Recipe for a Story

ONE BOY WATCHING: A Great Reads from Great Places Selection

My picture book ONE BOY WATCHING was chosen as the 2024 Great Reads from Great Places selection for the state of Kansas. It’s an honor to represent my entire state—a state some stereotype as flat, empty, and boring. Okay, much of Kansas is flat. But it’s never boring.

If you’re at the National Book Festival in Washington D.C. this weekend, you can see my book at the Kansas Center for the Book booth and purchase it from Politics & Prose.

How did I make ONE BOY WATCHING? I used a simple recipe. It’s a recipe I hope to use for many stories to come. Maybe you can use it to tell your own stories. The best part: It always turns out different.

RECIPE FOR A STORY

1. Take an experience from your life that feels both personal and universal.

   The feeling of quiet observation.

   The feeling of being a passenger.

   The feeling of finding the wondrous amid the familiar.

   

   I rode the bus from kindergarten through 10th grade. The atmosphere inside could be calm, dull, or raucous. No matter what happened inside the bus, outside there was always something new to observe.

   This habit of looking out the window, watching—no matter what craziness is going on around me—now informs my daily process of writing and drawing.

   There’s always something to see if you take time to quiet your mind and look.

2. Ask yourself questions.

   What do you remember?

   What did you notice?

   How did you feel?

   

3. Jot memories in notebooks.

   The time we got stuck in a muddy ditch and had to get picked up by another bus.

   All the times a long train made us late for class.

   The nice seatmates and the not-so-nice ones. 

   The way the teenagers in back would jump on that big bump on the dirt road.

   The way my stomach would leap when the driver hit that bump going fast.

   

4. Gather visual reference.

   Snap roadside photographs, fill sketchbooks with the surroundings of the story. Collect details too specific to conjure with your imagination.

   The varied shapes of barns and farmhouses.

   The gnarled pasture trees and colorful roadside wildflowers.

   The strange mechanical sentinels that guard railroad crossings.

   

   

   

5. Engage all of your senses: sight, smell, taste, sound, touch. Remember.

   The smell of old leather bus seats.

   The feeling of dew on windows.

   The sound of windows rattling as we rolled down gravel roads.

   The ever-changing soundtrack: upbeat 90s pop, sad old country music, moody alternative rock.

   And outside, the Kansas weather, as mercurial as the music.

   

6. Take a break to make a writing playlist.

   Spend way too much time making the playlist. It’s not procrastination—it’s research. Right?

7. Realize you have no idea how to draw the main subject of your story. Panic.

   Spend even more time collecting up-close observations of your subject from every possible angle. Draw until you’re exhausted. Then draw some more.

8. Tell the story.

   Lay out pages. Sketch spreads. Put words and pictures together. Think about pacing, rhythm, page turns. How much does a story need? How little does a story need? What makes the story sing, come to life, and stay with the reader long after the book is closed?

   

   

9. Read, Reread. Revise, Re-revise.

   Keep asking yourself: What is essential? What could make this book better?

   Try to not to forget of what inspired you to create this story in the first place. Make sure to keep that initial spark smoldering.

   At some point you will likely forget. At some point you will lose the spark.

   If you forget, return to step 1.

   

10. Finish?

    Even when the book is complete, the story is never finished. Now it will make it into the hands of readers, the windows of bookstores, the hallowed shelves of libraries. Now the story truly begins.

    

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September approaches. A familiar sight appears on the roads. Like great yellow-orange whales that have crawled onto land, they lumber down neighborhood streets; resting at bus stops, lingering at railroad crossings, and beaching themselves in front of elementary schools.

School buses. Suddenly, they’re everywhere.

ONE BOY WATCHING makes a great back-to-school read. It’s also perfect for the bus-obsessed preschooler in your life. And if you can’t visit Kansas in person, reading this book and experiencing the subtle beauty of the landscape is the next best thing.

You can purchase signed copies of ONE BOY WATCHING from Watermark Books or find it worldwide wherever books are sold.