writing a picture book✍️👻 a cosy vlog & tips on how to write

[Music] [Music] I am writing a picture book... oh it's so hard writing is not my strong suit...

about a ghost called Hattie who runs a hotel... I think this book is so useful for writing

picture books hi everyone welcome to another video so this is going to be continuing my

series on working on my picture book Hattie's haunted hotel now the first video that I did

was over a year ago because this is a project that I started and then I was doing other

things but we are coming back to it and today's video I'm working on my manuscript so I'm

actually rewriting my manuscript and I haven't looked at this in over a year so first of

all here I've got my writing I've got a couple of different drafts so I'm going to read through

those make notes I've also got a craft book this is a craft book on how to write picture

books so I'll let you know if there's any like good tips in this that I think might

help you if you're also writing a picture book and I might read you a couple of lines

of what I've got so far and maybe some things that I need to work on as well and then I

think maybe tomorrow I might have a look through some of my favorite picture books um have

a look at the writing and see what I like yeah see if I can get any tips from that as

well but yeah hope you enjoy this Vlog it's kind of yeah kind of a writing Vlog okay so

I'm gonna first of all start off by rereading my manuscript [Music]

[Music]

I quite like the start to that so I think that bit I might keep the same welcome to

Hattie's haunted hotel the most relaxing Retreat for ghosts and ghouls this is my third draft

oh maybe I should tell you a bit about the book I'm sure what a lot of you know so Hattie's

haunted hotel is a picture book about a ghost called Hattie who runs a hotel and she's very

hard working also quite an anxious person or quite an anxious ghost and she just wants

everyone to have the best day and she worries that things are going to go wrong so that

is the premise of my picture book I'm I quite like this next bit actually Hattie loves her

job she's a ghost herself so knows it's quite tiring sometimes yeah so this is my third

draft and then my fourth draft suddenly became a lot shorter I think I decided that I was

kind of explaining a lot of things to the reader and there were a few things in it that

I just felt a bit kind of cringy so they're my fourth draft I just kind of cut a load

of that out this was the version that I handed in to my picture book course that I was doing

I think so September October 2021 was actually when I was working on this the same structure

of the story but I just cut out a lot of the things because there was a there was a really

cringy line in here where I said um mistakes sometimes happen but it's not usually as bad

as you imagined I think kids are pretty smart and I'd rather the they understand it themselves

or or like I kind of don't want to make it like too preachy so the feedback they said

that the story structure needs a bit more work and it reads more like a series of statements

um which I can totally see and I think one of the things that I really need to work on

is the show don't tell which they have got a section in this book about so they give

an example in the book that says our dog was happy to see me is a telling statement basically

you don't want to tell the reader what is happening you want to imply it by some different