Christmas is coming and the geese are getting fat. And if you come back next week, you’ll find the first of three Christmas-time Blogs. Meantime, the last of this Making Connections series is about making up new stories – and, of course, it includes some keys.
Some keys to making up new stories
Some people blanch at the idea of making up new stories. Sor others, it’s what storytelling is all about. I personally cannot imagine spontaneously making up a new story in front of an audience – not unless it’s an audience of children and I get them to help me create a story between us. Yet I’m tremendously happy to sit at home and make up a story for telling in response to some special request for a story, maybe about a particular place or for some special occasion. And I’m very prepared and delighted to make up a story in writing, be it a children’s novel or a short piece of adult fiction. Funny, isn’t it, this business of what we can and cannot do?
Fortunately, there are some simple techniques and patterns to help us with making up stories on the spot and enabling others to do so. These include the wide variety of storytelling games which will make good subjects for future Blogs. (more…)
Making up stories is something many people are nervous of doing. Yet, as I hope my blogs over the last few weeks have demonstrated, there are lots of painless ways to practise. And anyway, what does it matter if your story isn’t the best that’s ever been created? The fun lies in the doing. And the doing teaches you an awful lot about the way stories work. 