The structure of a theatre book
Chapter
Much like a regular book, a theatre book can be divided into chapters. Each chapter is made up of one or more scenes (as defined below).
The text and the visual imagery of the book are designed to complement one another in a special, theatre-like, way. Although necessarily restricting the illustrations’ design, this delivers an immersive experience for the reader, who can follow the events as if they were unfolding on stage.
Flip through the pages of the opening chapter of my first children’s theatre book, inspired by the classic Cinderella story:
[1] Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, there was an inn called “Bee and Bee”. Contrary to what you might expect, there were no bees to be found inside the inn (which would have been bad for bee-siness anyway).
[2] “Bee and Bee” was run by Madame Lodge,
[3] a widow who inherited the inn from her late second husband.
[4] Madame Lodge had two daughters, Maryssa and Mathilda, who were very proper young ladies by the kingdom’s standards.
[5] Madame Lodge also had a stepdaughter, Cinderella, left in her care by Madame Lodge’s second husband. The Lodges made her do all the chores around the inn: doing the laundry,
[6] sweeping the floors, and so on, all day long.
[7] At night, when the Lodges were asleep, Cinderella would take a book from her father’s library, and read it until she ran out of candles to burn.
Scene
A scene is a set of theatre book pages that includes, and ends with, a single page with no cut outs. This is the theatre book equivalent of a homonymous concept in filmmaking or a live theatre work (i.e., a continuous sequence of shots/actions typically taking place in the same location).
Below is an example of a seven-page scene. The left side shows each page separately, whereas the right side demonstrates the corresponding view:
View
A view is any set of consecutive pages within a scene, that ends with the final page of that scene. As a consequence of the cut outs, these pages are merged together into a unified visual composition.
Below is an example of a mid-scene view (left) that consists of three separate pages (right):
