Let’s look at the numbers. I’ve dissected each and every story. Maybe we’ll see some patterns or tendencies emerge. What do I write?
First off, I wrote 52 picture book first drafts in 1 year. That was 1 each week for 52 weeks.
Of these stories, 12 have seen some form or revision. 7 have been seen by my critique group.
Words:
- Shortest story: 24 words
- Longest story: 1,598 words
- Average: 501 words per story
- Total words written: 26,071
Audience:
- 35 for the 5-8 age range
- 12 for the 0-4 age range
- 5 not sure yet
Format:
- 13 are told in 1st person
- 39 are told in 3rd person
- 43 are told in past tense
- 9 are told in present tense
- 5 are told in rhyme
- 45 are told in prose
- 2 have elements of both
- 26 are humorous
- 22 are serious
- 4 haven’t decided
- 2 are journal format
Genres and Topics: This will add up to far more than 52 as some fit into more than one category.
- 7 multicultural
- 6 bedtime
- 4 fable
- 4 concept
- 2 songs
- 1 holiday
- 1 first chapter of a middle grade
- 3 LGBTQ
- 3 sports
- 3 theatre
- 2 meta
- 20 live in that undefined quirky, contemporary world
- 11 are about friendship
- 9 are about family
Main characters:
- 30 male
- 15 female
- 5 both
- 2 neither
- 3 adults
- 37 human
- 14 animals
- 11 others
- Main and side characters included: people (caveman, sailor, farmer, cowboy, president, pirate, king, glass girl, gondolier and more), animals (gorilla, goat, raccoon, lion, fish, wolf, tarsier, crab, snail, turtle, and more. Oh, and birds, birds, birds), and others (nose, cloud, bread, rock, baseball, book, aliens, dragon, ogre and more)
Where I was when I wrote them:
- 9 Thailand
- 3 Indonesia
- 6 Taiwan
- 4 Philippines
- 1 Malaysia
- 3 Cambodia
- 5 United States
- 21 Mexico
- Stories directly influenced by my travels. This is impossible to quantify. Some times a story would be clearly about an experience I had had. Other times something I would see would inspire a story that had nothing to do with where I was. I’ll go with 10
The only thing here that surprises me is that my humorous to serious ratio is so even. I feel like I write far more humorous stories than the numbers show.
If I were to define my typical story, it seems it would be about 500 words written for the 5 to 8 age range. The lead character would be a human, male child. I would tell it in third person, past tense. The topic would be quirky contemporary with a strong friend or family relationship.
It’s funny, because I don’t think most of my favorites could be defined this way.
Some people have asked how many I think are publishable. Honestly I think all 52 have a workable ideas. 14 would need a whole lot of work (maybe a different author). 15 I like, but just aren’t working in their current form. 23 I could see living on a bookshelf. I truly expected to have many throw-away stories, stories simply written for the exercise of writing. I was pleasantly surprised that I was always happy with the ideas.
Wow! That was a lot of numbers. Take a look at everything you have written and see if there are trends. You may be surprised with the difference between what you think you write and what you actually write.