7 Questions to Ask Before Illustrating Your Picture Book

Finishing the manuscript for a children’s picture book is exciting. You can finally start imagining what the characters will look like, how the scenes will come to life, and what the finished book will look like in your hands.

So, naturally, you may be ready to find an illustrator.

But before you do, there’s an important question to answer:

Is your manuscript actually ready to be illustrated?

A picture book manuscript has to do more than tell a good story. Words and illustrations work together to tell that story, and the manuscript needs the structure, pacing, and visual opportunities to make that partnership possible.

Once illustration begins, major revisions can become much more complicated and expensive. Before moving into artwork, take another look at your manuscript and ask these seven questions.

1. Does Your Main Character Want Something?

Your main character needs a reason for the story to happen.

Maybe a little girl desperately wants to learn to ride her bike. A puppy wants to find its way home. A dragon wants to make a friend. Or a child is trying to understand something happening in their family.

The goal doesn’t have to be enormous or dramatic. It simply needs to give the character, and the reader, something to follow.

Ask yourself:

What does my main character want, need, or need to accomplish?

If you can’t answer that clearly, your story may need additional development before it’s ready for illustration.

2. Does Something Change as the Story Progresses?

Every page doesn’t need an action sequence, but the story should continue moving.

This can be particularly challenging in picture books with an educational message. An author may have several important ideas they want children to understand, but explaining those ideas isn’t necessarily the same as telling a story.

Look at what happens from one scene to the next.

Does your character encounter a new problem? Make another attempt? Learn something? Go somewhere different? Make a decision? Experience a consequence?

If several consecutive scenes essentially communicate the same idea, you may have an opportunity to combine or restructure them.

A useful test is to briefly describe what happens in each scene. If you find yourself writing essentially the same description several times, the middle of your story may need more movement.

3. Is Your Main Character Driving the Story?

Children want characters they can root for.

That becomes difficult when the main character spends most of the story waiting for someone else to solve the problem.

Adults certainly have a place in children’s stories. Parents, grandparents, teachers, and other characters can provide guidance and support. But whenever appropriate for the story and intended age group, give your protagonist opportunities to make choices, take action, make mistakes, try again, or contribute to the resolution.

Ask yourself:

If I removed the main character from the story, would the outcome still happen essentially the same way?

If the answer is yes, your protagonist may need a more active role.

4. Have You Given the Illustrator Something to Illustrate?

This is one of the biggest differences between writing a picture book and writing other forms of fiction.

A picture book is a visual storytelling medium.

Imagine five consecutive scenes in which two characters sit at the kitchen table and talk. The conversation may be wonderful, but what will the reader see?

Now imagine a character searching under the bed, racing through the backyard, climbing a tree, making an enormous mess in the kitchen, or cautiously opening a mysterious box.

Each creates a different visual moment.

You don’t need to tell the illustrator exactly how to draw those scenes. In fact, leaving room for the illustrator to contribute creatively is an important part of the process.

But your manuscript needs to provide opportunities for visual storytelling.

Before illustration begins, look at each scene and ask:

What could the reader see here that they haven’t already seen?

5. Are You Writing Things the Pictures Can Show?

Picture book authors sometimes describe everything because they’re trying to help readers visualize the scene.

But your book will have illustrations.

Suppose your manuscript says:

Lucy put on her bright yellow raincoat and red boots and walked outside into the pouring rain.

If the illustration clearly shows Lucy wearing a yellow raincoat and red boots while standing in the rain, some of those words may not be doing much work.

Those words could instead tell us something the illustration can’t easily communicate.

Maybe Lucy hates getting wet.

Maybe she’s supposed to stay inside.

Maybe she’s secretly thrilled because she has been waiting all week for this storm.

Words and illustrations don’t have to duplicate one another. They can work together, with each contributing different information to the story.

As you review your manuscript, look for places where the text simply describes what readers will already be able to see.

6. Does the Story Give Readers a Reason to Turn the Page?

The page turn is one of the most useful storytelling tools available in a picture book.

Consider the difference between:

Ben opened the closet and found a puppy inside.

and:

Ben slowly opened the closet door.

Page turn.

Now the puppy can be revealed in the illustration on the next spread.

The story hasn’t fundamentally changed, but the reading experience has.

Page turns can create anticipation, surprise, humor, suspense, or a change of scene. They can also encourage a child to wonder what happens next.

You don’t need a dramatic cliffhanger on every spread. But as you think about how your story might move through a finished picture book, look for opportunities where the turn of the page can become part of the storytelling.

7. Does It Sound Good When Read Aloud?

Don’t just read your manuscript.

Read it out loud.

Picture books are frequently shared between adults and children, which means the sound of the language matters.

Reading aloud can reveal things your eyes skip over when you’re reading silently. You may suddenly notice sentences that are too long, repeated words, awkward phrasing, unnatural dialogue, or places where the rhythm simply feels wrong.

Pay attention to where you instinctively pause. Notice where you stumble. Listen for passages that drag.

Also notice what works.

Repetition can invite children to participate. Short sentences can accelerate the pace. Longer sentences can slow things down. Interesting sounds and word choices can make a book enjoyable to read again and again.

And “again and again” matters when you’re writing for children. A successful picture book may be read aloud dozens, or even hundreds, of times in the same household or classroom.

Fix the Manuscript Before You Fix the Illustrations

There’s a practical reason to answer these questions before hiring an illustrator.

Changing words is relatively easy.

Changing finished artwork usually isn’t.

Suppose you begin illustrating your book and then discover that two scenes should be combined. Or that your main character needs to make a different choice near the beginning. Or that the climax needs another scene. Or that several pages provide almost identical visual opportunities.

Those changes may affect more than the manuscript. They can affect illustration briefs, storyboards, sketches, completed artwork, page layouts, and potentially the project budget.

That’s why editing a picture book isn’t only about correcting grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Before illustration begins, the manuscript should also be evaluated for story structure, character development, pacing, page-turn opportunities, read-aloud quality, and visual storytelling potential.

Your illustrator should be helping you bring a finished story to life, not discovering structural problems that should have been solved before the first sketch was created.

So before you start imagining the artwork, give your manuscript one more careful review.

Make sure the story works first. Then give your illustrator something wonderful to work with.