A Worked Example
See a Book Come Together
Sometimes it’s easier to see one. This page walks a single example book from a blank start to a finished story, step by step. At each stage you’ll see exactly what you’d fill in, so the whole thing feels familiar before you begin your own.
For this walkthrough, we’ll follow Priya as she makes a book for her daughter, Wren, who’s turning six. You’ll see Priya’s example at every step, marked clearly so you can tell it apart from the instructions.
Step One: About Them
First you tell us who the book is for and what the occasion is. It’s a small amount of information, just enough to ground the book in a real person and a real reason. There’s a spot for the child’s name, their age, and a sentence or two about the moment you’re marking.
Example
- The book is for
- Wren
- Age
- Turning six
- The occasion
- Her birthday. She’s about to start a new school, so it’s a big, slightly nervous spring for her.
Step Two: The Cast
Next you build the characters: the people and pets who’ll appear in the stories. We draw a reference illustration for each one, and you approve it before any story is written. That approved face is then what shows up on every page, so the cast looks the same from the first story to the last.
There are two ways to make a character, and you can mix them freely. You can use the visual builder, tapping preset options to assemble a look, or you can simply describe the character in your own words. Here’s Priya doing one of each.
Example
Character one, Wren, built with the visual builder by tapping preset options:
- Age
- Young child
- Build
- Small and slight
- Face shape
- Round
- Skin tone
- Warm medium brown
- Hair
- Dark, thick, and curly, gathered into two short puffs
Example
Character two, Marigold the cat, described in plain words:
“Marigold is a soft ginger cat with white paws and one slightly bent ear. She’s a bit round, very calm, and she’s always asleep somewhere she shouldn’t be, like the laundry basket or Wren’s reading chair.”
Either way, we turn it into a reference illustration. Priya looks at both, taps approve, and the cast is set.
Step Three: The Stories
Now you share a few story ideas. You don’t write the stories yourself. You just give the seed of each one, a single real moment, and we shape it into a full story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. A sentence per idea is plenty. Small, true moments tend to make the best books.
Example
The three story seeds Priya shared:
- The morning Wren found Marigold asleep inside the basket of clean towels and didn’t have the heart to move her.
- Wren feeling shy about her new school, and the two of us walking the route together so it wouldn’t feel so strange.
- Her sixth birthday morning, opening the window to a rainy garden and deciding it was a good day anyway.
Step Four: Review
Before anything is made, you see the whole plan in one place: who the book is for, the approved characters, and the stories it’ll hold. It’s a last calm look. If something isn’t right, you can step back and change it. When the plan looks good, you create the book, and you can watch each page get written and illustrated.
Example
Priya’s plan, ready to create:
- For
- Wren, turning six
- Characters
- Wren and Marigold the cat, both approved
- Stories
- Three: the towel basket, the walk to the new school, and the rainy birthday morning
Priya reads it over, presses create, and watches Wren’s book come to life, page by page.
Now You’ve Seen One
That’s a whole book, from a blank start to a finished story. You can read a finished example, or begin one of your own.