The Twelve-Sentence Story

By Lisa Amstutz 

 

Have you ever found yourself lost in the weeds with your nonfiction picture book? Maybe there are so many great details about your subject that you want to include them all! Maybe it feels like you’ve lost the throughline. Or maybe something just feels off.

Today I wanted to share an outlining method that I’ve found helpful in getting to the heart of a story. I call it the Twelve-Sentence Story. Each sentence corresponds to one spread in your picture book. You may need more than 12, depending on your book’s page count and how much back matter you’ve included.

Some people like to make a book dummy, which is also a great idea. However, this quick method allows you to see the whole story at a glance.

Start by numbering 1-12 on a sheet of paper (vertically). Write one sentence by each number summarizing what’s happening on that spread. Keep it brief—this is the bare bones version of your story.

Now read through your sentences. Is there a complete story arc there? Where does the conflict happen? Is it early enough in the story? Are there clear stakes?

Does the story build toward a satisfying conclusion? Is all the info you’ve included necessary, or does some of it distract from the main point? On the tail end, should your story have ended sooner?

Here is a sample outline from Full of Beans: Henry Ford Grows a Car by NF Ninja Peggy Thomas, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham (Calkins Creek, 2018). This is a 48-page book, with 17 full spreads plus back matter.

1. Henry Ford made cars.

2. Mother encourages young Henry to help others; he tries.

3. Life on the family farm is hard—he looks for ways to make it easier.

4. The Great Depression makes life even harder for farmers.

5. Maybe he can create a new market for their products!

6. Henry builds a laboratory to test crops.

7. He finds the perfect food…the soybean!

8. Ford tractors plant 300 kinds of soybeans over 8000 acres.

9. Henry’s team creates soybean paint for Ford cars.

10. The team makes more car parts from soybeans and keeps farmers busy!

11. Ford eats beans…and even wears beans.

12. Ford makes his cars even beanier with soybean plastic.

13. He tests the plastic—it works!

14. Ford assembles the soybean car.

15. Ford shows off his new car.

16. WWII begins and the soybean car is forgotten.

17. But the soybean is not!

18-23. Back matter

You can see a clear arc here, from Henry's desire to help farmers to his eventual success at building a soybean car, and even more broadly, to helping create markets for soybeans.

You may want to try an outline before you start writing or wait until you have a draft down on paper. This method works for picture book biographies as well as other narrative nonfiction stories. It works equally well for fiction. And it can be adapted to outline an expository or concept picture book as well.

What outlining method works best for you? Please share in the comments!

 

 Lisa Amstutz is a literary agent with Storm Literary Agency and a Nonfiction Ninja. She is the author of more than 150 children’s books, including Our Christmas Tree Farm, Plants Fight Back, Amazing Amphibians, and Applesauce Day. With a background in biology and environmental science, Lisa particularly enjoys writing about nature and agriculture. When she’s not writing or agenting, she loves watching birds, hiking, and gardening. Learn more at www.LisaAmstutz.com.

 

Finding Story Arc & Structure in Non-Narrative Nonfiction

By Debra Kempf Shumaker

 

In narrative nonfiction picture books, like biographies or ones about historical events, the story frequently has a natural story arc and structure. Not that they are easy to write, but it’s pretty likely the author will work in chronological order, maybe with a flashback or two, and that the arc will build toward the climax - the subject’s invention or big moment in history. There are exceptions to this, of course, but narrative nonfiction frequently has that built-in arc.

For science-based nonfiction, I found finding a story arc more difficult. With both Freaky, Funky Fish and Peculiar Primates—rhyming nonfiction books about strange and odd adaptations—I decided to end on a nighttime scene to provide a subtle arc.

Several years ago, I wanted to take some drafts of poems I wrote about the wind and make a picture book out of them. Finding a structure and arc proved to be really challenging. Just stringing the poems together felt disjointed. I wanted something to tie the poems together with an opening and closing that made it FEEL like a picture book vs. an anthology of poems.

Looking back at my computer folder of my many, many file names for this wind manuscript, you can see I tried a huge variety of ways to find that “something”, that structure and arc:

•    Wind by Location

•    Wind Season

•    Wind Mood

•    Wind Story

•    Wind Dance

•    Wind Blow

•    Wind Can Be

•    Wind Is Riddle

•    Dance of Air

•    Stripped Down

•    Wind Is

With each attempt, I revised and polished the poems—adding poems, taking them out, adding them in again, and drafting different openings and closings based on the structure I was attempting. A few drafts in, I realized that the poems where I used metaphors to describe different types of wind—wind is a butterfly, wind is a boxer—were my strongest and soon I rewrote every poem as a metaphor and added new ones. Fun, but challenging!

One of the metaphors from my initial set of poems was a general poem about what wind is instead of poem about a specific wind. It read:

The wind is a dance of air.

Warm air steps up and then floats high.

Cold air steps in and stays down low.

Up, in. Up, in.

Sometimes fast and sometimes slow.

As I played with different structures, I frequently deleted that “dance of air” poem but found I kept putting it back in. Finally lightning (or windstorm?) struck—wind as a dance of air could be the overarching metaphor and my opening! Transition lines about the dance of air getting faster and stronger gave me the arc I needed. By progressing the winds by speed, it gave the story a climax point. Finally, my set of poems FELT like a picture book. It seems obvious in hindsight, but it wasn’t during the process, LOL.

Here is that revised poem used as my opening:

 

While this story took me years to find the right structure, every draft I wrote and every structure I tried gave me new insight into finally finding the story I wanted to tell.

If you’re struggling on a nonfiction project’s structure or arc, take some time to play! Brainstorm different ways you could tie the information together. Try them all. You might be surprised at what works.

Take a look, too, at recent non-narrative nonfiction books. Not every one of them has an arc, but many do. They may be subtle. Here are a list of a few and their arc:

By size, getting smaller:

•  Meet the Mini-Mammals: A Night at the Natural History Museum written by Melissa Stewart, illustrated by Brian Lies.

By depth, going deeper:

•  Scratching the Surface: Exploring Earth's Layers written by Kate Allen Fox, illustrated by Erin Brown.

•  Deep, Deep Down: The Secret Underwater Poetry of the Mariana Trench written by Lydia Lukidis, illustrated by Juan Calle.

Span of time:

•  I Am We: How Crows Come Together to Survive written by Leslie Barnard Booth, illustrated by Alexandra Finkeldey. (Dusk to dawn.)

•  When Twilight Comes: The Animals and Plants That Bring Dawn and Dusk to Life written by Marcie Flinchum Atkins, illustrated by Michelle Morin. (Dawn progressing to light and dusk progressing to dark.) Publishing in March!

If any of you wrote a non-narrative nonfiction book, I’d love to hear in the comments if you have an arc and how you found it!

Debra Kempf Shumaker loves weird and fascinating facts. When she isn’t reading or writing, she enjoys hiking, gardening, setting puzzles, and watching Jeopardy. She writes from her home in Northern Virginia and is the author of several nonfiction  and concept picture books, including Wind Is a Dance, an NCTE 2025 Notable Book in Poetry. Her first fiction picture book—Sunday Scaries—hits shelves August 4th. Fire Is a Chorus, a companion to Wind Is a Dance, will be published in Spring 2027. 

Bringing Feels to Children’s Nonfiction

By Dr. Mira Reisberg

When people hear the phrase: children’s nonfiction, they often imagine cool, distant, or purely informational books. Dates. Diagrams. Definitions. But good contemporary nonfiction books do something else. They make readers feel… Because surprise, sadness, excitement, fear, anger, curiosity, or levity, make stories memorable. 

So, how do we amplify emotion in nonfiction for young readers without crossing into fiction, manipulation, or preaching? Read on with some examples from Dr. Mira’s fabulous award-winning former student’s books.

Enhancing Accuracy with Emotion

Emotion is about choosing where to place the camera.

A glacier melting is a fact.

A scientist (or a polar bear) watching a glacier shrink year after year is also a fact.

One informs while the other invites empathy.

When writers allow readers to experience information through a human or animal with sensory details and meaningful stakes, nonfiction becomes something children don’t just read, but something they remember.

Start with an Anchor

Even in broad-topic nonfiction, readers need someone or something to hold onto. That anchor might be a real person, a child experiencing an event, an animal whose survival is documented, a community facing change, or even a single object that travels through time. Anchors help readers ask not just What happened? But– Why does this matter?

Before drafting, it helps to ask: Who or what is the emotional doorway into this information?

With a beginning illustration of our protagonist staring directly at us with a defiant look, Sue Ganz-Schmitt anchors Skybound! Starring Mary Myers as Carlotta--Daredevil, Aeronaut, and Scientist in a time and place beginning with…

“Mary Breed Hawley had lofty ideas! But when she soared into the world in 1850, girls were told not to do brave and dangerous things. Proper young ladies like Mary were simply expected to land a husband, have children, and stay tethered to their homes.” Of course, we know that Mary Breed Hawley is definitely not going to be a proper young lady – leading to the mystery of just what is she going to do.

Let Curiosity and Care Drive the Structure

The best examples of emotion in nonfiction begin with wonder, curiosity, humor or drama with an implied or explicit question. In Vivian Kirkfield's middle grade collection of lively short stories about inventions and the visionaries who invented them, From Here to There: Inventions That Changed the Way the World Moved, it’s all heart and caring as inventor after inventor seeks to make a better world.

Zoom In Before You Zoom Out

Emotion becomes more accessible when writers start with a specific event and then move to surrounding events.

Zoom in on a single day, a decision, discovery, or an obstacle. Gradually widen the lens to show how that moment fits into a larger story. 

A great example of this is in Nancy Churnin’s award-winning book, Manjhi Moves a Mountain. Over 20 years, Dashrath Manjhi single-handedly carved a path through a mountain using only a hammer and chisel to help his community. Nancy invites curiosity by describing the mountain and how it created hardship for his side of it, making us care for and emphasize with Manjhi and his community in this seemingly impossible undertaking.

Use Language That Breathes

Strong nonfiction language for children is clear, concrete, active, and sensory when appropriate. Shorter sentences can heighten tension or importance. Carefully chosen verbs can do emotional work without editorializing.

Instead of telling readers how to feel, let the language create space for feeling. Shannon Stocker does exactly this in the beginning of Listen: How Evelyn Glennie, A Deaf Girl, Changed Percussion. “From the moment Evelyn heard the first note, music held her heart. Evelyn played piano songs by ear at 8 years old. Tink! Tink! Tink! Woo-woo-da-woo! Clarinet notes slipped through her lips when she was 10. But soon her ears began to hurt.” See how many poetic techniques you can count in this.

End with Resonance
A resonant ending might echo an image from the beginning, show change over time, return to the human or animal anchor, solve a problem, or leave space for awe, concern, or hope. Emotion lingers when readers are invited to think and feel. Jolene Guitérez brings so much heart into Bionic Beasts: Saving Lives with Artificial Flippers, Legs, and Beaks, ending by revisiting all the animals we’ve come to care for during the book and highlighting how the science of prosthetics is constantly evolving. It’s truly heartwarming.

The Takeaway 

Children are deeply emotional beings. As they grow, socialization often teaches them to manage, mute, or suppress many of their feelings. Yet kids remain empathetic, thoughtful, and emotionally responsive. When nonfiction respects that capacity, it becomes transformative.

 

About the Author: Dr. Mira Reisberg is an award-winning author/illustrator, educator, and creative coach who helps PB-YA writers and illustrators craft emotionally resonant stories and art. With a PhD in child development and kidlit craft, she specializes in helping others make and publish award- books. Mira is the founder of the Children’s Book Academy, where she blends her skills and kidlit love with real-world publishing opportunities in a supportive, human-centered community. Her talented, hard-working students have published well-over 2,000 books so far. Click here  to receive a free reusable workbook on using emotions in your own work for PB, CB, MG, and YA writers.

 

In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time: The Problem with Anachronisms

By Stacy Nockowitz

I was disappointed in the final season of Stranger Things. In the four previous seasons, the mid-1980s details in the series were pretty spot on– the shopping mall, the wall phones, the Kate Bush music. I was a teen in the 1980s, and the show really brought me back to those days of cassette tapes and Sam Goody stores. So, the lazy writing exhibited in Season 5 really bummed me out.

The moment that epitomized this uninspired effort happened when one of the main characters exclaimed, “My bad!” as the gang was running amok. When I heard him say those two words, I was sucked out of the story faster than Ms. Pac Man chomps up cherries. No one said, “My bad!” in the 1980s. It wasn’t a thing then. Anachronisms like that in historical pieces take your readers (or viewers) out of the setting you’ve so carefully crafted, slingshotting them back to their present.

Historical accuracy means everything. This is true for literary nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, and, of course, historical fiction. Even the smallest details– especially the smallest details– need to be true to the time and place you’re writing about, lest you ruin your credibility as a writer.

As I wrote my 2022 historical fiction, The Prince of Steel Pier, I had to do meticulous research about what was and was not applicable to the year 1975 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I was eight years old in 1975, but I could only rely on my memories so much. What stores and attractions lined the Atlantic City Boardwalk in 1975? If you’re thinking casinos, you’d be wrong. Gambling wasn’t legal in AC in 1975, and casinos didn’t open on the Boardwalk until later in the decade. In one scene in my book, a truck full of televisions is being offloaded in a parking lot. What brands of televisions would have been on the truck? And what did those TVs look like? For me, researching means finding primary sources and cross-checking information across multiple sources. Televisions in the mid-1970s were not thin, “smart,” or even cable-ready devices from Samsung and LG. They were boxes, even cabinets, of tubes from Zenith, RCA, and Magnavox.

Though I tried to be as accurate as possible, I still made a few mistakes. After I sent an early draft of The Prince of Steel Pier to a friend, she pointed out that supermarkets weren’t using plastic bags in 1975; they only used paper. A grocery bag filled with arcade prize tickets plays a big role in the book, so I was grateful to my friend for finding that anachronism in my draft.

 Avoiding anachronisms requires something called horizontal research, a term I used often when teaching information literacy to students in my years as a school librarian. Horizontal research means opening multiple tabs across your browser so you can check facts from several sources against one another. But what sources should you use and which should you avoid? I taught students to avoid using Wikipedia, or any user-edited site, as a definitive source. Primary sources are always best, but don’t take their veracity for granted either. Whose account are you reading? What are their biases? Are they professionals in their field? Examine photos carefully, especially in these days of AI manipulation. Absolutely anyone can post falsehoods online, so check and double check facts using trusted sources like library-vetted databases and websites.

My next book is a picture book biography of the 18^th century writer Emma Lazarus. Just the other day, as I was working on revisions of the manuscript, I was reminded of just how vulnerable we all are to having anachronisms work their way into our writing. After rechecking my sources, I changed a number from six to five. I know that sounds like a pretty negligible alteration, but if I’m going to put my name on a book, the difference between six and five is monumental.

About the Author: Stacy Nockowitz is a retired middle school librarian and former language arts teacher with 30+ years of experience in middle grade education. She holds Master's Degrees from Columbia University, Kent State University, and Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her debut middle grade novel, The Prince of Steel Pier (Kar-Ben), won the 2022 National Jewish Book Award for Middle Grade Literature. The Prince of Steel Pier was a PJ Our Way selection in October 2022 and March 2025. Stacy has spoken at education and writing conferences all over the country, including as the Keynote Speaker for the Garden State Book Awards in 2024.