Are There Any NEW Book Ideas Out There? • by Natascha Biebow

Are there really any NEW book ideas out there . . .? When you have a book idea, do you go online and search if anyone else has done it already?

For example, say you wanted to write a book on the topic of TREES. Here are just seven different ways 'in' to the topic that you might find:

Trees to Spot by Kirsteen Robson and Sam Smith

The Tree Lady: The True Story of How One Tree-Loving Woman
Changed a City Forever by H. Joseph Hopkins and Jill McElmurry

Tree by Britta Teckentrup

Trees: A Lift-the-Flap Eco Book illus by Carmen Saldana

Little Tree by Loren Long

As an Oak Tree Grows by G Brian Karas

The Wisdom of Trees by Lita Judge

So, arguably, most of the time, the answer is yes – in some shape or form - someone will have already written a book on 'your' topic. Why?

People are often asking the same questions – we’re curious by nature.

Everything reminds us of something . . .

It can be dispiriting, sometimes, to find yourself almost halted by this kind of obstacle before you’ve even really started.

 

But  . . .

 

Here’s a glimmer of hope: most ideas HAVE already been done, but they haven’t already been done by YOU.

 

So, how can you figure out your fresh, new take on an idea, your uniquely YOU story?

 

Writing coaches and industry professionals will often say:

 

“Write from the heart.”

 

“Write what you know.”

 

“Share what you’re driven to share.”

 

Yes, if you do this, your writing will come from you and your experience.

 

But the key here is to find a connection with readers that feels fresh and new. How?

 

You have to find a way to make your idea resonate with readers in a uniquely YOU way.  

 

How?

 

You have to make them say a-ha! or ahhhh!!! or aw! or WOW!  

 

To understand this, we have to delve into where any ‘new’ ideas come from.

 

Humans are driven to be creative and innovate. It gives us a boost. But . . .

 

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.” ― Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review

Our ideas are in all kinds of combinations, in a 'mental kaleidescope' 

So how do we make ‘new and curious combinations’ that are amazing and feel fresh and new? How do we create something that feels AUTHENTIC?

 

GENERATING NEW IDEAS:

 

To create new ideas, we often start with what’s come before, then question the defaults in order to innovate. In an article for the Smithsonian Magazine, this is summed up perfectly:

“Across the spectrum of human activities, prior art propels the creative process . . .

Before 1908, building a new car was laborious. Each vehicle was custom built, with different parts assembled in different places and then painstakingly brought together. But Henry Ford came up with a critical innovation: he streamlined the entire process, putting the manufacture and assembly under one roof. Wood, ore, and coal were loaded in at one end of the factory, and Model Ts were driven out the other. His assembly line changed the way the cars were built . . .  Ford later said, “I invented nothing new. I simply assembled into a car the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work.” 

 

So, authors must Start with the BUILDING BLOCKS of our world and our lives and seek out the new. We must be curious. This is why we must look around us – really LOOK.

 

We must do RESEARCH: listen to people around us, read lots of books, watch movies and documentaries, view art, search for problems that need solving in new ways, get involved in pursuits that are unrelated to writing for creative inspiration. Spend time with our young audiences.

 

We must ASK QUESTIONS: our writer ears must be attuned and open to possibilities. We must look for adventure and explore.   

 

Then, we must CHANGE THINGS UP, push the BOUNDARIES of our everyday and knowledge, and look for NEW ANGLES on existing solutions and ideas beyond what we already know.

We must make creativity a habit!

 

BE PROLIFEROUS

In his book Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam Grant suggests creatives should generate a lot of ideas to find the original. 

Originals: How Non-Conformists
Changed the World by Adam Grant

Surprisingly, he shares that William Shakespeare wrote his famous plays MacBeth, Othello and King Lear at the same time as quite a few ‘un-exceptional’ plays. Similarly, Mozart and Beethoven composed more than 600 pieces in their lifetimes, and only a handful were masterpieces. Picasso painted thousands of paintings and Edison registered over 1000 patents, but each are remembered and revered for a handful of achievements.

Grant also says that most people make the mistake of generating only a handful of ideas and ‘then obsess about refining them to perfection.’ Sound familiar?

So, to create new, innovative ideas, we must push ourselves to generate more of them and think big.

FINDING THE EXTRAORDINARY IDEA

So, now you have a pile of ideas . . . but here’s another problem – how can you figure out which ideas are the ones to pursue? Grant says that as creatives we are too close to our work to evaluate it successfully, which is why we are either often too positive about something (we love what we’ve just made!), or unable to see its faults. The solution? To ask fellow creators because they are “open to seeing the potential in unusual possibilities” and they often don’t have a stake in the outcome of our ideas in the way we do.

So, find a reliable critique group partner or, if you’re lucky enough to have one, listen to your editor, agent or art director – they know what they’re talking about!

REMEMBER! IT TAKES TIME to percolate to have the thought in the back of our minds long enough to come up with creative and unique idea.

 

Let's take another evergreen picture book topic (New babies in the family!) and look at some examples of how different creators have approached it and innovated to create a ‘new’ book idea that felt fresh and new and connected with readers:

There's a House Inside My Mummy
by Giles Andrae and Vanessa Caban

15 Things NOT to Do with a Baby
by Margaret McAllister and Holly Sherling

The Baby's Catalogue by Janet and Allan Ahlberg

Waiting for Baby by Rachel Fuller

The NEW Small Person by Lauren Child

Wolfie the Bunny by Ame Dyckman and Zachariah OHora

There's Going To Be a Baby by John Burningham and Helen Oxenbury

How to Be a Baby by Me The Big Sister by Sally Lloyd-Jones and Sue Heap

Mr Bear's New Baby by Debi Gliori

Mummy Laid and Egg by Babette Cole

On the Night You Were Born by Nancy Tillman

Mommy, Mama and Me by Lesléa Newman and Carol Thompson

Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born by Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell

So many ways 'in'! You can change up the target age group, fiction vs. non-fiction, flip the point of view, turn the voice on its head, innovate the structure and so much more!

Even if you don’t come up with a brand new idea, by adding your unique take on it, you could add a new perspective or spin that might feel new and connect with young readers. And THAT is valuable!

_________________________________________________________________

Natascha Biebow, MBE, Author, Editor and Mentor

Natascha is the author of the award-winning The Crayon Man: The True Story of the Invention of Crayola Crayons, illustrated by Steven Salerno, winner of the Irma Black Award for Excellence in Children's Books, and selected as a best STEM Book 2020. Editor of numerous prize-winning books, she runs Blue Elephant Storyshaping, an editing, coaching and mentoring service aimed at empowering writers and illustrators to fine-tune their work pre-submission, and is the Editorial Director for Five Quills. Find out about her new picture book webinar courses! She is Co-Regional Advisor (Co-Chair) of SCBWI British Isles. Find her at www.nataschabiebow.com

Drawing games to spark a narrative - Garry Parsons

Visual drawing games can be a great way to spark new ideas and unleash unexpected narratives. 

Best done in groups of four or more, here are a few drawing games I've tried and tested. So invite a few friends over or gather your family to release some visual poetry and collective creativity.

Exquisite Corpse collective drawing 1927 - Max Morise, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy & Joan Miro

Pencils and paper at the ready, we're going to start with a favourite of the Surrealists, 'The Exquisite Corpse' or more widely known as 'Consequences'. I'm sure everyone has played this at some point but it never fails to amuse and also gives your pencil a warm up. I will explain the rules of the original game and  then offer a version I practised on delegates at a picture book conference earlier this summer which has a slight difference in approach.

'The Exquisite Corpse' or  'Consequences'. 

Each participant needs a pencil and a sheet of paper. Everyone starts by drawing a head, it can be anything, animal, human whatever, but leaving off at the neck. Making sure each player's drawing is concealed from the others, players simply fold the paper over to hide the drawing but leaving the two lines of the 'neck' visible. Each sheet is passed to the next player at the same time where they continue with the torso, concealing it with a fold again once the torso is complete and passing it on until everyone has drawn a head, a torso, a waist with legs and then the ankles with feet. Pass the still folded sheets around again and take it in turns to unfold the paper for the reveal, ta dah!

The alternative version to this I mentioned is orientated around a landscape rather than a body and is inspired by the endpapers of Rupert Annuals by illustrator Alfred Bestall.

Rupert Annual - Alfred Bestall

In his landscapes you will see the sky with a distant horizon, a middle ground, a foreground and something in close-up. So in this version of consequences everyone starts with a sky and distant horizon, passes the paper around to continue with a middle ground and so on. At any point you can add a character or hint of a character. Once the drawings are revealed challenge each player to suggest a narrative that might come from the image. Try this large scale on A3 or A2 paper for more impactful results.

Automatic Drawing or Drawing a Story from a Line.

Another visual game from the Surrealists is Automatic Drawing. Pioneered by French painter Andre Masson, the idea is to draw without thinking, trying to avoid conscious control over the picture, a kind of unconscious doodling. Try keeping your pencil in contact with the paper for some unpredictable effects. 

Andre Masson - automatic drawing

Always with an eye on leading into a narrative, I use a version of this in the classroom with primary school children with the aim of turning a simple line into a story that they can develop into a piece of writing to illustrate. In a classroom I like to stand behind a flip chart and reach around with a pen to draw a wobbly line. The children can see that I'm not looking at what I'm drawing and my intention is to not make anything recognisable. I then ask them to tell me what they see or that they feel they might be able to turn the line into. The variety of things that are suggested is always astounding. We then choose one idea to develop and keep asking 'what happens next' until a narrative starts to form. A collective story emerges, often pretty wild but a story nonetheless!

So start by closing your eyes and making a mark on the paper, keeping it as simple as possible but with a little variety, not just a straight line. Take a moment to see what the line suggests to you and add to your line to develop it. You can turn your paper anyway you wish to get started. Then simply keep drawing or writing to develop the narrative. In the classroom, we often end up with a few sheets of drawings that have stemmed from the first,  becoming like page turns in a picture book or a comic. As the story unfolds we give it a working title and even make a plan for the look of the cover. Using this 'line' method works well with people who might feel inhibited or reluctant to draw.

Challenge the Illustrator

The next drawing game came form a conversation with author Josh Lacey on a train travelling to a school event we were attending together. During the conversation I nonchalantly announced that "I can draw anything".  Thinking this a little arrogant,  Josh asked the pupils at the school to come up with impossibly difficult things for me to draw as a challenge to the illustrator.  We discovered that this was not only very funny but also a great way to begin a story narrative and set the pupils thinking about writing. This proved such good fun that we incorporated it into our school events and added a few rules...

Ask people in your group to think up an animal, a mode of transport and a scene or setting. Consider a few suggestions and settle on one idea for each topic. Combine each element into one drawing (as best you can!) and then continue to explore the narrative from the drawing by considering 'what happens next' and 'what might have happened before' and write down what you come up with. 

Drawing from collective suggested topics - Tapir, a tractor and Earth's orbit.

                                           

Re-Assembling Reality or sticking together cut-out images!

The Surrealist Max Ernst invented this method of pasting together different 'cut-out' images which have a similar look or quality, principally taken from printed publications, magazines or books, and re-assembled  into new pictures. These new 'illustrations' were often dream-like or erring on the comical or grotesque. 

Max Ernst 'Women reveling violently and waving in menacing air' 1929

Collage took on lots of forms for the Surrealists but can also be good visual way to spark story narratives. I recently took part in a 're-assembly' exercise with a group of authors and illustrators who were given a pile of magazines to sift through and a pair of scissors and a sick of glue. I came up with this..

These exercises may not turn into fully a formed picture book but they are a fun and invigorating way to start the creative process and shake things up. Consider them more as creative yoga or visual warm up exercises for the creative mind!

                                                                                 ***

Garry Parsons is an illustrator of children's books and a lover of Surrealism. www.garryparsons.co.uk

You can follow Garry @icandrawdinos