Free worksheet · Storyteller Academy
Know if your book idea will work before you spend a year on it.
Score your idea against the four things every picture book that works has, and find out which one you’re short on. From Arree Chung, author-illustrator of Ninja! and Mixed.
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Miss one circle and you land in the black hole. It has four names, and each one tells you what to fix.
Five pages. About twenty minutes.
Four ways in
Where a real idea comes from, and the trap each one drifts toward.
Where my books came from
The actual moment behind Ninja!, Mixed, Out! and three more.
The four traps
Immature, Preachy, Commercial, Didactic. What each looks like and how to get out.
A scorecard you fill in
Score your idea on screen or print it. Your lowest circle is the assignment.
Arree Chung
I write and illustrate picture books. Ninja!, Mixed, Out! and Don’t Cause Trouble.
A writer brings me something she’s worked on for a year. The manuscript is fine but the idea was never going to work. If somebody would have told her earlier, it would have saved her years of spinning her wheels. That is what this worksheet is for.
Get the worksheet
Score the idea you have been carrying around, and find out in twenty minutes whether it is worth the next year.
Send me the worksheet
