Ideas, Themes and Originality by Malachy Doyle

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? 

Humdinger! - doing a picture book event for toddlers, by Malachy Doyle

 

One of the strange things about being a picture book writer is that you get asked to do loads of events, but because the vast majority are in schools, you’re rarely if ever actually reading your books to the age groups they’re written for.  I read picture books to everyone, from age 0 to 99, and they always seem to enjoy them - but it’s delightful to read them to real live pre-schoolers, for a change.

That’s why I love doing events like the one I did recently for the Humdinger Festival in Derry.  It’s a lovely little festival of children’s books run by Dog Ears – a new and exciting children's media company, and it was part of the year-long celebration of Derry as the first UK City of Culture. 

At the pre-planning stage the organisers asked me what age group I wanted to read to and I replied 3 to 8 (though I said if anyone wants to bring younger or older children, don’t turn them away – I know how complicated it can be, sorting out child cover in a busy family). 

I was delighted, therefore, to see lots of little ones turning up.  Now little ones, as we all know, have limited attention spans.  They can run about the place and yell and stuff...  If they like you, that have a propensity to edge closer and closer till they're crawling up your trouser leg...  They shout ‘I have a dog!’ and ‘I need a wee!’ 

So if they sit still and listen, or wriggle and listen, or join in and listen, even for a few minutes at a time, even just some of them, then you’re on a winner.  It’s chaos – but it’s wonderful.

Well in Derry, on Saturday morning, I did 45 minutes - and most of my audience were still there at the end.  I read them Well, A Crocodile Can – my first pop-up book - and they flapped their ears to keep cool, pretended to slurp a bathful of juice, stuck out their tongues to see whose was the longest, swung from trees like a monkey, stood on one foot while singing Twinkle Twinkle… 

I read One, Two, Three, O’Leary – while they joined in the songs (sort of), counted down the ten children falling out of bed, and all pretended to sleep at the end. (a rare moment’s peace)...

  

I read Too Noisy!, my most recent picture book, and when they all joined in, with great enthusiasm, on the HELP! spread, I was surprised the security guards (Derry’s still big on security guards) didn’t come rushing in...

I read Big Pig, and they all wanted Farmer Joe to let our eponymous hero, who'd saved him from the deep dark hole, live in his farmhouse with him , rather than be sent out to the field.  

 A little girl took the part of the boy in Hungry! Hungry! Hungry!  Guess who played the Grisly Ghastly Goblin?  You guessed it... 

And we finished, as we always do, with The Dancing Tiger.  Because it’s quiet.  And calm.  And sends them away with a warm glow (well, the Mums, anyway)  Two little girls came out to dance with my tiger.  (Though the first one went all shy on us and almost forgot how…)

So that was it.  Except they didn’t want to go yet, so we had to do one more story…

Oh, and while I was there I got to meet Meg Rosoff and Alex T. Smith, and to go and see the phenomenon that is Julia Donaldson, doing the second of her two sell-out shows that day in the Millenium Forum (a 900-seater auditorium).  Proof, if proof were needed, that Dog Ears have got it right - that there’s an enormous demand out there for happy, fun, children’s book events, even in a place without much of a history of such.

So congratulations to Dog Ears and the people of Derry.  What a Humdinger of a festival!  

Working (or not) with Illustrators - Malachy Doyle

People out there in the real world always assume that I’m best buddies with my illustrators. They think we huddle together over a mug of lapsang souchong and hatch out our books.

Now I know there are some classic teams that work like that, but it’s neither the norm nor is it necessary.

Most of my illustrators I’ve never met. We don’t discuss the project on the phone, or by email. In fact, in the vast majority of cases, the only time I have any direct contact with them is once the whole thing is done, dusted and published. I make a point at that stage of thanking them, generally by email (and in order to agree PLR shares.)

It’s not that I’m a curmudgeon, particularly. It’s not that I don’t care, passionately, how the book turns out. It’s just that we probably live hundreds, if not thousands of miles apart, and there’s no actual need for us to meet. And that publishers generally seem to like to keep us apart, so that neither one nor the other has an undue influence on the outcome. They don’t want me to say to the illustrator that it’s got to look like THIS (which is actually not my business), or to tell them if I’m not 100% happy with their artwork (which again, although of course I’m desperately hoping I’ll love it, is not my job).

(And, by the way, the publishers also don’t want the illustrator to say to me, ‘Please could you change the wording to make your zebra green, Malachy, because I spilt a pot of paint on him, and I don’t want to have to draw the whole caboodle again.’ Sort of thing.)

I learnt this when one of my very first picture books was being illustrated. The publisher sent me the early roughs. 'We hope you like them as much as we do.' I spent hours and heart's blood compiling a list of comments / reservations / suggestions. Some weeks later I got sent the next stage of illustration. Not a whiff of my suggestions had been incorporated. I asked why. ‘Oh, the illustrator’s far too sensitive to hear that sort of thing.’ Hmm.

But the thing was, they were right and I was wrong, really. Because even though the book ended up a long long way from how I’d envisaged it, somehow it worked. Because what I hadn’t realised until then is that the art of illustration is NOT about translating the words into pictures. It’s about going beyond and beneath and around the words, and the characters within them, to make that story richer, deeper, funnier and massively more enthralling. That’s what a good illustrator does. That’s what a good art editor is working towards. And that’s why, these days, I leave them to it.

Because since that early book I’ve realised my job is to provide the best story I possibly can, with some (minimal) illustration guidelines if I consider they’re absolutely necessary for editors to make sense of what’s happening. And then, unless I REALLY REALLY REALLY can’t help myself, my job is to stay shtum. It’s like selling your novel to a film company. Respond to what they do with it if you’re asked, but basically stand back... cross your fingers... breathe deeply. And write another one. An even better one, if such a thing is possible.

And if the book comes back and there's a dog on the cover, like in my Owen and the Mountain, even though there’s no dog mentioned in the story, then hold fire...

And if the dog appears on nearly every page, and becomes the emotional pivot of the story, though yours truly the blessed author never even mentioned a dog... then hold fire. Because maybe it works. Because it this case, it does work. It works beautifully.

Because I’m not a visual artist. Yes, I sort of see pictures as I write. Yes, I try to bear in mind that it's good to have a different setting or activity on every spread, to allow for variety of illustration. But the pictures I see as I write are not the ones I’ll see, or even want to see, when I’m presented with the finished book. Often the finished illustrations delight me, sometimes they astound me. (Like Joel Stewart’s wonderfully sensitive and surprising portrayal of my seemingly mis-matched characters in When a Zeeder Met a Xyder. Like Jane Ray putting an Eastern European Marc Chagall-ish feel on my, as I thought distinctly Irish story, The Bold Boy).

My newest one, Too Noisy! is out very soon from Walker Books / Candlewick. (At the time of publication I’ll be away from all the chaos and kerfuffle, walking the Via de la Plata - all 1000 kilometres of it hopefully, from Seville to Santiago de Compostela - which is why I’m telling you about the book now, if you don't mind).

It’s illustrated by the phenomenally talented Ed Vere (that's me, not him, by the way, on the top of a cold mountain), and he does something in this book to convey character that I’ve never seen before. Something truly rare and special. It is SO SO visual, SO SO beautiful, and it ends up SO SO central to not just the look but the plot, that I feel like not only has Ed illustrated my story, but he’s sort of co-written it too.

Who needs to get together round a table and drink lapsang souchong? What you need is an author on top form, an illustrator who’s inspired, and a genius editor and art editor who put their heart and their hoes into it. And then, through hard work and alchemy, abracadabra, you've got yourself a near-perfect picture book. And, in this case, it’s got my name on it. TOO NOISY!