Where do you get your ideas from? That’s one of the questions I’m most often asked. My imagination, I usually say. Memories of childhood, I add.
Observation. Experience.
But ideas come from anywhere and everywhere. A phrase overheard on the bus. The person in front of you at the
check-out. A picture on a postcard
someone sent you from Peru. That
silly/strange/funny thing you did/saw/heard/read/thought yesterday.
An idea is just a starting point. Starting points come from anywhere, and lead anywhere. That’s the joy of creativity.
Folk tales are a great starting point, for example. If a story’s survived, in all its many
forms, for hundreds, thousands of years, then there’s something deep inside it
that cuts to the quick of what it is to be human. Something we can draw on to create a whole new story, a whole new
world.
It’s often said that there are only a limited number of
themes, a limited range of plots that are appropriate for picture book. That may or may not be so, but the joy of
picture book is when the writer finds such a fresh, imaginative and engaging
way of telling their story that where it stands in relation to anything that’s
been written before becomes irrelevant. It works. It simply works.
So, below, I've jotted down a few basic start points for stories. And then
I’ve looked at some of my own picture books to see which of them might fit
under each theme:
A puzzle that needs solving: Who Did It?; Sleepy Pendoodle
Someone or something that’s lost and needs to be found: Charlie
is My Darling; The Snuggle Sandwich; Teddybear Blue
The need to find 'home': Antonio on the Other Side of the World
Getting Smaller; Big Pig
Triumph of the youngest / smallest: Too Noisy; Collywobble; Danny the Duck with no Quack; Digger and Lew.
Going on a journey / quest: Little Chick and the Secret of Sleep;
The Bold Boy; Blast Off!
Finding a friend: When a Zeeder Met a Xyder
A child’s relationship with a grandparent: Owen and the
Mountain; The Dancing Tiger; Tad-cu’s Bobble Hat; Jody’s Beans; Granny Sarah
and the Last Red Kite.
Dealing with an odd/annoying member of the household: Albert
and Sarah Jane
Helping, and making friends with, a monster: Hungry!
Hungry! Hungry!
Having fun with folk tale: Peek-a-Book; Hen’s Cake;
The Great Castle of Marshmangle; Una and the Seacloak.
Looked at that way, you can see that even just in my work
certain themes recur over and over (I seem to have a thing about grandparents…
and being the little one in a big family... oh, and mountains... and getting lost in the woods... )
In most if not all cases I didn't start with the theme - I more often started with a character, a picture in my head, a phrase that came to me out walking....
So yes, as Lynne said in the last post, try to avoid things that have been recently done to death - but don't panic if you think you story isn't 100% original - nothing is. The trick is to find something fresh,
something captivating to say with each new story. And to tell it in your very own style, in your very own voice. Then it doesn’t really matter how often the basic theme’s been used
before, because it's your story now. And it's a good one - I know it is.
How about you? Do your books/stories use any of these themes as a starting
point?
Has anyone got any other recurring themes they’d like to
offer up? Or any killer one-offs?
