Making It Up As You Go Along by Paddy Donnelly

This week we invited guest author-illustrator Paddy Donnelly to talk to us about creating his new picture book The Vanishing Lake, published by Yeehoo Press.

I’m always fascinated to hear how other authors and illustrators’ put the pieces of their picture books together. There can be a variety of methods each person implements, and each process differs wildly. No matter how many interviews I listen to, or articles I read, every creator seems to follow a different path towards their goal. There is one thing they all have in common though. They made that process up, and are still making it up.

There’s no such thing as a perfect ‘process’ and no two picture book projects follow the exact same set of steps to completion. Writing and illustrating are quite unpredictable tasks - filled with floods of inspiration as well as creative droughts. Challenges appear, feedback can be surprising and you can most definitely find yourself painted into a corner. What’s important to remember is that everyone, no matter how successful they are, also experience all of these things on each project. It’s how you react to them that spurs you towards success.

When starting out in this industry, I would view people who were successful as those who’d ‘figured it out’. They’d discovered the magic formula for putting together a bestseller. However the longer I worked as an illustrator and author, the more I discovered the common truths that link everyone together. Everyone is full of doubts. Everyone has made many mistakes. Everyone has been surprised when something became a ‘hit’. And everyone has a dream story idea that nobody has picked up (yet!). It was reassuring to hear that successful authors and illustrators also took very rambling paths towards where they are today. Nobody in fact has really figured ‘it’ out. And there’s not really an ‘it’ to figure out. Realising this, and combining it with some advice from my old university lecturer - ‘Just say yes and figure it out later’, has definitely brought many enjoyable opportunities my way.

I first got into children’s publishing in 2018, and in the beginning I had no clue how all the different parts of the publishing machine worked, what publishers like to see in a portfolio, what an agent does or how to create an effective page turn. I tried to soak up as much knowledge as I could, and while there are many ‘guidelines’ to working in picture books, they are simply that - ‘guidelines’. All these ‘rules’ can be broken. There’s always a first time for everything. And you can absolutely change your way of working, or completely switch up your illustration style, or write in another genre. Nothing is set in stone.

My debut author illustrated picture book, The Vanishing Lake, was published in April 2021 and was such an enjoyable experience. This is my eighth picture book to be published, but the first where I was gelling the two halves together.

 

The Vanishing Lake is about a little girl called Meara who visits her Grandad who lives by a mysterious lake which disappears and reappears for no apparent reason. She constantly asks her Grandad why it happens and each time he has a more extravagant and unbelievable reason for her. Meara doesn’t believe any of his stories about mermaids, giants or narwhals, but with a little imagination she may discover the ‘real’ reason.

The story is actually based on a real place, close to where I grew up in Ballycastle in Ireland. It’s a lake called Loughareema which actually does disappear and reappear every few days, depending on the weather!

Storytelling is a huge part of life in Ireland, so I was surrounded by myths and legends from a young age and I think that’s had a big influence on me and my work. Rough seas, rugged coastlines, islands and mountains are all things I absolutely love to illustrate. That definitely comes from growing up surrounded by stunning scenery. It’s something I’ve come to appreciate so much more after moving away.

When you grow up with a wonder like this on your doorstep, you definitely take it for granted, and I hadn’t really thought about it for years. I was brainstorming a few different story ideas and it somehow popped into my head one day. I thought the title itself was intriguing and then I set off to build a story around that. I thought the mystery of ‘why’ the lake would disappear and reappear could be interesting to drive the story, and then setting the character up to be unwilling to believe each reason, spurred me on to come up with crazier and crazier ones.

 

I created the little girl of Meara for kids to relate to, and then I needed a wiser character who could tell her these tales. A grandparent made the most sense here as there’s something special about the relationship between grandparent and grandchild. They’re at such different points in their lives, but there’s often a really direct connection that kids don’t have with their parents. And grandparents are often full of wild tales. Playing on that familiar situation of a child asking ‘why?’ something is the way it is, and a parent/ grandparent trying to give an explanation was something I thought both the reading parent and child could relate to.

Meara couldn’t live by the lake herself, otherwise she’d be like me and probably think it was quite normal for it to disappear and reappear. The setting had to be familiar and at the same time strange and mysterious, so that was another reason to make it a grandparent who lived by the lake.

As most picture books have a standard number of pages, I knew how much I had to work with. I laid out some super rough thumbnails, plotting in the main set pieces - introduction to the lake, having it disappear and reappear, a few spreads of Grandad’s wild tales and then a few resolution spreads.

Once I had that really rough outline, I made slightly more detailed roughs. Then I finally moved on to the words. I’d learned a little from my characters from the sketching process, so I could now start writing in their ‘voices’. For example, I knew the Grandad would be really casually telling these magical stories of giants and mermaids, brushing them off as completely normal. Of course mermaids pulled the plug out!

I wrote and rewrote, all the while keeping the visuals in mind. 

Trying not to show and tell, but have both the words and illustrations work together in harmony, as two halves of the same puzzle. 

As I wrote, that would lead me to new ideas for illustrations, and as I would work on the final illustrations, I would be tweaking the words. I bounced back and forth, back and forth all the way until the end.

This was very different to my previous book projects, where I was illustrating someone else’s story. Usually in that situation, the manuscript has already been through an editing process and comes to you fully formed. So you don’t really have an affect on the actual words as you add the illustrations. I don’t really want to mess with the author’s words either, and I find that process really fascinating too. You get a huge flood of images in your head as soon as you read through a really well-formed piece of writing, and the best manuscripts already get me sketching after the first read.

I wanted to have the natural world shine through in the artwork, using a lot of vibrant colour schemes. I would take a lot of inspiration from the Irish landscape, but also with a little bit of fantasy world built in. The mix between imaginary worlds and the real world is a key element in this story, however it’s very difficult to see where one begins and one ends. 

The lines are blurred, and I left plenty of space for the child reading it to decide what’s real and what’s not.

Maybe you’ll be able to pull some interesting insights out of how I worked on this picture book. Some things might work for you, some things totally won’t. Take bits and pieces from it, try it backwards, take a sledgehammer to it! Remember though, that this was my path for this one particular book, and I can already see that it’s not the same for my second author illustrated picture book. This next one is an entirely different kind of story and is presenting both new challenges and firsts for me as an author and illustrator. All really exciting though!

‘Process’ is, and should be, a constantly evolving thing as you grow as an author or illustrator. 

Take comfort in the fast that everyone else is making it up as they go too. Don’t be afraid to get messy in your process. Try out something wild, new and scary and see what happens!

What does your current ‘process’ look like? Do you visualise images first when you’re writing a story? Do the characters already have a voice and you feel like you’re just writing down what they say. Do you have no idea what your characters will look like until the illustrator sends the first artwork? Or if you both write and illustrate, how does one fit with the other? 

Watch trailer of the book here!

Watch Paddy's short interview here. 

 

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Paddy Donnelly is an Irish illustrator and author of picture books, and also creates middle grade book covers. He wishes Pluto was still a planet. Follow him on Twitter @paddydonnelly and on Instagram at  @paddy

 

 

From redundancy to award-winning picture book • Guest blog post by Kate Milner

Huge congratulations to author illustrator, Kate Milner, who last week won the prestigious 2018 Klaus Flugge Prize for the most exciting and promising newcomer to children's book illustration.
In her guest blog post, Kate takes us behind the scenes of her award-winning  My Name is Not Refugee. We see illustrations that didn't make it into the final picture book, and discover why they were left out.

When my job was replaced by a machine at our local library I decide to take the chance to do an MA in children’s illustration at Anglia Ruskin. I had wanted to do the course for many years but it felt like a huge risk to step out of the labour market when I had commitments. There was so much excitement and so much fear wrapped up in returning to education in middle age.

I had done some work in editorial illustration when I was younger and I have always drawn and written stories for adults but it was working in the local library which showed me all the possibilities in children’s publishing. I also, of course, met a lot of readers. It was an excellent education.

I came up with the idea for My Name Is Not Refugee at the very end of the course when I should have been finishing off a piece of work for presentation. It was born out of anger at the debate in the press about the march of refugees out of Syria. They were being described as a zombie army, shuffling towards us, and it felt important to me to explain to children why these families had no choice but to leave their homes. It was crazy to start work on this idea a few days before the end of the course but that is what I did, presenting at the final crit a scrappy, half-finished picture book, with no cover. We all agreed it had no chance of commercial success. 

All the steps which have taken me from that crit to winning the Klaus Flugge Prize feel as if they are nothing to do with me but all the wonderful tutors, fellow students, agents and publishers who have picked it up and run with it. When people congratulate me I always say that I have been very lucky. Being polite they generally then say something like, not luck but talent; but, without any false modesty, I know that it takes collaboration to get a book into the hands of children and I have been very very lucky in my collaborators.

Unlike others below, this is an early illustration
that did make it into the final book.
From My Name in Not Refugee by Kate Milner
Published by The Bucket List (Barrington Stoke), 2017

Some of the spreads in the final book have hardly changed since I first drew them. The illustration showing people sleeping on the station platform is an example (see above), it is almost exactly the image I made as soon as I had the idea. Some spreads, on the other hand, have gone through a lot of changes and below are three early illustrations which have not made it into the book.

1) We'll hear words we don't understand.
This was the first example of the idea. I was trying to get the feeling of not understanding anything around you as a child might who finds themselves in a strange country. It’s not just the people who are speaking a strange language, it’s the radio, the dog, the street signs and the magazines, everything is different. Although I still like this image I can see it didn’t fit in with the rest of the book.

Early illustration idea on language, Kate Milner

We'll hear words we don't understand, from the final book
My Name is Not Refugee, Kate Milner

2) We'll see lots of new and interesting things.
Here is  another spread that went through many many changes. The little boy at the centre of the book is basically a cheerful, curious character so, to give a change of mood, I wanted to show him excited about something new. But what should the new thing be?

Early illustration idea on seeing new and interesting things, Kate Milner

This was one idea which came from looking at pictures of refugee camps on the internet. I could see temporary shops being set up with items for sale wrapped in plastic bags and hung from washing lines. I found this visually very interesting, the sweeping curves of the washing lines, the distortion of the objects through the plastic; I got a bit carried away. Again I like this image but I can see why it hasn’t made it into the final book. It’s my idea of what is interesting, not a small boy’s.

We'll see lots of new and interesting things, from the final book
My Name is Not Refugee, Kate Milner

3) Sometimes we'll wait by ourselves...
I like this image, probably more than the illustration in the final book which is a return to my original idea. However, I can absolutely see why we decided not to use it.

Early illustration idea on waiting, Kate Milner

The heart of the book is the relationship between the mother and her little boy. On nearly every spread of the final book they are touching, or close to each other, or looking at each other. If she is there he is safe and can look out at the world around him. This illustration does not show that connection between them.

Sometimes we'll wait by ourselves, from the final book
My Name is Not Refugee, Kate Milner

Kate Milner

Thank you, Kate, for this wonderful insight into your new picture book, and for showing us that redundancy can be an exciting catalyst to something new.
Follow Kate on Twitter @ABagForKatie

My Name is Not Refugee by Kate Milner is published by The Bucket List (Barrington Stoke), 2017
Klaus Flugge Prize 2018  www.klausfluggeprize.co.uk

Ten Little Pirates (or how I nearly threw away a great book deal) by Mike Brownlow

We're delighted to feature author (and sometimes illustrator!) Mike Brownlow as this month's guest blogger. His many picture books include the popular Little Robots series that became a TV series, and in this blog Mike divulges why somebody else has illustrated Ten Little Pirates, and it wasn't all plain sailing...

It came unbidden, as sometimes these things do. Walking with my wife in Trelissick Gardens not far from Falmouth, thinking about nothing in particular, the words “Ten little pirates, sailing out to sea, looking for adventure, happy as can be” popped into my head.

Maybe it was because I was in Cornwall, with all its piratical connections, or maybe because it was a beautiful day and I was gazing out over the sea that the nautical theme occurred to me. Whatever the reason, it might have stayed no more than an opening line, soon forgotten, had I not immediately coupled it to the idea of ten green bottles, and their gradual reduction in number.

So, here we have ten little pirates ready to be bumped off one by one in a series of nautical mishaps, the more dramatic the better. But would this be too gruesome for a picture book text aimed at 3-6 year olds? Well not if a happy ending could be arranged, and I had an idea about that. By the time we’d finished our walk I reckon I had about a third of the book written. I dragged my wife into the National Trust coffee shop, and she patiently waited until I'd put down on paper what was in my head. It felt like a strong idea, but I've grown to be wary of first ideas. I’ve started on texts before now, thinking yay! this is the one! – a terrific idea that will make for a sure-fire best seller, only to realize a little later that maybe that first flush of enthusiasm was misplaced.

But another feeling I've learnt to trust is to make time to develop that germ of an idea, whether the outcome is a good manuscript or a duff one. And do it as quickly as you can manage. I made time the next day and pretty soon I had the first draft of Ten Little Pirates done and dusted. It happened that I was quite busy with other work at the time. I was illustrating a book for America, and was running a bit behind schedule. I had a pretty good idea how I wanted my pirates to look - a bunch of disreputable but lovable rogues, with the odd scar and peg leg thrown in to conform to piratical convention. I doodled about, but the annoying thing was that I couldn't actually get down to roughing out the pictures for the book because of pressure of work.

Yet there was still that nagging feeling - was the idea any good? If you're anything like me, confidence is brittle at best, no matter how many books you've had published. I needed confirmation that my text was on the right track. I needed that reassuring pat on the shoulder. So I sent the manuscript off to my agent without any accompanying sample illustration, nor even a pencil character rough, and went back to my other work. All I wanted was a little note saying, yes, this is good, carry on, or no, I don't think this is going to fly.

In the evenings over the next few days I worked on the look of my pirates, and even did a painting of them hanging from the rigging. I was keen to continue, but the Americans were sending me nagging emails, so it was back to the day job.

Less than two weeks later I received an email from Caroline Walsh, my agent at David Highams. 'Congratulations!' it said, “Orchard Books have made an offer on Ten Little Pirates!” Orchard are better than good. They're a great publisher responsible for producing many lovely books. I was thrilled... until I read the next sentence. “And they have the perfect illustrator for the book.” The 'perfect illustrator' it turned out, wasn't me. Orchard had worked before with a young, relatively new artist called Simon Rickerty. He had produced a book for them, 'Suddenly', and it was doing very well. They'd been looking for another text for him to work on and, in their opinion, this was it.

I'll confess it. I was miffed. I huffed about for a while until I'd collected my thoughts. I made the fateful decision. I emailed Caroline to say thanks but no thanks. I really want to illustrate this one myself. Terribly sorry and everything. Caroline emailed me back to say “Er, are you really sure about that? This is a great deal they're offering.” I had another think. I had, I realized, done most of the hard writing work by this time. Illustrating it would take me at least another three, probably four months of hard graft. I checked up on the upstart Rickerty. Damn. He was very good. Bright, bold, strong shapes. A charming naïvety juxtaposed with graphic sophistication. Was this worth having a hissy fit about? I was being offered the opportunity of a book deal with the prospect of having very little extra work to do. All the rest of the hard slog would be down to Simon.

I recanted. I said yes to the deal. It turned out that my manuscript had landed on the desk of Frances Elks, who had been newly promoted to editor that very week. She has subsequently told me that she was worried at the time because people had warned her it might take weeks before she saw a promising manuscript, and here she was, on the first morning of her first day, with something sitting in front of her that she thought was really good. It had apparently taken the reassurance of one or two of her colleagues before she’d followed her convictions and made the offer, but I'll always be grateful that she did.

Fran very kindly suggested she show me Simon's work as it progressed to see if I had any comments. My old illustrator instincts getting the better of me, I looked over his roughs and actually, yes, I did have one or two thoughts. Shouldn't that giant squid be a bit more terrifying? Shouldn't the pirates be in a bit more of a panic on that other spread? Shouldn't that pirate's hair be a teensiest bit browner? Whether Simon actually saw any of my comments I don't know. If he did, he politely ignored most of them and went his own way. And why not? I always hate it when art directors come back to me with nit-picking amendments. I decided to keep any future comments to a minimum. I needn't have worried. Simon did a beautiful job with my little pirates, taking the ‘Little’ part of the title literally and coming up with ten child-like pirates, whose look seems to chime well with children.

Ten Little Pirates breaks two big rules – it’s written in rhyme and its cover is black. Despite this I'm happy to say that at the time of writing the book is selling really well, with five reprints of the paperback in less than two months. It’s also been short-listed for two literary awards. Orchard are so pleased that they’re making it into a series. The next one out is Ten Little Princesses, in August. There are two more ordered, and I’ve just completed the first of those scripts, which personally, I think is the best one yet. (Dinosaurs since you ask!)

More by accident than design, Ten Little Pirates has turned out to be a great book to read out at school visits. Some books make for a quiet read. Not TLPs. I always get the children to stand up and join in with the actions and the noises that accompany the story, and it seems to work a treat. Having a hall full of children leaping into the air and all crying out “ARRRRR!!! at the top of their voices is very satisfying. It even works with a room full of jolly, middle-aged women as I found out the other week when I gave a talk to a regional branch of a book charity in a library.

Hachette, who own Orchard, have a brilliant publicity department, and Rebecca Hearne who deals with me, has found me lots of spots at various festivals, something I’ve done very little of before. It feels very good indeed to have a publisher’s support like this.

And illustrating? Well it’s fair to say I’ve had a bit of a crisis in confidence with my illustration. I know many illustrators and lots of us periodically reach a stage when the work we’re producing feels tired and dull. (A browse through the picture book section of any bookshop usually brings on this feeling in me!) But after a relatively fallow period last year, I’ve re-evaluated things and have updated my way of working in a way that makes me feel enthusiastic about the future. I’ve been doing some pared down illustrations and it feels more contemporary. ‘Less is more’ is a motto I’ve always admired, but never had the courage to put into practice. Now I feel I’ve tweaked my paintings so that the results look less fussy.

But the real discovery from my decision to hand over the illustrating reins to someone else, is that I haven’t missed illustrating nearly as much as I thought I would. In fact I’ve spent quite a lot more time recently writing other manuscripts – early reader and middle grade books as well as picture book texts – and I’ve found that to be a thrilling and addictive process.

So, am I pleased I decided to let another artist illustrate my text? Very definitely ARRRRRRR!!

Mike has worked as an illustrator in the areas of advertising, packaging, animation, design, and editorial. And possibly a few other areas he can’t recall just now. He began writing and illustrating children’s books in the late 90s, and his second book, ‘Little Robots’ was made into a 65 episode, animated TV series for the BBC. Mike’s website (which needs a jolly good spring clean!) is mikebrownlow.com