Workshop Wednesday: Storyboarding for Picture Book Authors

Storyboarding a picture book is a useful tool for picture book authors

What is storyboarding? Why is it something a picture book author should do? And how do you do it?

A picture book storyboard is a visual of your whole book. It’s your WHOLE STORY laid out visually on one large page (or “board”), covering all 32 pages of a picture book. All 32 pages of a picture book means the story PLUS end papers, title page, copyright page, etc.

Why bother storyboarding your picture book manuscripts?

Visualization

A storyboard will help you visualize your story as a book, with scenes and potential page breaks.

Story length

Is your manuscript the right length? This is not about word count, but about how much story there is. Is there enough story to fill a standard 32 page picture book? Is there too much? Laying your story out scene by scene, page by page, will help you get an idea. It’s important to note that there isn’t a hard and fast “rule” about this. Not every scene in a picture book will require a two-page spread, for example. The point: there is wiggle room.

Story pacing

Storyboarding your manuscript can help you see if parts of your story are too drawn out. For example, is your story’s set-up or resolution spanning too many pages or spreads so that it bogs down at the beginning or the end? Or does the resolution come about so quickly that you end up with leftover spreads with nothing on them?

Action

It’s important to know if the action (or lack thereof) in your story will translate well to illustration. In other words, do the words evoke images? Even if the text is spare or quiet, if you can visualize what is happening on each page or spread of your storyboard, then you’re on the right track.

Scene Changes

Another important thing storyboarding can help you understand is if the scene changes in your story are effective. For example, if a story takes place all in one place (a bedroom, a park bench, etc.), without a lot of change in scenery, there should still enough happening in each scene so that each page or spread is distinct.

Also…

An editor may ask you to do it! So, you might as well practice.