When pressed for this I tend to take a particular story, and try to strip it down into it’s abstract form—something like—protagonist and companion undergo journey, face 3 opposing characters, arrive at destination and have life lessons confirmed. Then redecorate it with different particulars from other stories—switch males for females, dinosaurs for insects etc. Often this process stimulates my own creativity and i end up with something fairly new, but it guarantees an acceptable bedtime story. Know your audience though. A three year old child mainly wants amusing images. Mild scatology tends to go down a treat as well.
Sounds like something I occasionally do, or try to do (mostly because my kid asks for stories with dinosaurs); do you have a handy list of abstract stripped-down stories by any chance ? (or do you use an existing one like the Seven Basic Plots?) Do you have a usable list of life lessons?
(I’m slowly collecting and organizing material like this, it’s something I find pretty interesting, not only for telling stories to my kid …)
Nope, I generally just plagiarize the last film or piece of fiction I’ve read. Sooner or later I’ll probably end up traumatizing a niece because the last film I saw was by Lars Von Trier. As for life lessons, the typical stuff you teach children of that age group—younger kids need to learn empathy, self control etc. Older ones can be introduced to basic social commentary—sometimes people have to be mean to be nice, sometimes people get sick and go away, but this is nobodies fault, sometimes your imagination is unreliable etc.
When pressed for this I tend to take a particular story, and try to strip it down into it’s abstract form—something like—protagonist and companion undergo journey, face 3 opposing characters, arrive at destination and have life lessons confirmed. Then redecorate it with different particulars from other stories—switch males for females, dinosaurs for insects etc. Often this process stimulates my own creativity and i end up with something fairly new, but it guarantees an acceptable bedtime story. Know your audience though. A three year old child mainly wants amusing images. Mild scatology tends to go down a treat as well.
Sounds like something I occasionally do, or try to do (mostly because my kid asks for stories with dinosaurs); do you have a handy list of abstract stripped-down stories by any chance ? (or do you use an existing one like the Seven Basic Plots?) Do you have a usable list of life lessons?
(I’m slowly collecting and organizing material like this, it’s something I find pretty interesting, not only for telling stories to my kid …)
Nope, I generally just plagiarize the last film or piece of fiction I’ve read. Sooner or later I’ll probably end up traumatizing a niece because the last film I saw was by Lars Von Trier. As for life lessons, the typical stuff you teach children of that age group—younger kids need to learn empathy, self control etc. Older ones can be introduced to basic social commentary—sometimes people have to be mean to be nice, sometimes people get sick and go away, but this is nobodies fault, sometimes your imagination is unreliable etc.