Wordiness in Picture Books
Wordiness in picture books is a problem for a couple of reasons. First, word count guidelines for picture books are much lower these days than when, say, Ludwig Bemelman’s Madeline was published in 1939. Madeline clocks in at 13,156 words. Tightening up the wordiness in picture books will keep your manuscript within current market preferences.
I remember refusing to check out certain (cough, Disney) books from the library for my preschoolers because there was way too much text on each page. I also spent years making up my own, shorter, stories if the author’s words were too long. This is part of the reality of reading to kids with short attention spans! So this trend towards shorter picture books is one I enjoy.
AN EXAMPLE OF WORDINESS
More importantly, I think, wordiness can often obscure the story. For instance, take this passage:
Fredricka, my orange and white kitty cat, was a loud and yowling and always hungry mess of a pet. She would walk around the living room sniffing for butter. Every day, she would routinely climb up onto the top of the kitchen table and MEOW loudly and then lick the butter off of every last one of my pancakes, and then Mom’s pancakes, and then Dad’s pancakes. It was absolutely perfect.
It could be condensed like this:
Who, me? Adding to the wordiness in picture books with my extreme cuteness?
Fredricka was a yowling, hungry kitty.
[No need to describe her coloring—this is a picture book, so the illustrations can show that without spending any words on it. Loud, yowling, and always hungry mess are all saying essentially the same thing, so I picked the words with the most verve. And cutting down on setting changes—like going from the living room to the kitchen—can be helpful.]
She climbed. She meowed. She licked.
[The illustrations can carry a lot of weight here.]
It was perfect.
That took us from 70 words in the original example to 16. That’s some aggressive cutting! But we can go even further.
Fredricka loved butter.
Only 3 words—but not engaging storytelling. (But something I might say to a two-year-old as we quickly flipped through pages…)
So we can definitely take this too far! I find it’s easiest to write a first draft without worrying about word count. Then, when the plot and characters are down on the page, it’s time to go through and cut some of those filler words and eliminate details that can be shown in illustration instead. Trimming all the wordiness in picture books, so that we’re left with bare bones, is not the answer. For instance, if you wanted to emphasize the pancake situation, if it’s important to the plot rather than being a general habit of Fredricka’s, you could spend more words on it.
My kitty, Fredricka, yowled each morning from pure hunger. Then she leaped onto the kitchen table and licked the butter off my stack of pancakes. Then Mom’s. Then Dad’s. The chaos was perfect.
This still takes us from 70 words in the original example to 29 here. Pretty good savings! What’s more, the prose is tighter without being weighed down by redundant phrases like “off of,” “every day she would routinely,” and “up onto the top of.”
When we shave off some of those words that aren’t earning their keep, the story comes through. We’re off on an adventure with a butter-loving cat whose small owner loves the chaos she causes, for some reason. (Hopefully the reason comes to light on the next page!)
Some shortcuts for avoiding wordiness in picture books
These are some phrases I like to cut (or at least scrutinize):
Adverbs and adjectives (look for that –ly ending)
Just, only, really
Seemed to
Saw/heard/smelled/looked at
That
The tighter your prose, the more engaging it will be to read aloud. Avoiding excessive wordiness in picture books is a wonderful skill to hone to level up your craft.
Happy writing!
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