Should I put some illustration in my novel?

[Yukinara]

I'm writing an action/sci-fi novel and I know a guy who can draw some pictures for me. My question is: is it ok to put like 5-6 illustrations in a 50,000 novel? Is there any general rule about this one?

 

[JCFarnham]

More than okay. It seems to be something that a lot of authors in that genre do these days

 

[Anders Ämting]

Might depend on what the publisher says, provided you have one. From what I hear it can be hard to even get any say on what goes on the cover, let alone illustrations inside the book.

That said, illustrations used to be fairly common but sort of went out of style for some reason. I for one wouldn't mind more of them. The most extreme exception to the rule is probably Clive Barker's Abarat series, which is shock full of oil paintings he made himself to illustrate the story. I can safely say they are the most colorful books I've ever seen outside of the small children's section. Then again, maybe you have to be Clive Barker to actually get away with something like that.

 

[Yukinara]

actually I plan to self publish this book so I don't really need to care too much about the publisher. And I don't plan for something too colorful either. I just want to insert some character illustration here and there. I just wonder if it is obtrusive to the reading experience or not

 

[Kelise]

I'd put them all at the end of the book, unless you had one for each chapter. Otherwise it may seem uneven, or encourage people to skip through the book and possibly spoil themselves.

 

[Anders Ämting]

I'd put them all at the end of the book, unless you had one for each chapter. Otherwise it may seem uneven, or encourage people to skip through the book and possibly spoil themselves.

I dunno about that. When it comes to characters, first impressions are important. If you have the readers go through the entire book and then show them what the characters all look like, I bet a lot of them will go: "But non of these people look the way I've imagined them!"

If you're going to have a character illustration, it should be in the same chapter the character is introduced. Don't give the readers a chance to form their own opinion! If you're going to let them do that, you may as well skip the illustrations entirely.

 

[Yukinara]

I guess each person has his own opinion but I agree that inserting the illustration right after the first appearance is important. The reader can have an idea how that character look like

 

[grahamguitarman]

I'd put them all at the end of the book, unless you had one for each chapter. Otherwise it may seem uneven, or encourage people to skip through the book and possibly spoil themselves.

No offence but that would be pointless, illustrations should be a part of the story not an appendix.

As an illustrator I intend to have illustrations in all my books, probably for every chapter.

Using illustration can allow me to reduce the amount of descriptive text used for the more unusual aspects of my worlds. by combining the images with the text they can work together to make a more complex scene without resorting to over descriptive text. It goes without saying of course that you should not try to use illustration as a replacement for description (unless its a graphic novel).