Hi all,

Another newbie here. I've been playing with an idea for a children's book for some years, but have only of late been working on it in earnest. It's a humourous (hopefully) and sarcastic depiction of the adventures of a creature called the Great Shnark and his friends.(See uploaded example).
From the start, I wanted to only give the odd glimpse of what the creatures looked like, so that the reader would build the physical appearance of the characters from their own imagination, and therefore, in a way own them. Every reader would know, in their mind what they thought the Shnark looked like. The human characters have a full description.
From a publishing point of view, is this literary suicide, with an agent or publisher dismissing the manuscript out of hand due to lack of character description; or is it a valid approach if treated carefully?

Hi, Shnarkle, and welcome to WriteWords.

If you join the Childrens Group and upload your chapter there then more people will find it - work tends to get overlooked in the Archive.

As for character description, your plans could be scuppered if Marketing decide to use a picture on the book cover with their interpretation of what the characters look like.
While I agree that the reader doesn't need much description to build up an image of the character using their imagnation, I think a little description would help - if they are furry, hairy, multi-headed, multi-armed, multi-eyed, solid, liquid, gaseous - as it all adds to those little descriptions/actions that help to break up the dialogue.


- NaomiM