The Making of a Book Cover: 3 Stories

This Mitten blog post about book covers was our most popular post to-date, meaning that more people read that post than any other in our nearly two year history. Go Kirbi Fagan! Kirbi's post was so popular partly due to her awesome tribe of supporters and her stunning artwork, but it was also a post that spoke to both writers and illustrators. So, in that vein, let's take another look at book covers with some take-aways for both the writers and illustrators in SCBWI. Here are the cover stories for three of our Michigan Chapter members (starting with my own!):

It wasn’t until my own debut YA novel entered the publishing process that I truly saw the making of a cover. I was fortunate to be involved in many of the decisions, including choosing from four initial cover concepts, all very different.

Here’s what my cover designer, Amanda Schwarz, shared about her initial process with THE ART OF HOLDING ON AND LETTING GO:

"When designing a book cover I search for a way to visually represent the emotion of the novel while not outright telling the audience what it’s about. After reading the book I realized that the heart of the story is the lead character coming to terms with where her life has taken her and accepting change. In particular the Annie Dillard quote at the end of the novel struck me, “Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But mountains are home.”  

To me, this sums up the feelings of the book. Cara, by the end, comes to realize that no matter where she is in her life, the mountains, along with Uncle Max, will always be a part of her. They are inside of her and a life that she can return to one day. So while not referencing climbing directly, I felt having mountains represented in the covers somewhere is very important as Cara comes to hold on to the important aspects of her previous life, but also learns to let go of others as she grows in the story. It captures the tone but there is also the mystery of what exactly the mountains represent to the story.

While working on the preliminary designs I also decided to use handwritten or script text for the covers. Since we spend the entirety of the book seeing the events from Cara’s perspective, anything that isn’t handwritten felt too impersonal for a very personal story. I choose fonts that have similar characteristics but also contrast to emphasize the emotions of the title especially “Holding On and Letting Go.” 

Heather Smith Meloche's YA novel, RIPPLE, hits bookshelves in September. Heather says, "The cover design was a hard part of this debut publishing process because, when my editor asked me for suggestions to pass on to the designers, I didn’t really have a sense of what I thought should be on the cover. With the title being RIPPLE, I felt like water had to be there somewhere. And I knew there were scenes in a cemetery that were pivotal in the story, so I suggested to the art department that they think “in the graveyard.” But primarily, I knew what I didn’t want more than what I did."

Penguin’s designers came out, first, with a design that I personally loved, since it reminded me of my grandmother’s art, which hangs all over my house. But we weren’t sure if it would hook readers enough. When they came back with a second design that elaborated on the first, I seriously got chills the moment I saw it because I just knew -- THAT was the cover Ripple was supposed to have. It’s dark. It’s edgy. It captures the mood and tone of the book. And I truly couldn’t be happier with the work the design team did.

Cover designer Tony Sahara said this about RIPPLE's cover:

“Here in Penguin Young Readers Design Group, sometimes there are multiple designers working on the same project to create a variation of book cover ideas. Ripple is one of those books. During the initial design stages, my colleagues and I were pretty much working with Tessa in mind, and that was a fun part of our job. We started off with more abstract and type-driven designs in various styles. Some of us physically painted graphic elements, including the book title type, and incorporated them into the layout digitally. I then decided to also create a layout with more human elements. Something that would engage the reader on a very personal level. This became the base of the final cover."

"In terms of the cover concept, I was focusing on the fragile, emotional state of the characters, but visually I tried to maintain the creativity and the spontaneity of the whole cover development process. In the end, my goal is that the author's and reader’s initial reaction to the cover would validate the contents of the story. So, I hope this cover accomplishes that goal when people pick up the book at the book stores.”

Social media has opened up new avenues for publishers to tailor their cover designs, such as Swoon Reads/Macmillan. They ask readers to vote for their favorite of several cover options. Katie Van Ark's debut YA novel, THE BOY NEXT DOOR, was published by Swoon Reads, and you can see the Pick-the-Cover voting process here, including the original four, very different designs.

Katie says, "Having a cover contest was really exciting for me as an author. I was also glad that Macmillan responded to my suggestions on the final cover. (We fixed the characters' hair styles!)" 

To learn more about the crowd-sourced model at Swoon Reads, their cover creations, or vote on upcoming covers, go to their website/blog.


Thanks to Katie and Heather for sharing their book cover process with me!

Want to read more about cover creation? Follow these links:

By the Cover: an ongoing feature at Book Riot.

Cover Evolution: an in-depth look at the process from Chad W. Beckerman, designer and creative director at Abrams. And here's a fun post for picture book author/illustrators: VEGETABLES IN UNDERWEAR! 

Publishers Weekly has a new column devoted to book covers.

Coming up on the Mitten blog: Writing non-fiction, MFA Week, the Sophomore Experience: Your Second Book and More, another Indie Bookstore Interview, and a new Writer Spotlight - it could be you!

Who's going to the big SCBWI conference in Los Angeles next week? Not me. :( We'd love to share your experience on the Mitten blog. View our submission guidelines for guest posts here.

Have a great weekend!
Kristin Lenz

Everything I Need to Know About Writing, I Learned From Figure Skating by Katie Van Ark

I skated my way into writing. At first reading, this may seem to imply that writing glided to me, as natural as sleeping and waking. It didn't. Writing came with the bruises of repeated Axel attempts: soaring jumps of hope crashed by rejections from agents. Writing came with the ice burn of editors' criticisms, the pulled muscle torture of a high school English teacher reading the short stories of our entire class aloud. (Two minutes in, I became painfully aware that mine would have been better targeted to a middle grade audience; half a class period later I was scrunching in my seat with the realization that I had written not a short story but a novella.)

No, when I say I skated into writing, I mean it literally. My passion for skating cultivated my passion for writing. Though I played with writing as a child, earning invitations to young author events and winning a poetry contest, my heart belonged to skating. I acted out entire competitions with my dolls, scrutinized the biographies of top competitors, and longed to try it myself. I took ballet and piano lessons, but the nearest ice rink was forty-five minutes from our house and there honestly wasn't money, or, with my competitive swimming and supercharged class load, time for much else.

With the help of adult-learn-to-skate classes, I came to skating as an adult and fell head over skates...in love. I thought I loved skating before; now, I breathed skating. This sounds perhaps like something that might happen to a character in a novel, but the passion was so overwhelming that my husband and I saw a marriage counselor over it. (Success – we just celebrated our ten year anniversary.) Even pregnant with my first daughter, I skated until my seventh month. The evening I realized I was too pregnant to skate anymore, I came home and cried for two hours. What was I going to do? Pouring the intensity of that emotion onto the page, I rediscovered my passion for writing. And realized that everything I needed to know about writing, I learned from figure skating.

• First, it's okay to start small. I have a favorite childhood memory of building a backyard ice rink with my father. Our city backyard was tiny, and our rink was about six swizzle pumps wide and only a little bit longer. It had giant potholes where leaves from our crabapple tree froze under the surface and then caught the heat of the winter sun and melted the ice. Bumpy at best and treacherous at worst, it was ice. That my father cared enough to help me with this time-consuming, and in fickle west Michigan weather, often futile effort, gave me the seed of the idea that skating was something I could do. It's the same for writing. Even one frozen drop of water can be enough if you want it, really want it. For me, this was when I dared to show my mother, a writer and librarian, the beginning ramblings of my first book. She had lots of advice and areas to improve but, “Sure, this could be a novel,” were the words I took with me as my droplet of hope.

• Second, however small your start, you must put in the time. It's about repetition. With good daily practice routines, the elements on ice come. With good daily writing routines, the words flow. Practice never makes perfect, but quality practice builds improvement bit by bit. Listen to your coaches, aka your trusted critique group, because whether you like it or not, they're right most of the time. But know that sometimes you have to follow your heart, sometimes you just have to know when it's time to ditch a project. I once completely changed programs three weeks before a national competition, much to the chagrin of my coach. That new program won me a national gold medal. So go ahead, re-write that novel in first person. Cut those scenes. Start over with a blank page. And take comfort in the fact that least in writing you can save all your old versions on the computer and pull out an old routine with the click of your mouse.

• On the ice or on the page, you will fall down. A lot. All you can do is pick yourself up, the sooner the better. You must try again. It took me almost a year to learn a loop jump, two years for the flip, and five years for the lutz. I'm still working on that Axel and I won't even tell you how many hours I worked at writing, but I try to remember that everyone is afraid sometimes, that everyone struggles with some things. You must believe you can do it.

• Take advantage of camps, clinics, and retreats. Fresh opinions can help you get over a rut. I had been struggling with a loop jump for months when I attended a skating camp in Aspen. New phrasing and the trick of jumping out of a backspin helped me master the element that week. And when asked for advice, give it when you can. Helping others can help you, too. It's so much easier to see the faults when watching, or in the case of writing, reading someone else's technique. And of course every once in a while you'll happen upon a move you can borrow and make your own.

• Just like skating, writing is also about acting. To make your characters real to your audience, you need to feel them, get inside their heads. Wear your heart on your sleeve and keep a box of tissues nearby for the tears and runny noses. Because in skating, you only need to do one character per program but in writing you're going to need to do them all.

• And finally, sweat the small stuff. Yes, pay attention to details in your routines and in your novels but don't forget about your actual real world. I used to have one of those t-shirts proclaiming that “figure skating is life, the rest is just details!” I gave it to Goodwill. Skating, writing, whatever your passions – life is in the details, and not the sequin-covered, rhinestone-studded variety. Don't forget to live.

Katie Van Ark lives in Michigan with two little girls who love mud, a cat that thinks it's a dog, and a very patient husband. The Boy Next Door, a YA figure skating love story, is her first novel. Visit her online at katievanark.com or on Twitter @kvanark.

Katie is one of the busiest people I know - mom, teacher, figure skater, author, and she's about to graduate with her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Through all of this, she's been very giving of her time to help other writers. 

A master's degree in fine arts: The best career move? What will I gain from all of that time and expense? Can it be affordable? Questions about MFA programs are often posed to editors and authors at writing conferences. Katie has offered to gather her fellow students at VCFA to answer your questions. What would you like to know about the MFA experience? Leave your questions in the comments or email me at kristinbartleylenz@gmail.com. We'll share the answers in a future post.

Happy New Year!

Kristin Lenz

Write What THEY Know: Using Your Character's Passions to Develop Voice (Part 3) by Katie Van Ark

In the first two parts of this series, I wrote about my personal struggles with developing voice and how using my character's passions and backgrounds helped me develop a new voice for one of my own works in progress. Today I'll focus on advice and exercises for your own writing.

First, unless you already have a great deal of personal experience or background in the sport, hobby, or culture, please do your research before attempting to use it as a lens. Like all passionate people, your characters must know their passion inside and out for their voices to be believable. I easily wrote about figure skaters because I was one. When I tried to write from a hockey player's perspective? Toe pick trip. I could write games scenes well enough from the random games I'd glimpsed at the rink. But the only time I'd “breathed” hockey was while pinching my nose on my way to the figure skater's locker room. I didn't know hockey well enough to write that character, so I ditched my toe picks for a few weeks to play in a local women's spring league. I followed the Blackhawks in  the Chicago Tribune sports pages, watched game tape, and studied hockey play books like my own personal championships depended on it. Immersing myself in hockey gave me a greater appreciation for the sport and an understanding about what my character loved about it that not only improved his voice but helped shape the entire novel.

Beware of outside influences that may be spoiling your voice attempts. When I was writing Jonah's voice, my script-obsessed character from part two of this series, Dawson's Creek reruns were great. When I was trying to write my hockey character, I now had a jock who sounded like Dawson. I switched to Friday Night Lights and had a much easier time in my writing sessions. Your reading material can have the same effect.

A great exercise to try is one that author M.T. Anderson calls “emblandishment.” This means taking a section of writing that you love and breaking it down into its barest bones. Consider this paragraph from my novel, The Boy Next Door:

It's not a move he needs more practice with but I let my body arch into his touch all the same. I know how to handle myself on ice, but this isn't ice. This is fire. And soon it's going to be out of control. Gabe doesn't push for anything more than my bra but it's enough for me to realize that I'm not thinking about if this is special and that right now I don't give even a single Axel about forever. When his hands are on me, I feel the same sense of exhilaration I feel just before the top of a split triple twist. I'm soaring and weightless.

What this basically says is this: “I enjoy Gabe touching me enough to stop thinking about if it's a good idea. His touch exhilarates me.” Flavoring it with Maddy's passion for skating, though, brings it to life. Try this out on your own favorite passages that I asked you to find in part one, then look for bare bone places in your own work (as I did in part two) and see what you can do.

            
Finally, don't get discouraged if your search takes awhile. The journey for voice is a new journey with each novel and it has to be. Authors need to get to know their characters, too, and nobody lays everything out on the first date, right? Think about how you bond with another person. We are all unique individuals with vastly different life experiences and interests yet we are drawn together by our shared passions.

I now like to think about my work as cups of tea. I am the canister of loose leaves and I seep a little of my own passions, either existing or new, into each of my novels. And in doing so, I not only give my characters stronger voices but I become more passionate about my writing as well, having infused it with something I love. Brew your own characters' voices by playing up their passions.

Katie Van Ark lives in Michigan with two little girls who love mud, a cat that thinks it's a dog, and a very patient husband. The Boy Next Door, a YA figure skating love story, is her first novel. Visit her online at katievanark.com or on Twitter @kvanark.

Thanks to Katie for kicking off the school year with this three-part series on developing voice. We've had a studious month, and now it's time for some fun. We'll wrap up the month with another round of Hugs and Hurrahs (send your good news to Patti Richards at pgwrites5@gmail.com by Sept. 22nd). In October, Nina Goebel will reveal our new blog banner created by our new Featured Illustrator! I'll miss our delightful summer banner created by Jennifer Scott, but I'm looking forward to a new season.

Would you like to contribute a guest post for the Mitten blog? Read the submission guidelines here.
Have a great weekend!

Kristin Lenz

Write What THEY Know: Using Your Character's Passions to Develop Voice (Part 2) by Katie Van Ark

In the first part of this series, I wrote about my own struggles trying to develop unique voices for characters in first person POV novels and how a friend's comment about how artists see the world a different way made me think about if I could use my character's passions as lenses to help bring out their voices. When I began writing this article, I found an old YA novel I'd started and set aside during my period of writing “laryngitis.” It began like this:

Jonah’s eyes scanned the room for any and all possible exits. How was he going to get out of here? Running away might make him look like an idiot, but maybe that’s what he was. Skip the maybe part.  He was so stupid for letting people set him up on dates. After this many disasters, he should have learned his lesson.

There may be nothing horribly wrong here at first glance, but there isn't anything great either. Jonah could be anybody; all we know about him at this point is that he's having a bad date.

In a later version, I'd tried to find voice by switching to first person and immersing myself in the action:

So school will be no problem, with the uniforms, but outside? I have a lot of blue in my wardrobe, how about you?” Kimmi's voice squeals like markers on a white board. She can't be Kim or Kimmy, either, those names aren't original enough. Go figure that someone obsessed with being different would want us to wear matching outfits all the time so everyone will know we're a couple.

            

“Excuse me, I'll be right back.” I stand so quickly I almost trip myself on the legs of the restaurant table.

I now had less internal thought and more dialogue and action, but I still lacked a fully developed character. Even in first person, I was still using my “authorial” voice. Frustrated, I'd put the work aside.

Now I wondered: would considering Jonah's passions help me find his voice? Jonah had appeared in my first novel, The Boy Next Door, as a bit part so I knew his family was French and he was in the running for valedictorian. I added French phrases and upped his vocabulary choices. But what else was there to this character? Working through my overall story arc, I realized that a mutual enthusiasm for film would bring Jonah and his love interest closer and also let me use a tendency to think through his life scenes as film scenes to help with his voice. The result:

"Espèce de merde. Species of shit. All species of shit. I examine the bathroom window. My six foot frame means I could reach it but it also means that I'll fit through it the day that chickens grow teeth. I slump back against the cool tile of the men's room wall. At least it's quiet in here. The urinals reek of piss but stink way less than what I've just escaped on the other side of that six-paneled door. I pull out my phone and start dictating my latest first date fiasco:

CROWDED RESTAURANT – EVENING

Upbeat music, tables of couples and groups laughing and chatting. Jonah and Kimmi sit at a table in the center.

KIMMI

So we should like totally wear matching outfits so everyone knows we're a couple?

JONAH

???

KIMMI

With the uniforms at school that'll be, like, way easy? But after? Do you like blue?

JONAH

???

Of course, other aspects of this scene have been altered as well. I'm now starting the scene in the bathroom (where Jonah eventually fled in the previous drafts) and this may not be the final draft, either, but as far as voice goes? That's a wrap.

Check back for some practical tips and exercises in Part 3!

Katie Van Ark lives in Michigan with two little girls who love mud, a cat that thinks it's a dog, and a very patient husband. The Boy Next Door, a YA figure skating love story, is her first novel. Visit her online at katievanark.com or on Twitter @kvanark.

Write What THEY Know: Using Your Character's Passions to Develop Voice (Part 1) by Katie Van Ark

My first time at critique group, I soaked up my fellow writers' compliments on my “voice” in my figure skating romance. Though I was new to writing, I'd already heard the art-versus-science debates over this elusive aspect of craft. Well, I thought, I didn't need to worry about if voice could be taught or if it required natural talent. I already had it. Then came novel number two, and my critique partners said: “These characters sound... just like your first characters.”

As I looked back over my draft, I had to agree they were right. I didn't have voice. I'd only given my voice to that first set of characters. Unable to skate competitively myself while pregnant with my first daughter, I'd followed the old advice to “write what you know” and poured out my longing for the ice into The Boy Next Door. Expressions like “see you later, figure skater” and “smooth as ice, that move” had glided onto the page. Now they were back to haunt me like instant replays of a bad fall.

As a reader, I've always been drawn to stories with strong voice and the realization that maybe I didn't have voice after all hit hard. But as a skater, I was used to getting back up. I brushed myself off, deciding that if I didn't have voice, then I was going to learn it. However, I seemed stuck in an ice rut. My MFA program advisor was telling me my newest hero's voice sounded like a girl and the voice muse was ditching practice. (Case in point in these last two sentences, right?)

Then an illustrator friend and fellow SCBWI member, Kathryn Dilley, surprised me at dinner one night with a confession. As a child, she had never thought she could draw until a classmate explained that the skill was all about looking at the world a different way. Kathryn went on, trying to explain how artists see negative space, but her words had sidetracked me: looking at the world a different way. Developing voice was about seeing the world my character's way. My skating lens had given my first characters their voices. Could different lenses help me develop different voices?

Think about meeting people at a party, the way they come to life when you bring up one of their favorite subjects. Miranda Kenneally scored a touchdown using her heroine's passion for football to develop her voice in her young adult romance, CATCHING JORDAN. Jordan confesses her feelings for football in the very first paragraph: “I once read that football was invented so people wouldn't notice summer ending. But I couldn't wait for summer to end. I couldn't wait for football. Football, dominator of fall – football, love of my life.” However, Kenneally also weaves football completely into Jordan's words. How would someone who loves football think about time? Not as after dinner but as “before Monday night football.” Jordan's grass isn't green, it's like “lying on Astroturf, only without the rug burns” and her feeling of emptiness is “a playbook without plays.”

In I'LL MEET YOU THERE, Heather Demetrios used Josh's military experience as a lens for the brief sections told through his perspective while flavoring Skylar's world with her passion for art and specifically collage. And of course passions aren't limited to sports or other hobbies. People are often passionate about their families and cultural backgrounds, and both of these can influence their word choices and tone as well.

In the next part of this series, I'll give you an example of how I applied a new lens to improve the voice in my own work in progress, but in the meantime I'd love to hear about some of the books that have voices you love. Please share!

Katie Van Ark lives in Michigan with two little girls who love mud, a cat that thinks it's a dog, and a very patient husband. The Boy Next Door, a YA figure skating love story, is her first novel. Visit her online at katievanark.com or on Twitter @kvanark.

Thank you, Katie! This article was first published in the Romance Writers Report (RWR) by Romance Writers of America (RWA), and Katie revised it for this blog series.

Wishing everyone a fun holiday weekend and a smooth start to school. We'll see you back here next Friday for Part 2 of Katie's series on developing voice. 

Another round of Hugs and Hurrahs are right around the corner. Remember to send your good news to Patti Richards at pgwrites5@gmail.com.

Cheers!

Kristin Lenz