How do stories come about?
The creative process of the book Aaahhh!
A new idea can emerge from any situation. It all depends on your outlook, imagination and creativity. I want to share with you a little of the creative process behind my book "Aaahhh!". I hope you enjoy it and maybe you'll feel inspired too. By the way, maybe more people need a dose of inspiration... Send this post to a friend or share it on social media before reading on!
The spark
It was late at night, about 9.30 pm. I was getting the groceries out of the car boot when I heard a screech from one of the windows of the building where I lived. "How can a child be still screaming at this hour? He should be in bed! What kind of parent allows their children to make such a mess?" I started to climb the stairs and the noise got louder with each step. I reached the first floor, the second, the third... Finally, on the fourth, my flat floor, the noise was even louder. For my luck, all three of my neighbors had children the same age as mine. I had a 75% chance that it was not my house. When I opened the door, I saw my wife, who looked at me in despair and said: "Your son is in the bathroom shouting, he doesn't want to have a bath. Do something!"
And I did: I wrote a story! That's how AAAHHH came about!
The text
A screech that annoys people in the building is an idea, but it doesn't yet have the strength to become a book. What if it gets a bit bigger? What if it bothers more than just our neighbors? Maybe a city, a country, the whole planet? Then we can start a conversation.
I like to play with nonsense, ridicule and exaggeration. For you to have an idea, my reference was Monty Python. So I tried to take it in that direction and fit some absurd things into the story. What's even more interesting is when, with all the exaggerations, the reader is led to believe that the ending will be grandiose, that something really scary has happened, and that all the confusion is just because a child is crying. (But some parents will agree that when their children cry, their world turns upside down).
After the first few drafts, in which the story revolved around Planet Earth coming together to fight an enemy, with armies and weapons, I submitted the text to some editor friends and my agent. In this exchange, I realized that adding war scenes wouldn't be the best choice.
During these conversations, my friend Pablo Lugones warned me that the idea of children crying to avoid having a bath wasn't a very unusual ending, and he was right. I was left with this concern and rewrote my text, taking out the part about the war and trying to be creative by using other ways to arrive at a new ending. It's very interesting to be able to submit your idea to people you trust to help you polish your project.
A while later, we were having a barbecue at a friend's home, the children playing and having fun, when suddenly there was a cry. My son had fallen and hurt his knee. But this time the intensity of the crying and the drama were greater than the crying when he didn't want to have a bath. The barbecue dinner practically stopped and we had to go home to calm our son down. After the crying subsided and the spirits calmed down, I realized: I had found the end of my story!
The illustration
For this project I wanted to try the collage technique, but I didn't like the first experiments at all. I left it on standby for a while... sometimes it seems that insisting isn't productive and giving ideas time to emerge is a way of taking the pressure off and giving room for creativity.
Weeks later and with new tests, I finally liked what I had done. I think I found the identity, but there was still a problem to be solved: noise is the main protagonist of the story. How could I represent it? How does one represent onomatopoeia in a visual way that connects with the illustrations? I tried various ways, including potato stamps. It didn't work very well. What worked were various "A"s and "H"s cut out of magazines, scanned and treated digitally.
Once this was done, I restricted my color palette to 5 or 6 colors and thus created the illustrations for my book. A mix of digital collages and solid color illustrations. All in Photoshop. Here you can see some of the artwork that was discarded:
The result
The book's illustrations won an important award in Bratislava, Slovakia: the BIB Golden Plaque in 2019. It was the first time a Brazilian had won a trophy since 2007 when Angela Lago received an award. I was overjoyed but I could never have imagined what would happen a month later.
I remember the morning I woke up and saw some messages from my agent, Veronique Kirchhoff, about some book awards in China. When I checked the emails, I discovered that AAAHHH had won the Golden Pinwheel award at the Shanghai Fair in China, where I'll be travelling in November to see the event.
The comments were that the book's illustrations were innovative, bringing a freshness to the world of editorial images. I never thought that I would receive such a comment, incredible right? In addition to the awards, the book has already been translated into 8 languages, including Korean and Turkish. It was also a finalist for the Jabuti Prize in 2020 in the 'Illustrated Book' category. It seems that it's not just in Brazil that parents also suffer from noisy children.
I hope you enjoyed learning a little about this creative process. Not all books are created in the same way, but a keen eye and a repertoire are what you need to get started. If you'd like to tell me a little about your creative process or your inspirations, please write a comment. I'd be delighted to hear from you.
Inspiration is like that, it transforms something simple and ordinary (a child who didn't want to take a bath) into something great (a scream that could shake the whole world).
Take the opportunity to buy the book and get to know every detail. Just click on the image below:
Cheers, and see you next time!