I’ve heard it said that the very best endings are both inevitable and unexpected.

There. I’ve given you the key to writing your perfect ending. Done and done.

The end.







Just kidding. (Hint: writing The End is usually not the best ending.)

Writing an ending that is both inevitable and unexpected takes careful crafting, starting with word one. You know you’ve achieved it when your reader has an “Ahh!” or an “Aww” moment at the end, not a “Huh?” or a “Duh” moment. You want your ending to be unexpected rather than completely predictable, but you also want it to feel just right, like this was where you were meant to end up the whole time.

Everything in your book, EVERY WORD (especially if it’s a picture book), should be leading up to the perfect ending for your book. Sometimes it will lead to a surprising ending, sometimes to a warm and fuzzy ending, sometimes to a circular ending (where you end where you started), and sometimes even to a melancholy or sad ending. Still, all of those endings can be inevitable and unexpected.

I’ll give you two examples, and oldie, and a newbie:

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

Max is wild, wild, wild, and he drives the story. He ends up confined in his room without dinner after telling his mother, “I’ll eat you up!” There, he gets on a boat and sails to where the Wild Things live. What if the book had ended when Max became their king and they rumpussed about? Though that is arguably the best part of the book, it would have been a very dissatisfying ending. When Max decides to go back to where “someone loves him best”, he ends up back in his room, with his dinner, “and it was still hot”. Inevitable and unexpected. Perfect.

Note that Max ends up in his room alone with his dinner. If it had ended with Max giving his mother a verbose apology, it wouldn’t have been nearly as satisfying. It would have been contrived and out of character, and it wasn’t the scenario that the story was leading up to. And if he had ended up back at home, but without dinner, it still wouldn’t have been quite right. There is a strong food theme throughout, and to be true to that, Max had to have his dinner.

This post was written by Maria Oka, mom of three girls and wife of one handsome fella. Maria reads and writes from Southern California.

Picasso said, “Every act of creation is an act of destruction.” 

Often, at the beginning of a project, I slap far too many words on the page. Then, in order to find what I really want to say, I take away.  I deconstruct. I eliminate. I simplify. 


Try this, radical writers: As an exercise, cut all the sentences in your working manuscript in half. What do you have? Are at least some of the sentences improved? Is the story different now?

Stillman writes that instead of always trying to think outside the box, Picasso gave himself a “small box to work within.” He gave himself constraints, such as creating a painting with just one color. 

Try this, radical illustrators: Paint with just one color.

Picasso also thought that action is the key to success. He produced thousands of variations of his ideas until he got it right, until he got it the way he wanted. Many of us spend far too much time protecting the first story idea that came to us. Question that first thought. How can we make it better, more radical? How can we manifest our true ability? As many little girls of a certain age knows, one way is to “Let it Go.” Let your first precious idea go. That’s what Queen Elsa did.

When I think of radical creativity in picture books, a few names come immediately to mind. 

Jon Scieszka, the first-ever National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, turned fairy tales upside down and inside out.    

Last month, I was busy preparing my stories and portfolio for the New Jersey SCBWI conference.  Part of that preparation included experimenting with a new technique. With some convincing and encouragement from friends, I started to examine the idea of using batiks for illustrations, a medium I love to use!

Batik is the art of wax resist and dye on fabric or paper. Batiks can be traced back to the Middle East, Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Thailand, Philippines, and India. They are usually created on cloth by applying wax to the material and then dyeing it. Cracks in the wax often occur as the batik is folded or pushed into dying tubs. The “crackling” effect occurs when the dye seeps into any cracked parts of the wax.

Batiks can be done using a tub dye method. First, I draw my picture on white muslin. Then I melt a mix of paraffin and beeswax and painted it on the areas to keep white. The wax has to be hot enough to go on clear so as to not allow any dye to get onto those areas. Next, the fabric is placed into a dye bath of the lightest color. Wherever the wax was applied, that area would stay white. After the fabric is hung to dry, wax is applied to the areas that will stay the light color. The process is repeated until the last color (the darkest) is applied.

Using melted crayons on muslin been giving me the best option with regard to using lots of different colors while keeping the crackling the same color. After painting the picture with the melted crayons, I dye the batik in a tub as mentioned above, and when dry iron out the wax between pieces of newsprint. The crayons may bleed a bit but it can give some amazing effects (plus Photoshop is really great at adjusting colors and fixing errors.)

To learn more about this process, click here.

So in the end, any art process could work for illustrations. You just have to give it a try!