by the characters’ wants and desires.”
Our lovely Marissa is the best 1st grade teacher on the planet. Seriously, she spends like 60 hours a week on top of her class time coming up with sizzling lesson plans and activities to get her kids psyched about learning. So just for kicks (and to give me an excuse to see her more often) I started taking my Sheltie, Auggie, into the classroom once a week to help her teach writing. Auggie’s a registered therapy dog, and I’ve done writing and literacy programs in the classroom before, so I thought it would work out well.
First session, Auggie and I acted out a basic story about Auggie the lazy sheepdog, who fell asleep on the job, and the naughty black sheep who decided to teach him a lesson by hiding. The story showed off the list of various tricks in Auggie’s repertoire: sleep, eat (his favorite), fetch a newspaper, be lazy, get the sheep, jump through hoops, crawl under hoops, go through the tunnel, weave around obstacles, beg, pray, roll over, dead dog, find the lost sheep, jump for joy, etc. Needless to say, the kids loved it.
Now it wasn’t all fun and games. In the course of that first story, the kids learned a few new tricks, too. By the time class ended, they could tell me about the story’s:
- Protagonist/hero
- Antagonist/villain
- Goals
- Plot
- Setting
The kids were proud of their new “big” words, and of course we went over them and over them the next few sessions. We tried to pick out the protagonists, antagonists, and story structures in stories we read together, and in stories they had read at home.
Next step? Write a story together, of course. So Marissa and I came up with a basic story framework:
Once upon a time there was a ________________________________who lived
__________________________________ with ________________________
and wanted to __________________. But _____________________________
wanted ________________________________________________________.
So ___________________________________________________________.
But then _______________________________________________________.
And that made __________________________________________________.
So ___________________________________________________________.
But then _______________________________________________________.
And that made __________________________________________________.
So ___________________________________________________________.
But then _______________________________________________________.
And finally _____________________________________________________.
And they lived happily ever after.
The kids have since written several stories by combining this story structure and Auggie’s list of tricks. There was one about Monsieur Bob stealing Mademoiselle Fifi and running through the streets of Paris with Auggie chasing after them to get her back. Then there was the one about Auggie the sea turtle and the evil octopus who stole the treasure and hid it in the tunnel on the dark side of Jelly Fish City. And then…. Well, you get the idea.
My point (and yes, I actually have one) is that watching the kids take such pleasure in telling a simple story reminded me that all stories are essentially simple. The plot worksheet I use pretty much starts with this same structure and complicates it until I have a full-length novel. But telling the story, almost any story, is as simple as looking an antag and a protag each doing things to advance their own goals, with the other reacting and each of them making things worse for the other. After that, the rest all falls into place more easily.
Anyway, that’s my theory du jour. I think it all starts with what the protag and the antag want deep down as well as on the surface. What do they say they want? And what do they really need?
What do you think? Is that where your stories start? And if not here, then where?
Oh, and the winner of Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares from last week is:
