From Planning to Drafting the Picture Book

Drafting the Picture Book

Now that you have planned the general characters, conflict, and mountain of action, it's time to start drafting.

Write the first draft of the picture book story. Due Friday! Please type it. You do not need to include pictures yet.

For your picture book story, make sure to write an engaging story with a good mountain of action. Consider your audience. You want to make an interesting journey for the readers, mainly your peers, teachers, and elementary school children. The writing should be creative, memorable, and detailed.

Guidelines for drafting your story:

• decide on the point of view - is it better to tell your story in 1st person or 3rd person point of view?
• have a well-developed protagonist with a clear conflict
• have a clear setting that is appropriate to the characters and conflic
• tell a story that has a simple, believable plot/mountain of action 
• have clear events in the rising action that lead to a specific climax or turning point; is each event necessary to the plot?
• in the falling action, show how protagonist is changing as a result of the climax
• resolution: don't make it cheesy, preachy, or predictable; leave some mystery in the readers' minds
• theme: the message or moral of the story should be shown through the resolution
• meaningful details: make the writing creative and unique; include metaphor, simile, symbolism, repetition, onomatopoeia, sensory details, dialogue, etc.