarily change from adventure to adventure, but he's such a strong character and his unique attributes, kind of, carry through the entire series. They end up changing the world around him. He ends up, you know, informing the man in the yellow hat. We end up seeing the world through George's unique, kind of, strong lens and point of view and being inspired by his confident sense of self, his playful sense of self. So if you aim to develop a series character, sometimes their core attributes, the simpler, the better. They don't necessarily have to go through a major transformation with every installment of a series. That's a question that we get all the time. And you should also decide, when you're handpicking your character for a narrative picture book, why their particular attributes, their characterizations matter and will be attractive to readers in the age group and, kind of, focus on developing story ideas that intertwine who the character is with the plot that they go through with the setting that they are in and, if possible, do it in a fresh and interesting way. Because to Amy's point, there are a lot of picture books out there on shelves with really simple themes that are about very simple things, that are about these, sort of, kind of, key experiences and problems of childhood. There aren't that many of those, if you really think about it, but how do we, sort of, pair a really interesting character, a fresh character, a compelling character with that theme that you're working with and then we'll talk about how to get them going on a story? Anything else about character, Amy? I mean, this is really key to any narrative picture book.

Amy: This is just the heart of it, that's what I think, especially like a character who wants something and a character who does something. And I mean, that's important no matter what you're writing—novel to picture book, anything. But just especially in a picture book, this is where this is where the heart of everything is. And I think there's also, like, a certain appeal to your target audience. Like, children don't have a lot of control in their lives but they want a lot of things. And so I think that these, kind of, larger than life characters, who just really wants something and they're really going for it, I mean, that can just be so appealing to the target audience, I think.

Mary: Yeah, no, I'm completely on board. And does that character have to change? So I alluded to this question. It's one that we hear all the time. This really depends on theme. If the theme involves a revelation for the character or overcoming an obstacle, that's a very, very common picture book structure, then give the character a problem or something to learn where they're set up to change over the course of the story. If the character already knows the heart of the theme to start, for example, "I am special and unique," let the character use their strong convictions to change the environment or lead and inspire secondary characters in a way that keeps the protagonist active. That is a challenge of this theme that we see very, very much very frequently in the market right now, which is if the character knows that they are unique, being unique is awesome, that's a conviction that they're going into the story with, well, very often we end up with a pretty passive story where the character is like, "Hey, I'm great," and everyone's like, "Oh, you're great, and I'm great, too." And there's not a lot of plot involved in something like that. So, if a character already knows the theme and they sort of embody the theme, then how can they, sort of, bring other characters to that level, maybe inspire somebody younger, a younger sibling, maybe lead change in their classroom where they bring everybody into that fold just as long as the character can be active within a story with those types of themes, that is something that we're really looking for. And kids who are empowered and proactive, they drive narrative picture books rather than adults. The one thing that, if you take anything away from this, I would like to see that you never write an adult who comes and delivers a message or an adult who's like, "Well, actually you're unique and that's awesome." The kids really have to originate those ideas. They can have support. They can have scaffolding from adults, an environment in which they can explore these ideas. But I really want to see... There's such a temptation to be the wise parent, to be the wise grandparent, the wise teacher, or the wise mentor to put that person in a picture book to deliver the message, but that takes power and agency away from your character.

Amy: Oh, just 100%. The adults shouldn't swoop in to teach the lesson at the end and tell them what they've learned, and the adults also shouldn't come solve the problem. Like, whatever pickle that character has gotten into, like, let's let them get themselves out. And like you said, the parents can be or adults can be support or scaffolding. They can get some ideas from them but, yeah, let the kids finish out the story.

Mary: I do think it's interesting and good and I think just good for society to model adults that are supportive adults that, you know, can be a wonderful role in a kid's life. That being said, in a picture book, we really want that protagonist look at the root of that. They're proactive. They are acting. They are the protagonist in the story rather than the adult swooping in. No swooping, I think just as a blanket rule.

So now let's talk a little bit about structure, and let's talk about stakes. Stakes are super important. A lot of this language comes from our novel work and it might seem silly to apply some of the lessons of novel writing to picture books because there's just such a huge difference in terms of scope and size. But I do think a lot of the same puzzle pieces are relevant here. So stakes define what's at risk to your character in the story... Some editor, I should change that. And for the character... So we have the external stakes. Those are the story stakes. What might happen to the character if the story goes this way or that? And the internal stakes, if the character is successful in their objective or if they're unsuccessful. So basically why does the action of the story matter to the character? And if they achieve their objective, what happens if they do, what happens if they don't, either inside the character or in the world around them. These are, sort of, ways that we can come at this bigger question of stakes.

So as you brainstorm your premise, your theme, your character, those are going to be the most important ingredients. It's never too early to think about structure, and why the structure of the story matters, why the events of the plot matter. So these are some structures that you can play around with. For example, the problem-solution. The character makes several attempts to solve their problem. They are eventually successful after, sort of, overcoming a few obstacles. The three acts—beginning, middle and end. And a lot of these can overlay one on top of the other two twists. So apply twist leads from the beginning to the middle, then another from the middle to the end for a fully symmetrical story that, sort of, seems to come full circle. Speaking of which, full circle, an image from the beginning is revisited at the end but the meaning changes. So I'm thinking here about the supper in "Where the Wild Things Are." Max gets in trouble over the issue of supper. His supper is taken away. He's sent to his room. And then when he comes back, his supper is waiting for him and it's still hot. That's a really lovely way to, sort of, track that the character has changed when they encounter the same situation at the beginning in the end.

So these are just some brainstorming points where you can really, kind of, dig in and see what, if any, makes sense for you from a narrative perspective. Are there any plot points that you care to add, Amy?

Amy: No, I think this is a really good start. I think this list is very helpful when you're at the premise stage of planning your story. And I think it can also be really helpful after you've written your story and you're like, "Wait, it's not quite working. What is my structure? What's happening here?" These can be some, kind of, diagnostic tools to think, "Oh, okay. Maybe I could twist it like this." So these are all just tools to use.

Mary: Yeah. Yeah, and, I mean, any writing education that you do for yourself, any workshop, I think you're just gathering tools for your toolbox. And different tools are going to mean different things for you at different stages in your writing life. So it's all grist for the mill. We actually had a Story Mastermind meeting two days ago, and somebody was like, "Yep, it's all grist for the mill." And this mill is going to be working overtime.

Concept premise. So this is the second, kind of, big category. It's tough to define what a concept book is. We are going to take a really strong stab at it, but it's basically, kind of, not a narrative book that doesn't fit a purely educational framework. So this is, kind of, the muddy middle, the wishy-washy, muddy middle of our three concepts.

So the premise is the answer to what is your story about. And for a concept book, the answer can be easy. Like, it teaches the alphabet, seasons, colors, concepts, larger ideas by breaking them down into an easily digestible format, which does not fit into the category of either a narrative or a non-fiction picture book. The best way to talk about concept books I think is to provide examples. Um, you can predicate your idea on a joke or a visual format. That fits into the concept book category. For example, my favorite is "Duck! Rabbit!" It hinges on that illustration of the duck or the rabbit, right? It can look like a bill. It can look like the ears of the rabbit. And we have two characters, kind of, debating, passionately their take. Or, I love this book. They all saw a cat. Readers learn the concept of perspective by adopting different points of view, and it is heavily visual just like "Duck! Rabbit!" where the visual illusion is, sort of, at the center. Here, the shifting of the perspective on the cat from a flea that's riding on the cat's back to an earthworm underneath the earth where the cat is walking. You really get the concept of perspective just with this very simple visual exploration of what that might mean.

"In My Heart: A Book of Feelings" guides readers through their various feelings with concentric cutouts of a heart in the center. So there is a visual element at play as well, but it's like basically this takes the dry explanation and gives it new life. For example, a book of feelings would be very boring if it was just like, "Here is sadness. Sadness means you feel sad." You know, it's not interesting. But if we have these kinds of very visual elements that help explain a concept, the picture book is uniquely suited to that type of exploration, and that's a really great way of transmitting, kind of, a complex idea to somebody of this readership.

Picture books that use well-known songs can also be grouped under concept books even though songs often incorporate a narrative structure, kind of, "This is the house that Jack built," "The wheels on the bus." They relied on the song to carry the story. Of course, before you set out to write a song-based book, make sure that you have a license to use the song or it is in the public domain. So if you're working on a fable or a retelling of a story, something that is taking part of a larger conversation that we know about, make sure that you're bringing something fresh or interesting to the table. I am not sure how you would spin the ABCs in a new way, but if that is your mission, if that is your call as a picture book writer, just make sure to bring something fresh to it. I'm thinking of an ABC book that we have that is the ABC of boats. And guess what. There's an ABC of dinosaurs. There are dinosaurs with every single letter of the alphabet, and somebody put that together and it was a great new slant on the ABCs. And the boats, too. I had no idea that there were boat terms that fulfilled every letter of the alphabet. But somebody put it together. They put a great, unique wrapper on it, and that's how they made it fresh.

With any kind of picture book writing, especially for concept books, do your research. This is something crucial that we try to get into when we recommend comparative titles for everything that we work on in Story Mastermind. It's, sort of, like, has this concept been tackled in this way? Because there's the concept, right, and there's the slant on the concept. Has somebody else done it? If not, you have the green light to make an attempt. But if they have, that concept might have been used already. So that is something especially to keep an eye out.

But the great news is, and we recommend this to everybody, the people who actually go out and do it rather than thinking about doing it, they report back. They just have great fun. Picture books are so easy to read. It is completely within your grasp to go to a library for an afternoon, spend three hours, read a hundred picture books. You will internalize so much about picture book pacing, structure, voice. When you do that, I would choose to read only contemporary books that were published within the last three years to really get a booster on your knowledge of what the market is doing. It's so easy, especially with concept books that don't have a lot of text to them usually to just really get your feet.

And then your theme. So, we're going to break it down just like we did with the narrative books. Your concept picture book may or may not have a theme, a main character, narrative structure, or stakes, but each concept book does need a raison d'être or a reason for being for presenting the information you've selected in the way you've selected as there are likely competitive books already on shelves. So what's your differentiator? What are you trying to say that's bringing this information to market again in a new way? While the book might not have an overt theme, you must decide on your own mission as a writer.

And for those writers hoping to tell a highly visual story, you also need to think about your contribution to the project rather than simply relying on a potential future illustrator. I have seen in my decade plus in the publishing industry writers who have brought a wordless picture book to the table and a lot of the heavy lifting goes on the illustrator. But if you have enough story, if you have enough, sort of, ins and outs and movements to the story and things that you are, sort of, imagining that will happen in the story, that's your contribution to a wordless project even though it seems strange to be a writer of a wordless project. So, what are you adding to a popular childhood topic or idea? With a concept book, that needs to be ironclad. Amy?

Amy: Yeah, absolutely. When you're writing a narrative, your character is going to be new, right? The situation's probably going to be new. The story is fresh. And so you have that going in even if you're addressing a common topic or a theme that we see a lot in picture book. But with a concept book, there's so much that has been done and you have got to know what else has been done so you can know how to be fresh and interesting about it, because otherwise there's just no need for your take.

Mary: We give the same exact advice when we're dealing with novelists who are doing, like, a fairytale retelling. What's the spin? What's the spin because we're rehashing something familiar and we're hoping to bring it into a pretty crowded market to be honest? So, this is definitely something that we work on a lot. So the storytelling style is crucial. It's not a narrative. So how will the story be told? Some concepts like numbers or time, the alphabet, they have a built-in structure. Others like colors or shapes do not. So how will you give order and meaning to the concept being explored?

So if the concept is explored through narrative, so there we have kind of a concept where you're putting a narrative around it like the two characters arguing about is it a duck, is it a rabbit. That's an attempt to wrap this visual illusion in some kind of structure. Then the comments in the narrative premise section will be helpful that we already discussed, but many picture books in the concept space, they sort of have to organize that information. So if you're doing shapes, is it a day in a preschooler's life? And then the bowl at breakfast is a half-circle, and then the moon at bedtime is a circle. Like, do you organize your shapes into some other kind of structure to give it some kind of plot, to give it some kind of forward momentum? And we'll talk about that in the non-fiction picture book discussion to follow. But, yeah, the concept book occupies this kind of nebulous liminal space in picture books. So it's always very, very interesting to us when a writer comes with a concept and we have to make it fit and make it work.

So let's go over to non-fiction. This is our final, kind of, main category for your potential picture book premise. For non-fiction book, the premise answers the question: what is the story about? So that is very consistent with all of the other takes on premise, but the answer needs to be very precise because you are ideally fitting into a very specific curriculum niche. This is an additional consideration that comes to the table when you are writing in the non-fiction picture book space. So rather than, kind of, general like, "Oh, it's about bugs. It's about space," the premise needs to be specific and detailed because there are a lot of competitive titles.

In the non-fiction space, we have major players and licenses. For example, a Nat Geo book or a Discovery Channel book is already going to exist on space. So how do you as an independent creator come to the table, drill down to what exactly the story is going to teach, and how it's going to teach it? So, those are two potential areas for differentiating yourself. There are already lots of picture books about bugs in space. So how will... I think fresh angle... If we were to, sort of, give this talk an overarching theme ourselves, fresh angle would be it. So a specific niche approach is more appealing than a general treatment of a topic. So for example, flowers, not very interesting. Carnivorous flowers like the Venus flytrap, for example, that would be a much more niche-specific conversation to have about the larger, larger category of flowers.

For some types of non-fiction, the ideas under the narrative picture book premise come into play. For example, picture book biographies, they tell the story of a person's life. So you have somewhat of a structure, somewhat of a narrative available for you. It usually unfolds in chronological order, though other choices are definitely possible. Like, before she was Harriet, it tells the story of Harriet Tubman's life in reverse chronological order starting from when she's an older woman. Will the biography cover the person's whole life from cradle to grave? That's always been, kind of, a very classic choice or focus on a shorter period of time or more important incident in their life. So, “Mother Jones and her Army of Mill Children” focuses on one specific event.

So using the tools that you're learning about, theme, stakes, and tension, you want to tell this type of story using all of those tools in your toolbox. You should also pick a strong focus. Maybe a person's entire life is no longer enough to attract agents and publishers. The cradle to grave approach is not fresh. Is there a timely angle or a topic that you can weave into your specific exploration? Is there a person's life story that is important but hasn't been told? You can innovate here in your selection of topic and/or your focus within a particular topic. So a lot of different approaches that you can take. Don't be afraid to narrow your scope, especially if you want to write about somebody who has been explored ad nauseam. Maybe there is a new angle. Maybe there is something undiscovered about a well-known topic or life that you can dive into and you can, sort of, make that your own. Amy, do you have anything here?

Amy: No. I think everything that you said is just really smart. I love picture book biographies. They're one of my favorite things, and I love the ones that are coming out lately about, you know, people that we didn't know about who made big contributions that weren't so popular. And I think just exactly what you said, the cradle to grave approach is not so common anymore. More common what we're seeing in the market is more of a drilling down into one area or one incident or taking just a few things that happened in their life like maybe something formative that helped this person want to do whatever it is that they did.

And it's kind of liberating when you're writing a picture book biography to think, "Oh, okay, well, I don't have to put in everything about their siblings and their world and how they grew up and where they went to school for all their different degrees or whatever." And then also just to remember that illustrations can do a lot of work here too as far as that world-building because often with picture book biography is a lot of them are historical. And so you don't have to spend all the time explaining, you know, "This person wore a dress every single day," or whatever, because the illustrations can show that. And so that's a way to free up some of your words as well if you're working on a picture book biography.

Mary: Yes, I think that's a really, really good note. And also, if we look at the market, we want to boost women of history. We want to boost diverse people in history of different backgrounds, different races, sexualities. All of these, sort of, people who came before us in this cultural conversation should get their time in the spotlight and that is... You know, STEM and STEAM are really, really big focuses. These are the types of stories that publishing right now, more or less, is looking to explore. So if you have a story or you know of somebody who has made significant contributions from, sort of, an underserved platform, this is the time to write those stories. So a lot, a lot of opportunity there.

So other types of non-fiction, those teaching broader concepts, for example, they still require some kind of organizing principle. Maybe starting with a wide lens and zooming in or starting with a microscopic lens and zooming out on a topic, it might follow the path of a street or a river. This might be something really interesting like the journey of the water cycle from the mountains to the sea might be a really nice narrative to apply to a concept. It might be organized into a who, what, where, why and how structure. Just think about how you are presenting this information and how you can apply some kind of flow, some kind of logic to it. Planning and organizing should go into your development cycle rather than, like Amy was alluding to, all the known facts about a topic. I see this all the time in picture book non-fiction where we get into research overload. The writer has just found so much data, that they have a lot of trouble whittling it down and finding a focus. So, lot to think about here because there is just so much wonderful information about our world out there. How do we organize it? How do we pick? We love working on non-fiction, and I will say, as a result of the pandemic, there has been a renewed vigor in the market for non-fiction as parents have become teachers and the lines between school and home have gotten blurred. There's a lot of economic interest in that category as well.

So I think now we are going to transition over into a workshop. So I'm going to do some screen-sharing magic I hope. It might not look like magic. It probably will not, but I am going to transition over into Word and we are going to do some pitching here. So what did I select? "The Trouble With Bubbles" by Michelle Steinberg. So Michelle Steinberg, "The Trouble With Bubbles." So these are pitches. We are working at the pitch level here, and this is how we would liaise with a pitch or concept within Story Mastermind.

So, "Bubbles, the non-binary kindergarten class pet, fears the children will not love a guinea pig who is neither a boy nor a girl."

So this very, very obviously we are tackling the issue of gender identity, non-binary identity in these young age groups. And we are doing that through the lens of a pet. So this is, kind of, the writer's log line and I think it's a really nice log line. It does a good job of communicating the conflict, which is the fear that the children will not love or accept that guinea pig as well as giving us a sense of the character's concrete identity. So, fabulous. And I think from a market perspective, a publisher or an agent will know right away if they're interested in a story that tackles this particular issue, because a lot of picture books are found by parents who are like, "Oh, I have this issue in my life or in my kid's life or in just my family life, and I need a picture book to, sort of, address it intelligently." So this would definitely fall into that category. That's how a lot of picture books are bought and sold.

"So, Bubbles, the guinea pig, loves everything about being the new kindergarten class pet."

So, what I love about this is we also get a focus on change and being new in an environment via the character, which is going to be very relatable to kids who are new in a classroom or going to a new school. So we got that kind of... Bubbles is an analog for what a kid might be experiencing too, so I think that's just a really, really smart way of reflecting that common experience.

"...from the comfy home with a tunnel to enjoy watching the children play to the new lessons every day."

And I do think that here you do a really nice job of...a really nice voice for the age group even in the pitch. Just capturing that spark, that excitement of a kindergarten classroom I think shows me that this writer is pretty well versed in kind of the energy level.

Amy: And to me, that voice comes through in comfy. Like, that's such a great choice to say comfy instead of comfortable.

Mary: Absolutely. So, "The class pet learns about shapes, colors, letters and numbers."

This throws up a little... So how much time in the narrative will be spent on this? So, you could see it... I'm going to keep tapping in here. You could see it as it could be a nice inclusion of other educational material. It could be a distraction. Yeah, sometimes we see a narrative picture book that also...you know, we have this, like, other sales hook or other educational or curriculum hook in there that's worked in nicely. Sometimes that works really well. Sometimes it's a distraction from the main story. So, here, I think that the story has a lot of legs other than this. And so I'm just wondering, in the execution of the manuscript, how much time is actually spent here versus how much time should be spent here. Did you have any kind of reaction to that Amy or anything else in here?

Amy: Yeah, I thought the same thing. I mean, it could just be that in the background of the illustrations, we're seeing, like, the teacher teaching them about shapes while Bubbles is enjoying their comfy home, you know, or it could be, are we stopping the narrative to be like, "Children, these are the numbers 1 through 10 for five pages," and I would stay away from that.

Mary: I do think that this is an opportunity in the illustrations as well. We can have the shapes. We can have the colors. All of that can be, kind of, a secondary throughline that goes on in the story. But how much do we want to point at it? I'm with you. I don't want to spend five pages there. I really like this. So then we learn about this kind of binary concept of gender, but here's the conflict. The guinea pig, Bubbles, does not feel like a boy or girl. Just Bubbles. And I like the introduction of, like, this idea of, "I'm just myself. What do I do?"

You know, I think that, for this particular topic, that's a really nice way of framing it. You know, you see these labels and they can be labels of anything. Like, my two kids have red hair. So at some point, somebody's going to label them red heads. And it's like, "Well, am I...?" You know, you can, kind of, like, reflect on, "Well, does this label fit me? Does it fit who I feel inside?" And I think that that's a very universal, sort of, approach.

So he hisses. So Bubbles has a big reaction. And I think here, I really like we get into this secondary topic of emotional regulation, and that in pre-school is a very big topic. So we, sort of, see Bubbles become dysregulated. How Bubbles deals with that is something that this book might want to explore, but it might not because, again, like the numbers and the shapes and the colors, it might be a distraction from the story but it all depends on execution. So Bubbles fears that kindergarteners will no longer love their class pet who's neither a boy or a girl guinea pig.

Just from a logic perspective, I would be curious how Bubbles plans to tell them. That's something I'm curious about, how will the children know about Bubbles' identity?

Amy: And continuing that logic standpoint, I was thinking the same thing about... So each student is called a boy or a girl but being either one doesn't feel right to him. Well, also he's not a child, you know? He's not a student. And so I was just, kind of, thinking in my head here, how does this go down? How is he communicating this? What parts of him aligned with these kids? And I was like, "Maybe there should be another guinea pig who is a boy or girl, who he talks to," or I don't know. There's some questions to answer that might be there in the execution but feel like they're missing from the pitch for me.

Mary: Yeah. So when Bubbles liaise with the kids, is there a gender-conforming guinea pig that can sort of act as a check that Bubbles can work through some of these ideas with? So I feel like, from a big picture kind of thematic standpoint, this is a really, really nice way to explore it. That being said, how do we bridge the guinea pig world with the kid world? And how much time do we spend on, kind of, these secondary things that are introduced in the pitch if that's fair to say? So this I'd be very, very curious to see the execution on. Okay, Amy, our faces are coming back because I'm going to go to a different window. So, put down your coffee, because I'm always like whenever I'm not on the screen, I'm usually eating.

Okay, so I am going to go to this next one. I think we have time for one or two more. And this is the one we're going to next. So I'm going to make our faces disappear to make sure we can all see the screen.

So, "Chun is a wiz with toys and can make them work."

That's great. Right away, we have a STEM and STEAM...STEM focus. Love it.

"At her new friend's traditional festival, Chun could stop being a worrywart about goofing up."

I'm a little bit confused as to... A lot of elements. So, if Chun is a wiz, where do the worries come from? So that's an immediate question that I have here. I like that it looks like we're going to be... Good highlighting of a cultural element here. I like that. That could be either a primary element in the story or a secondary element, but I really like setting it in that kind of environment.

"That is, if she knows how to dress down, get ready for, and win the festive game."

Okay. So, I'm a little bit clearer here but it seems like... I'm not clear though on how the festive game interacts with Chun's abilities with toys. That kind of connection just from the outward pitch is unclear to me.

"Chun learns similarities and differences between her family's Lunar festival and the colorful festival of Holi. She realizes that the celebration of diverse cultures, food, and traditions with friends can be fun."

I think this is a great takeaway, but I'm still a bit lost on how the toy wiz element with the celebration of the festivals, because we have two festivals here, will play out in plot. So I think from a pitch perspective, what I would really like to see is how this element, the first thing that we learn about the story, the first thing that we learn about the character, how it weaves into the festive games, and all of the other things that it seems like are plot points, but are they cohesive with the theme?

So, "The story in Colors of Friendship helps to empower young readers," obviously love that theme, "growing up in a world of intersectional and diverse experiences," I think that is really, really timely focused, "provides a fresh perspective of different colors as complementary experiences that have the power to transform."

So I definitely think from the title that colors are going to be key. How does this intersect with plot? That is still something I am wondering. So, "...that have the power of transformation like the splendor of a rainbow." So I think, like, thematically there's a lot here. I'm just a little bit confused on what the actual structure of the story will be and how that wiz with toys will be something that Chun can contribute as she, sort of, makes her way through this new intersectional experience that she's having. Amy, what do you think?

Amy: Yeah. There's just a lot of elements going on here. And I really like all of them. I love that we have her own Lunar festival, that she's learning about the festival of Holi. I love that she's a wiz with toys and she can make them work. I love that she has that emotional struggle of like, "Oh, no, I don't know I'm going to goof up. I don't know how to behave at this different festival, but maybe it's kind of similar to my own and different in fun ways." I like that we're learning about colors, but they all seem a little disparate right now as we're reading the pitch. I'm not seeing how they're all tying together, and I think we really need to get that on the page for this pitch to work.

Mary: So on the one hand, what I think is crucial in today's market is that we do have some substance going on. We have a number of layers. We have, let's say, STEM and STEAM, culture, acceptance. Wonderful, wonderful. But that being said, it is possible that sometimes an idea may have too much going on and here, since I don't quite know how it all intersects in an actual plot, what the characters are actually going to be doing for those 28, 29 pages other than just existing in this space, right, that is where...depending on the execution obviously, I might ask, is one of these elements maybe a fit for a different story? And should we sharpen our focus a little bit? So that is something that I am wondering here.

Okay, back to the faces for a second. I think we have time for one more, and I will find it now. Get the faces out of here. Get out of here, Mary's face. Don't come back. Okay, so this is "Scales of Invisibility." I just love the title. There's a nice mystery to it.

"If animals could talk, this story would all be true," which is a heck of an assertion but I like it.

So, "In this picture book of 749 words," for non-fiction, that is fabulous. Don't do anything different, you're perfect. "...Borneo, the Kapuas Mud Snake (a snake with impressive and unique powers)," so right away, I love the focus on a specific snake. This shows me I'm about to learn something interesting and unique.

"...watches all the other..."

Amy: But hang on. I want to know what the impressive and unique powers are right there. Like, I would say to either just name the snake and move on to what he's doing or to tell us specifically what those impressive and unique powers are.

Mary: Yeah, so I am very much... So what I typed here was from a pitch craft perspective, give us those powers. Like, wow us right away with what the powers are rather than, sort of, withholding it. But that's like a query letter critique rather than a story critique. But I do think that, in a pitch, like, give us the good stuff right away. That's what's going to catch that agent or publishing editor's attention.

So, "...watches all the other animals heading off to the river for a drink and a tasty tidbit for breakfast."

So I like some of the evocative language here. Again, I think the language... Good job capturing some nice energy with your language.

"...but she is too cold to move."

So right away, we get this great conflict right away. All the other animals, we set up this contrast. Just like with Bubbles' story, it's like, "Oh, all of these other kids must fit into these two buckets. And what happens if I don't fit in?" You know, so right away we get that difference. A lot of kids feel different and this is something that we really want to normalize. So thematically, that's a nice little extra element.

"She can't get to the river for a drink or move fast enough to catch some breakfast. Her muscles just don't work when she is cold."

Great. So we're learning. We're learning about how cold-blooded animals operate there.

"Snake asks the other animals how they can move around in the cold early morning when she must wait while her muscles warm up. But she asks one animal too many and puts herself in danger."

So just from a pitch perspective to Amy's earlier point, be specific about the danger here. So this is a really interesting... How can we make the character proactive as she's sitting there? This is kind of like in a novel where it's like an escape room or like a closed-door thriller where the characters are really limited in their environment. How do we make that active? And this character literally cannot move. So how do we make sure that she comes off as an active character? And also I'm a little bit worried about repetition, kind of like, "Hey, how can you move?" "I don't know. I just move," you know? Like, those conversations can get a little bit one-note after, like, two or three requests from different animals because the thing about animals is they don't really know how or why or what they do. They just do it. I guess the writer is saying, like, the animals actually are more aware than we give them credit for with this [crosstalk 00:57:32.633]...

Amy: But even if they are aware, their answer is pretty much all the same thing. Even if she's asking like a variety of animals, I mean, the answer is the same. We're not coldblooded. We don't need to wait for the sun to warm us up, you know?

Mary: Yeah. So I want to make sure that that is not necessarily the main driver of the story, that we don't spend 15, 16 pages just covering that because it could get pretty redundant.

"So will Snake remember her unique powers in time to escape becoming breakfast?"

So, I'm a huge opponent of rhetorical questions and query letters. Just because this is your story, tell us what happens instead, you know, instead of making the person evaluating wonder. But again, that's more of a query critique rather than a premise critique. So I think in terms of stakes, there is no higher stake than becoming breakfast. So I love the stakes here. This is something great that this writer is doing.

"This non-fiction story wrapped in a fiction format was written to introduce the concept of warm and cold-bloodedness," which I think is really, really cool. I love that it's a non-fiction story, but we do borrow some techniques from fiction. We have this fictionalized character. The character is interacting with her world, and there's danger coming from that world. I mean, from this pitch, this seems really compelling. I wonder how much we're going to be able to learn other than just the warm-blooded can move. Cold-blooded can't move. What other wrinkles we can bring in about it? Because my worry here is that maybe just the idea of cold-bloodedness doesn't give us enough substance for an entire book. So I'm also wondering what other attributes of cold versus warm-bloodedness the writer explores. What do you think about that question, Amy? You can totally disagree with me.

Amy: No, I do agree with you. I mean, the pitch almost sounds like it's just the setup for the story. And then I'm reading down here below that she has an equal amount of words almost about factual back matter. And I'm just wondering if there's enough story, whether this would be more effective weaving some of that non-fiction information into the story or whether developing the story a little bit more so there's more than just, "I'm cold-blooded. I'm stuck here." It's happening in the story. I mean, I think you could go a few different ways with it, but I am a little worried about being enough material in the narrative right now.

Mary: And that's sort of something that we have to really decide. This writer did a lot of research. They have a lot of facts about cold-bloodedness. How much of it do we include if we do take this kind of fictional approach to the actual story and then sort of add a sidecar of back matter? Well, how are we distributing that information? A lot of the time, Amy, you and I, I'm going to turn this off now and bring our faces back as we bring this in for a landing, but a lot of the time you and I, we... Ugh, there. I'm sorry.

Amy: I like that better.

Mary: I would rather, I would rather spotlight you, but whatever. A lot of the time actually we tell people, when we have a pretty fact-filled narrative portion, we advise writers to pull facts out of the narrative, focus the narrative and put those facts in back matter because that's always available to us for non-fiction. Here, I'm wondering if we need to pull any of the facts from the back matter and weave them into the story so that the snake's not just asking the same question five times and then gets eaten, and then I'm guessing warms up enough to spring away at the last minute. But obviously he's...

Amy: Because also maybe it's more of a non-fiction book. Maybe what the author is seeing as the back matter, maybe that's the actual substance of the story. And this little frame of the snake in danger, maybe that's a small attention-getting hook for the beginning, you know, that then resolves at the end after covering the non-fiction matter. I mean, there's a lot of choices you can make when you're trying to balance that fiction and non-fiction element to this story.

Mary: I think the premise is really sound. How you explore it, that is something that is sort of perfect for this workshop setting. And as you can see, we're asking questions. We're positioning kind of different options for how you might work within the material that you've already come up with. So I will bring this slide back up just as we do an outro here. The Story Mastermind program is workshop. You bring us ideas. You bring us anything from a pitch to a manuscript, and Amy and I along with a small cohort of other writers, we workshop your idea. And at the end of five months of your time together, you'll have six or more fully workshop and realized manuscripts, whether fiction, non-fiction or concept book or something that we haven't even covered here, ready for submission or well on their way to being ready for submission your entire picture book portfolio. So these are just some of the benefits of the Story Mastermind program. If you are interested in learning more or applying, you can find all of the information and applications open twice a year over at storymastermind.com. But this is what we do. This is what we do with our groups of masterminders and this is what we love. So I'm so happy that you have joined us for this little demo of the workshop. And, Amy, thank you so much for your wonderful insights today.

Amy: Thank you.

Mary: And thanks for joining us. Hope you check out storymastermind.com.