My Kind of Exercise

During the Picture Book Intensive, presenter and author/editor Diane Muldrow introduced a fabulous writing exercise - divide the text from one of her Golden Books into 24 pages. Key concerns were: (1) creating interesting page turns, (2) allowing for beautiful visual spreads where the art matched the text, (3) using words themselves as a graphic element, and (4) pacing the plot.
This is an exercise I do with my current work, but I usually use the standard 32 page format. 24 pages was quite the challenge! But it was also a good reminder that, as Diane pointed out, not every story is meant to be an up market, hard cover, 32 page, fancy-pants, glossy picture book.