Writing Your Author's Note

There are several different things you can do in your author's note. The most important is to explain your use of your source, especially if you made big changes to the source. If you did not make any changes to the source, then use the author's note to explain just why you picked this story and how it fits into your project overall, and you can also comment on the image you are using to illustrate the story and why you chose that particular image.

Explaining how you used your source

When you are writing your author's note, the most important thing to remember is that the note is about YOUR SOURCE first and foremost. People get to read your story, so you can let your story speak for itself. In the note, you need to give people information about the source you used, explaining the changes that you made. If you have made major changes to the your source, your author's note will need to be longer and more detailed. You may even need to provide a summary of the original story if you have made extensive changes to the whole story.

If you changed the plot of the story in a big way, or if you left out part of the plot, you will need to provide a summary of the original plot. Something like this provides a brief description of the plot of a source story and how it was changed:

In the the original story, the prince went on three different adventures: he battled a dragon, and then he captured a magical cow, and then he led his armies against the evil wizard. In my story, I decided to leave out the part about the dragon and about the magical cow, so that I could focus on the battle with the wizard.

If you made big changes to the characters, then you need to describe the original characters. Something like this provides a brief description of the original characters in a story and how the author changed them:

The original story was about three frogs who lived in a big pond, and what happened when the pond dried up. In my version of the story, I decided to make it a story about human beings instead of frogs. In the original story, the water dried up and the frogs had to go looking for a new home; in my story, there was a famine, and the people had to move in order to find food.

The most important thing is to FOCUS ON YOUR SOURCE. Describe your source, and then talk about your story - with most of the information being about your source. The goal is for people to become familiar with the original source story, even if they have not read that story for themselves.

Explaining why you chose the story

In addition, you can also use the author's note to explain why you chose this particular story to include in your Storybook. What is the main theme or idea or this story, and how does it contribute to your Storybook overall? How is this story similar to the other stories you have told or are planning to tell? How is this story different from the others? You can use the author's note as a kind of commentary to let us see how your Storybook is coming together as a whole, reminding us of the previous stories in the Storybook and also preparing us for the stories to come.

Explaining why you chose the image(s)

You could also comment in the note about the image (or images) you have used to illustrate the story. Why did you choose this image? What details about the image do you really want us to notice? People see different things when they look at an image, and you can use the author's note to tell us exactly what you see in that image, and why you chose it as the illustration for the story.