Themes: Exploring the nuances of writing rhyming picture books with guest Lisa Riddiough, a Northern California based writer and author of the newly released picture book, Pie-rats.
Key Discussion Points: 1. The Art of Rhyme in Picture Books: Discussion on the industry's view on rhyming picture books and the common misconceptions that surround them.
2. Natural Rhymers vs. Learned Technique: Insight into the natural ability of rhyming versus the learned skill, emphasizing that while anyone can learn to rhyme, an inherent sense of rhythm enhances the writing process.
3. Crafting Quality Rhymes: Riddiough highlights the importance of using interesting words that align with the story's theme and avoiding "bad" rhymes or forced cadences.
4. Perfect Rhyme vs. Slant Rhyme: Delineation between perfect and slant rhymes, illustrating how each serves the narrative differently and the importance of consistency in rhyme schemes throughout a book.
5. Reader Engagement through Rhyme: The educational aspect of rhyming for young readers, fostering confidence, and participation in the reading process.
6. Lisa Riddiough's Writing Process: An in-depth look into Riddiough's creative process, including the use of word banks, title generation, and the foundational elements of crafting a story.
7. Upcoming Works: A sneak peek into Riddiough's forthcoming books, Embarrassed Ferret and Furious Turtle, which are set in a school environment with rhyming adventures.
Conclusion: Rhyming picture books hold a significant place in children's literature, captivating young readers with rhythm and sound. Lisa Riddiough's experiences illustrate the dedication and creativity required to master this art form.
For writers and readers alike, understanding the intricacies of rhyme can enrich the storytelling experience. Listeners are encouraged to visit the Writers with Wrinkles website for additional resources and upcoming episodes.
Hi friends, I'm Beth McMullen and I'm Lisa Schmid, and we're the co-hosts of Writers with Wrinkles. This is season three, episode 14. And today we are excited to welcome Lisa Riddio to the show as part of the Big Picture series. Lisa is a Northern California based writer whose projects include picture books, middle grade personal essays and short fiction. Lisa has an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Hamlin University. She is a former sales executive, a backyard scroll watcher and a frequent baker of chocolate pound cake. Her newest picture book, pirates, just released on March 12th. So welcome Lisa. We are so happy you could join us today.
LIsa Riddiough:
Thank you, I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Lisa Schmid:
So I am. You know I'm a huge fan of yours. Thank you, lisa, likewise, and I especially love your new book, pirates. It is so darn cute and full disclosure. Lisa sent it over to me in the PDF so I could review it, and it is the funniest, cutest thing ever on the planet. I love it so much. The ending is hysterical and children across the world will be shouting pie, pie, pie. That's what I hope will happen.
Lisa Schmid:
You're good at so many things, especially writing picture books and rhyme, and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show, and it's because, you know, there's all this like little kerfuffle about picture books, specifically rhyming picture books, and I remember there was an editor who posted a tweet about like, if you're writing picture books, just don't even bother doing rhyming, and I I'm sure you know about it, and it created this whole excuse me, little Twitter storm. And then I started looking into it. And it's not that agents and editors don't want picture books, they just want them done well, and so I think there's a real art to doing rhyming picture books. And I started looking into it and I'm like I could never do this. So I'm calling my friend Lisa and inviting her on the show and she can tell us how to do it.
Lisa Schmid:
There's a whole mystery around it, because I think so many people have been scared off of doing rhyming picture books because of all that. You know there's this huge stigma around it, but there really isn't. They still are really popular. When every time I open one, I'm like it's a rhyming picture book, so they're clearly wanted. So let's talk about how to do them well. Well, I think it's interesting.
LIsa Riddiough:
You know, you hear that all the time that the agents and editors don't want rhyme. And I have an analogy and hopefully I won't offend anyone by saying this, but I was listening to Tara Lazar on some webinar talk about writing funny picture books and she flat out said if you are not a funny person, you're going to have a hard time writing funny picture books. Like, you need to naturally be funny. Like, are you funny in your life? Do you say funny things? Do you make people laugh? You know that kind of thing. And I was like yeah, I, I, this is good, I need to hear this. But maybe some people didn't want to hear that sort of thing and I kind of feel that way.
LIsa Riddiough:
A little bit about rhyme, like you can learn how to rhyme. Well, certainly you can. But I think that some people just naturally hear it, they naturally know how to rhyme. Maybe they are, you know, walking around their house saying things that rhyme, like me, you know, and they've been doing that for their whole life. I mean my poor kids. I want to rhyme everything. Like I'm just a rhymer. Like you know, the Harry Potter craze was happening and I immediately jumped on the fact that I'm a muggle and I would tell my kids come huggle your muggle. You know, like things like that, you know. I mean it just rhyming is fun and so if you are, if you're really not a rhyming person in your life, it's going to be hard to write good rhyme.
LIsa Riddiough:
I think I kind of made a little list here of like, why is it? You know what trips people up in their rhyme? You know they have bad rhyme. They use slant rhyme when they shouldn't. They have boring rhyme schemes. They are not rhyming interesting words that are very specifically related to their theme or topic. They're just rhyming boring words that aren't really part of what their story is about. Right, and I think that you know.
LIsa Riddiough:
Then there's all that I also joke about. You know all the serious stuff about rhyming, like the different rhyme schemes, and I call it the pterodactyl anapest, budapest because I get them all mixed up. There's the troch, you know. There's the trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee, like all of them. But I could get my note cards and explain them to you, but I don't have it memorized. I just hear it Right note cards and explain them to you, but I don't have it memorized. I just hear it Right. So when I hear a bad rhyme, or I hear one that's slightly off or the beat isn't working or the rhythm is wrong or there's a forced rhyme, you have to say the word inside out. They call it Yoda speak. I hear it immediately and I'm like, oh, and that's not to say that every parent or young reader is going to react that way to a not so great rhyme, but certainly the cute or it's funny, it's got that sing-songy quality and so they don't understand or respect the difficult process of getting it to have that flow.
Beth McMullen:
where you aren't, it just goes naturally. Where you aren't tripping over those words that are maybe not the right ones or don't quite work the way they intended. I wrote a song lyric for a manuscript that I hopefully will be shopping soon. It's an adult fiction and it's got a rock star in it and he writes this song, and so I was trying to write like a stanza of a pop song, rhyming, and it was terrible. I mean, it took me all day to just get it to someplace where I wasn't embarrassed, fully knowing that if an editor ever gets their hands on this they're just going to put a big red X through it. But even to get it to the point where I was willing to show my agent I mean so and what you just said, suddenly it made sense.
Beth McMullen:
I am not a rhyming person Like. I am missing that fundamental part of my brain. I think that's made sense. I am not a rhyming person Like. I am missing that fundamental part of my brain. I think that's so interesting. I never thought about it as being like. This is this type of person you can rhyme and I'm the kind of person who can't rhyme well.
LIsa Riddiough:
Yeah, and I don't want to like like that's not to say you can't rhyme, because you can, but I think it just is easier and more natural for some people Like you know, some people that, like with the Tara Lazar thing, people that are really writing funny books, they have a funny bone, right they're. They're the comedian in their household or maybe they were, you know, the funny kid in school or whatever.
Beth McMullen:
Why do you think that for picture books, rhyming is important for these young readers?
LIsa Riddiough:
I know why I think it's important and it comes down to who I was as a young reader and when I was a kid and my dad read to me all the time picture books and, you know, chapter books and and whatever. And when I was little I have very, very specific memories of hearing my favorite rhyming picture books and feeling you know all the usual things like the feeling joyful and it's fun and it's got a rhythm and a beat and you're you know you're tapping your your foot on the ground. Um, they're surprising words maybe, but it's when you know what the rhyme is and this is in particular with refrains. You know what the refrain is, you feel smart as a kid, you know it's coming and you can say it before it is read, or you read it along with the person reading, even if you're not really a reader yet. For me, that's why I think it's so important.
LIsa Riddiough:
Like I, I can remember this book. It was a Berenstain Bears book and I actually need to go find a copy of it, but it was called Inside Outside, upside Down. Do either of you remember this book? I just know. I can tell you right now. The ending, the ending stanza of that book is mama, mama. We went to town inside, outside, upside down, and I mean I'll never forget it and we would get to the end page and I would say it right as a little four-year-old or whatever, and I felt smart.
Beth McMullen:
That is such an interesting answer because I don't think people think about that the confidence that it will give young readers to be able to say the words. And then, of course, there's that learning that's going on You're saying the word, you're seeing the word, and that's how you're learning how to read ultimately, and there's something about the hearing right, the hearing.
LIsa Riddiough:
I was just reading this book. This is your brain on art, but there's something about the hearing. There's the audio part of it, so you're hearing this rhythm, you're hearing this beat, you're hearing the rhyme and you're seeing the words or a parent is reading to, or a teacher or librarian or whatever, and all of that together is stimulating your whole experience with that book and having the knowing. As a little small person, you know that. You know what the word is, that it's going to land on, that the little sentence is going to land on.
Lisa Schmid:
So what elements do you think make a rhyming picture book successful? I think you kind of touched on a few of those things, but a little bit of a deeper dive into that.
LIsa Riddiough:
I really think that you know. I mean obviously the rhymes have to be interesting. You know you don't want those. You know rhyming, say, with play and you know boy with toy. I mean there's times when that is necessary, it works and it's fine. And particularly in a refrain, simplicity, I believe, is great for a refrain and that whole idea of the kid knowing what's coming. You might want, you know, sort of simpler words, but having interesting, unexpected words, that rhyme I think is critically important.
LIsa Riddiough:
But I also think that all of the elements of craft need to be in your rhyming picture book and I mean like, obviously you've got a story, you've got a plot, you've got an art, you've got rising action, there's a crisis, there's a climax, there's some kind of interesting surprise ending. Maybe You've got characterization through possibly great dialogue. You have a very distinct setting, you've got POV, you have a, you've got a particular theme or two or three or whatever. All of those things have to be there. And then when it rhymes it's like the icing on the cake. It's like the icing with the extra fluffy topping and the sprinkles, but you have all of those base layers of the elements of craft.
Lisa Schmid:
It's so magical when you're reading a picture book that rhymes and it. All those elements do come in, and there was one and we kind of we talked about this yesterday when I was talking to you on the phone. I want you to tell the two little stories one, the gold doubloons, how you work that in to your pie story, and then also the rat line story, because I remember when you were struggling with this during edits and then how you stumbled upon it, the serendipity that was involved with that was so brilliant and I just remember being so excited for you.
LIsa Riddiough:
Oh, thank you. Yeah, I think that my one of my opening lines in my book is pirates don't want gold doubloons. Their bounty comes on forks and spoons. So this is an interesting rhyme, if I don't mind saying so myself, like this is you know, I'm rhyming gold doubloons with forks and spoons and if you think about it, what I, when I talk about, like you, want your rhyming words to be very specifically about your story. Gold doubloons are very piratey, forks and spoons are the whole dessert element of this book. So, yeah, you can maybe find something else to rhyme with gold doubloons, but forks and spoons I mean, come on. So it's a challenge and it's like I accept the challenge. Right, like, bring it on. I want to find the best, most interesting, surprising words you know to work into my rhyme scheme.
Lisa Schmid:
So when you're starting off with it, like you've come up with your theme of your story, do you just go and start searching for words that are associated with that and then go from there and kind of build your, your rhyming around that structure For me with my picture books.
LIsa Riddiough:
I usually start with like a title. I'm all about wordplay, I. That just seems to be where it starts, and then I do like word banks right. So when I, when I landed on pie wraps and I of course thought I invented this term come to find out there are many types of pie wrap books out there, I just start thinking about pie wraps as like unicorns. People write about unicorns. People write about high routes. My agent said Lisa, there are no new ideas.
Beth McMullen:
Because I was so sad when I discovered that I did not New to you, right, it's a new to you idea.
LIsa Riddiough:
It was new to me, but it was not new to children's literature. Anyway, I still went with it, I still kept going.
Lisa Schmid:
Lisa, I have to tell you something. This is so funny. Like right after you told me like you had a book coming out called Pirates, like probably a week later on Twitter, somebody like I think it was in England announced a book called Pirates and I was like, huh, I'm like, well, I'm not forwarding that out.
LIsa Riddiough:
Yeah, I was very disappointed for a while. And then I just like I said I was very disappointed for a while, and then I just like I said, I just changed my mindset and I was like Look, I'm writing about pirates.
Lisa Schmid:
Other people do too.
LIsa Riddiough:
Fine, you know, whatever it's, okay, it has. It does. Tell me about the rat line. Yes, the rat line, okay. So I had a situation in this book where the illustrations were already done and there was a little.
LIsa Riddiough:
There was a little mix up in one of my rhyming couplets and basically what I had to do is I was challenged with making my rhyme fit the picture, fit the illustration, in just the right way. What had happened was you know, my refrain is from the poop deck or from the wherever. From the poop deck, hear them cry Pie, pie, pie, pie. And let me just interject that with refrains I believe that the simplicity actually works well for that whole, like kid trying to know it and repeat it, as opposed to more of a complicated type of a rhyme elsewhere. But at any rate, the rhyme now I can't even remember what the old rhyme was, but essentially the rhyme was something like from the bulkhead, hear them cry pie, pie, pie, pie. And what it had been was that the pirates had been drenched by the storm and they were all huddled in the bulkhead of the ship like shivering, like the rhyme was something about shivering and shaking and from the bulkhead, hear them cry. Only, we didn't get to have that picture. We couldn't have the picture of them in the bulkhead. The picture was them on the ship with the typhoon going and the pirates are flying all over the place.
LIsa Riddiough:
And I had to change the rhyme and I had already used everything Like I'd already used from the poop deck, from the main deck, from the crow's nest, from the galley, you know, from everything. And I was like I don't know, I don't have, I don't know what to do, and so I just racked my brain. I did all this research on pirate ships and just before giving up, I found this diagram of a pirate ship that showed the little rope ladders, that kind of climb up the sail. Those are called rat lines. Who knew? And they were already in the illustration and the pirates were like hanging on the rat lines. And so there it was, from the rat lines, hear them cry pie, pie, pie, pie. And so my editor thought I was brilliant. So it was.
Beth McMullen:
It was just it all worked out. That is such an interesting challenge, right Like okay, now you have the picture and you're really confined to what you can do. Yeah, right, wow, probably not a not a little bit of panic when confronted with that situation at that late stage of the game.
LIsa Riddiough:
Yes, I think I probably called you Lisa. I think I did have a panic and I was like, oh my goodness, yeah, and then I just like, did it. You know, I figured it out. It can be figured out. There are solutions.
Beth McMullen:
Problem solutions so rhyming is complicated. We're going to we, we know that. Now, what is the difference between perfect rhyme and slant rhyme? And I'm actually super interested to hear the answer, because I have no idea.
LIsa Riddiough:
I love this. My general definition would be perfect rhyme is literally a perfect rhyme, like gold, doubloons, forks and spoons, Hits the beats. It works right. A slant rhyme is when a word sounds like another word, but it doesn't perfectly rhyme. And I'm going to give you an example. I actually was texting with my friend, Amy Lucido. I don't know if you guys know Amy Lucido. She has a picture book coming out in July and it's called Pasta, Pasta, Lots of Pasta, and it's almost entirely written in slant rhyme.
LIsa Riddiough:
So I said, oh, will you send me an example of one of your rhymes? All right, here we go. Knead the dough like I'm a baker, Roll it out it's thin as paper, Cut it for lasagna layers. So we have baker paper and layers. Okay, those are not perfect rhymes, they're slant rhymes. Here's another example Sift the flour from a crater, Bye-bye eggshell, See you. Later Add some basil just for flavor, Stir and stir. We're pasta makers.
LIsa Riddiough:
So in this one we did have a perfect internal rhyme with creator and later, but then that went with flavor and makers. So do you see that? Yeah, how that works. So what you know, can you use slant? What are you supposed to do?
LIsa Riddiough:
And so what I kind of came up with is it's all about and Amy was helping with this it's all about the promise that you set out from the start and you are making a promise to your reader by the way your picture book starts out. If you're starting out with you know two stanzas, a perfect rhyme, your reader is expecting perfect rhyme all the way through. My opinion is, I feel like it should be all perfect rhyme if that is the promise you're making. On the flip side of the coin, if you are starting out with slant rhyme and maybe there's a perfect rhyme thrown in here and there, the promise is this is a slant rhyme book, but you can't mix it up Like you can't be writing a story in perfect rhyme and then you can't find the right word, so you throw in a slant rhyme.
LIsa Riddiough:
It wrecks it, right, Right. So this was my bottom line on this question, and then, of course, I made it into a rhyme. When you promise perfect rhyme, you must deliver every time. Stop it, yeah, that's the answer. So for me, my books are all in perfect rhyme, but Amy has masterfully created this beautiful book that is almost entirely in slant rhyme, which is more or less how they write lyrics. Musical lyrics has a lot of slant rhyme in it.
Beth McMullen:
I sometimes feel with slant rhyme that the author is winking a little at the reader. You're kind of in on it. But I think you're right. I think if it goes back and forth it's going to be really jarring to your ear.
LIsa Riddiough:
Yeah, I think. I think my bottom line on this and this is just my personal opinion is that it has to do with what you're promising up front. If you have basically shown that you're going to use both, then you're going to use both and maybe it's going to work fine. But if you're showing perfect rhyme, I don't think you can sneak one in. I'm not saying you can't, but you probably can. I think sometimes it feels like cheating. That's just my personal opinion.
Lisa Schmid:
I didn't know about perfect rhyme and slant rhyme before you introduced it to me the other day. Do you ever do slant rhyme or do you just do perfect rhyme?
LIsa Riddiough:
I so far I've only done perfect rhyme but, like I said, like I love this book that Amy has written and I'm like, wow, she's got the plant rhyme going on and it's awesome. So you know who knows, but so far I gravitate toward that perfect rhyme.
Lisa Schmid:
I can hardly wait till I'm at a conference and I hear some people talking like picture book people talking in their little circle, and I'm gonna be like, hey man, do you do perfect?
LIsa Riddiough:
or slam like what's your, what's your jam you're gonna be writing a rhyming picture book before you know it, lisa oh, I'm not.
Lisa Schmid:
We barely like. Beth and I together I'm working on a picture book. Can you even imagine if we had to do a picture book that was rhyming Beth, never.
Beth McMullen:
It would be a catastrophe. I told you I can't rhyme. I am rhyme deficient. I you know let's think of other things that we can call it, but that's why I love them so much. My favorite picture books are rhyming picture books because they're fun to read and when my kids were little I always gravitated toward those and I was always kind of disappointed when I opened a picture book and I was like where's my rhymes?
Beth McMullen:
There are no rhymes in here, and you know a lot of them were good anyway, but I was still a little disappointed.
Lisa Schmid:
So, Lisa, what is? We've touched on a lot of this, but what is your actual process for writing your picture books.
LIsa Riddiough:
I'm all about the word play, like. I really feel like when I'm writing rhyming picture books, I'm like playing with words, right. I'm just like finding the cool words and I'm seeing what I can do with them and I'm seeing how the meanings come out. So I feel like like I said, you know, I kind of start with a title, like some idea will come into my head or I'll be playing with puns or I don't know, but I usually start with a title and then I usually go to like word banks, so like in the example of pirates. You know, we've got pie, we've got pirates and we've got rats, so we have three different sort of subjects to draw from. So I, so I will make like a list of all the words that are related to pirating. You know, maybe all the phrases, all the like their belts and their buckles and their swords and whatever. And then I might go to the wraps and write all the, all the words I can think of. Or, you know, I might even go to a rhyme zone online or whatever, and all the rat words. And then it's all the pie words, the rolling pin and the crust, and people who know me know I'm all about the crust, it's all about the crust. So you know, yeah, those words, and then all the pie flavors and like I don't know a serving knife and you know the forks and the spins, all those things.
LIsa Riddiough:
And then I might just start rhyming things. Well, what words in all these word banks might be good rhymes? And so I might not really know the story yet. Like I'm just playing with the words. I'm playing, and then maybe I just kind of barf out some kind of bad story, like it's not really a story, but I've got some rhymes in there that I like.
LIsa Riddiough:
And then that's when I have to find the story and that's when I go back to you know the elements of craft, like what is the story, what is my characterization? You know all those things and I just make sure it's it's legit, right. And usually I go through a lot, a lot, a lot of different rhymes, a lot. And when you're working on rhyme and that you maybe experienced this when you were writing the lyrics is you can go down that rabbit hole of being like lost and trying to find a rhyme for like four hours. And you look up and you're like, oh, my God, it's midnight, you know, and you've been working on one rhyme. I love it. It's so fun to me. I love spending time working in lines.
Lisa Schmid:
You have more picture books coming out. This ain't correct. Tell us about that.
LIsa Riddiough:
I do. I have two books forthcoming, one in 25 and one in 26. And they're both rhyming picture books and the first one is called embarrassed ferret. And so just think about like that one time at school, like maybe you were a second or third grader and that horribly embarrassing thing happened. All of the embarrassing things happened to poor little ferret on the same day.
LIsa Riddiough:
Oh, no, it's like the story of my life. It's just a lot, it's a lot, a lot, a lot. So Poor Little Ferret. I mean, maybe it'll be a series. It all takes place at the fourth school and their teacher is Miss Bunny, and you know, ferret has her bad day, basically. And then the second book is also at fourth school, with Miss Bunny, and it's called Furious Turtle. So Furious Turtle, it takes place at the school fair and he doesn't, you know he doesn't win anything.
Beth McMullen:
What's up with turtles and being angry? Yeah, they look kind of naturally grumpy. That is very exciting. You are super busy, I'm busy. Yeah, I love it, I'm grateful. Do you dream in rhyme? Do your dreams? Are they narrated in rhyming sequences?
LIsa Riddiough:
That I don't know. I will try to pay attention and find out.
Beth McMullen:
See, when you wake up the next time you'll be like yes, I do. I did not realize the like, the way you describe this process and this, this universe. It sounds so fun. For people who love words and wordplay and all of those interactions, it just sounds like it's a lot of fun. I mean, I know better than to try it because of my rhyming problems, but I could see people listening to this and being like, oh yeah, I got to try that because it sounds. It just sounds so cool, it's fun.
LIsa Riddiough:
I mean, I love it. And so, kind of going back to that first question of why do agents and editors not want rhyme, they do, they do, they want it, and you've just got to work at it right, it's like anything else You've got to work at it.
Beth McMullen:
Yeah, and the bar is high. I mean, the bar is really high and I think Lisa said this earlier when she said you know, it's not that they don't want it, they just don't want the stuff. That's not any good.
Beth McMullen:
And I think probably the large majority is not very good because it seems like a skill that you have to continuously hone to get it to the point where it is something that's going to be published and well-received. Yeah, this has been so interesting, right, Like? I mean, I am feeling, I'm feeling pretty smart and I am going to go from this interview to one of my kids sports events and I'm going to talk about slant rhyme. And I'm just going to go from this interview to one of my kids' sports events and I'm going to talk about slant rhyme and I'm just going to confuse the hell out of people because they're going to be like what? Because I have knowledge now.
Beth McMullen:
I'm going to use it. I know Good. So thank you, Lisa, for joining us. This has been so much fun.
LIsa Riddiough:
You're so welcome. I'm so delighted to be here and, of course, I'm a fan of the show, so it's really awesome to be on the show, so thank you. Thank you, lisa and Beth, really fun.
Beth McMullen:
And listeners, remember I'm going to put all of the books that are coming out. Lisa has coming out. She has the one that came out March 12 Pirates so you can find that right now. But she has more coming so we'll put those all in the notes and I will also put her website on the notes so you can find her and see what she's up to. She's got a lot of stuff going on and be sure to visit writerswithwrinklesnet to follow, support and share about the show. And we will see you again next week, April 8th, for a deep dive craft episode. So until then, my friends, happy reading, writing and listening.