A picture book manuscript is a script, not a book. Somewhere between the words and the finished object sits the stage that determines almost everything: the storyboard.
What a storyboard is
The whole book, drawn rough, as small thumbnails — usually sixteen spreads for a standard 32-page picture book. Each thumbnail shows what is on that spread, roughly where the text sits, and what the composition is doing.
It takes a day or two to produce and it is the single highest-leverage document in the project.
What it decides
Where the page turns fall
This is the thing manuscripts cannot express and the thing read-aloud picture books live on. A page turn is a small suspension — a beat of anticipation between "what is happening" and "what happens next".
Put your best reveal at the bottom of a left-hand page and the reader gets it for free. Put it after a turn and it lands. Nothing about the manuscript tells you which you have; the storyboard shows you immediately.
Which moments deserve room
Not every spread should be a full-bleed double-page image. A quiet vignette with white space around it can do more emotional work than a busy scene, precisely because the book has been loud elsewhere. Rhythm across the book is a storyboard decision.
What is redundant
Almost every first storyboard reveals two or three spreads doing the same job. In the manuscript they read as different sentences. Laid out visually, they are obviously the same picture.
Where the text sits
Text needs somewhere to live: sky, a wall, a patch of grass, a panel. Deciding this at thumbnail stage means the illustrator composes space for it. Deciding it after the art is finished means squeezing words into a gap.
Why doing it late is expensive
Every decision above is nearly free at thumbnail stage. A thumbnail is twenty minutes of work.
The same decisions made after finished art has begun cost complete illustrations. We have seen projects lose two months and a substantial part of their budget because a page-turn problem was found at spread nine.
How to read your own storyboard
Print it. Look at all sixteen spreads at once on a table — you will see the book's rhythm in a way you cannot on screen.
Then read it aloud, turning pages at the actual turn points. Where you hesitate, or where the turn feels flat, is where the book needs work. Do this before anyone draws anything properly, and do it more than once.
Ines Okonjo
Art Director
Part of the editorial team at Winfrey Publishing. Articles here are written by the people who do the work, not by a content agency.
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