Mac McCool Graphic Novel Premium Workshop

What's totally awesome?

 
Today was the last day of Mac's workshop. He spent the time critiquing each person's page of panels or page of a graphic novel script. For some, it was their first time drawing a comics page, but all felt it had been a great place to learn and experiment.

For readability, it's all about bubble placement, baby.

Mac critiqued story arc, text, pacing, as well as bubble design, inking, color, panel style, final art, and lettering. He took great care to translate art or comics terms that may be foreign to authors or even some illustrators.

Everyone put their art up and we all had a chance to check stuff out. These were some of my favorites:

Eric Sailer of New York

Elizabeth Oh of Hawaii

Lucy Mara Taylor of California

 

 

Brooke Boynton Hughes of Colorado

And here's Brooke holding another assignment about character silhouettes.

Please, please, let's do this again! And, HEY! Did you spot the celebrity in the first picture?

Premium Workshop - An Editor Over Your Shoulder: Polishing Your Picture Book with Diane Muldrow

photo from http://patricianewmanbooks.blogspot.com/

Sat in on the first session of Diane Muldrow's Premium Workshop yesterday, and I am really excited for those 20+ attendees. They are going to get some ultra-polished picture book manuscripts out of these hours with Diane. And not just traditional, 32-page hardcover trade manuscripts. Diane is teaching the group about board books, Golden Books, novelty books, all sorts of formats.

Diane starts with a history of her career as a children's book editor and an author. She invites the class to reformat their manuscripts the way she lays them out, which is, at times, a radical departure from what most of us have learned is industry standard formatting. The caveat, however, is you do this only on your personal copy of the manuscript to see how it informs your self-editing. And all authors must self-edit, says Diane, so who better to teach us how than an editor!  Her ideas are superb, making authors who don't draw think visually, mapping out every single page turn and writing up all possible illustrations ideas.

The class looks at the evolution of Diane's book, WE PLANTED A TREE. A gorgeous hardcover illustrated by Bob Staake. She hands out a copy of her original manuscript. A story she thought about for ten years before actually putting pen to paper. Diane credits the powerful ideas and images in Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai's book about the Green Belt Movement in Kenya as being the inspiration behind WE PLANTED A TREE.

The next few sessions, attendees will be doing in-class exercises using existing picture book texts as well as their own manuscripts to learn about format, pagination, and art notes. Diane says all stories start out as lumps of clay and she's going to provide tools (like how to have good flow, suspense and mood in your story) to help attendees edit themselves and build stronger books.

This is going to rock! It sold out on the first day of conference registration, so here's hoping they do this again.

One attendee I recognized from my local SCBWI WWA was John Deininger. Check out his artwork in the portfolio show tonight, or on his site.

Linda Sue Park Premium Workshop: "The Middle Grade Novel: Growing Your Story"

I am so excited to get to sit in on this first of four workshop sessions with the amazing Linda Sue Park.

She has the ability to articulate so thoughfully about writing, in addition to being an amazing writer. (Yes, she's won the Newbury Award - among other laurels.)

Just in the first moments she's dissected what readers are looking for when they read books at the different age levels:

Picture Books - children are looking to find out about their world: colors, animals, ABCs.. They want to see their world reflected in books.

Middle Grade - they are reading to find out about the world - the world outside their circle of familiarity.

Young Adult - they are reading to find out about themselves.

***

She's had the sold-out room do two writing exercises, and now is breaking down how our characters have to be specific (in a time and place) to feel real - and then the emotions can be universal.

She gives as an example a 12 year old girl who likes music. All that gives you in your mind to picture is a face. Not even a hairstyle. Or what she's wearing. You need a time and place to make her real.

When writing, we have to find the mix between the specific and the universal.

***

Linda Sue Park is brilliant, and I'm so glad I got to be here for this.