My first writing interest was the novel. It is still my focus as an whole, though I have tried my hand at children’s stories and the children’s story is my first published work. It was not difficult for me to choose the novel as my format of choice. The longer build of the story appeals to me. I prefer to have a large palette of words to choose from in painting the story. Beautiful paintings can be created with only a few colors and limited brush strokes, but I prefer to create with the wider variety a larger canvas affords.
There are, however, definite advantages to children’s books and short stories that novels simply do not have.
Fewer colors and a smaller canvas forces you to narrow your field of vision and use every color, every brush stroke, to it’s best advantage. In these smaller story forms your every word has to count, simply because it uses up a word in your already limited word allotment. That is one word you can’t use elsewhere, if you need to. This can be either an advantage or disadvantage depending on the writer.
In the novel, there is less of a sense of necessity to make every word hit its mark because the word count is so large. This makes it easier, in the sense that you don’t have to be so selective, but this can be a pitfall as well as a boon; the writer might allow themselves to ramble. That rambling will likely have to be reviewed, rewritten, some aspects used, others thrown out, or – horrors – the whole section set as unusable for that particular novel.
Two major issues with the children’s book, that a writer might want to think about, are those of illustrations and formatting, the two of which go together like tires and a steering wheel; you can go places with the former, but the latter gives direction. The novel is text with a cover image, as a general rule, while the children’s book will require illustrations or photos, or both, on most pages or every page, depending on the audience age. Besides this, the text must work around each image in one manner or another. The author must decide what type of images they want and where to place them. If illustrations are decided upon, the question will then be, who will create those illustrations, the author or an outside source. An outside source must be researched, and once chosen, paid. This is, of course, all from a self publishing point of view as the traditional publisher will likely obtain photographs or other artwork for the book with limited author input, per my last research. Changes may have taken place since I last looked it up.
Self publishing vs. Traditional publishing could be the subject of not one posting but several. Therefore, such will be dealt with in a separate post or posts.
The short story and the novella would of course fall somewhere between the children’s book and the novel for word count. As far as illustrations, however, these two book forms seem to be more like novels with few, if any, illustrations or photos inside. As such, the short story and novella could be considered the best of both worlds, depending on personal preference.
The Young Reader book is, again, somewhere between the children’s book and the novel for word count. The illustrations are, also, somewhere in between the children’s book and novel, with illustrations usually being at the beginning of a chapter and/or somewhere in the middle. Another difference in illustrations in a Young Reader is that they often consist, at least in part, of line drawings. The children’s books are usually in full color.
I consider the Young Adult books more of a genre than a book type because as far as I can tell they are simply novels written with young adults or adolescents in mind rather than… well… those with more years (give or take) behind them.
This is my view of book forms. If you know of a book form I have missed, please, leave a comment below.
One more thing, as you go about your journey choosing the right genre for you. Remember to enjoy the wonder.
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