When it comes to writing a story, perhaps the trickiest thing is having a clear idea of what to write. Dividing an idea into different parts and giving it shape until we are able to build the work can be quite laborious if we are not clear on which story we want to tell.
Here are 10 proposals that we offer to help you to write a story.
1. Look for an original story
No one will want to read a story that sounds exactly like all the others. Starting from this premise, you have infinite combinations of features at your disposal to create original ideas for building your character, your plot and scenarios. Children’s fiction has a thousand possibilities at its disposal, considering that children will never wonder if a story is possible or not. They will be looking for a fun story, with a nice ending where the characters end up achieving their goal.
Show all your enthusiasm in telling your story, the little ones will notice the difference. We anticipate that reading other people’s stories for inspiration is not the right solution. you would only end up developing a modified copy of the original!
2. Start by developing the protagonist
Another idea to spur your imagination may be to start by creating the main character. Think of an attractive character for children, who acts as a pivot for the development of the plot (a group of friends who will have an adventure, a shy girl who wants to make friends in school, etc.)
Then help yourself by asking and answering key questions such as “What is his goal?”, “Who will accompany him to reach it?” “What obstacles will he encounter along his path?”
As you can see, these are just two examples from which you can start to give free rein to your imagination and complete the story. If you are lucky enough to have children around you, remember that they can give you valuable suggestions. Ask them which character they would like to appear in the story and shape it. They will appreciate you and will also be thrilled with the story since it will be about the character of their choice!
3. Start by inventing a scenario
What if, instead of thinking about the character, we started from the scenario? An alternative idea is to start from the place in which to set our story. An enchanted castle, a village in the woods, a city at the bottom of the sea … And from there the possibilities for articulating our history are endless. (There is a curse to break, there is a need to help save someone …)
4. Remember: animals always work
A huge number of famous stories have had similar origins. Children love animals, which is why there are hundreds of fairy tales with animals as protagonists (dogs, cats, crocodiles, spiders). The list is endless, as are the possibilities! To enrich our idea we can use the qualities of each animal by combining them with human characteristics, to solve a problem in history. You can also set everything in unusual realities for the genre of subjects. Why not talk about a little beaver who befriends a raccoon and together try to stop the deforestation of their forest?
5. Think of phrases that suggest the beginning of the story
It may happen that you are not very clear about the characters or the general settings of your story. For this reason, an alternative idea could be to start with phrases that suggest the idea of the story.
For example: “the beaver had to save the forest”; “in that alley, all the children who entered it ended up disappearing”; etc …
The idea is to start from simple sentences to get ideas and build our story. There are thousands of hints on the internet too, so if you are going through the classic “writer’s block”, you can look for inspiration there too!
6. Think about the moral you want to convey
Stories for children always have an educational purpose, therefore, it may also be useful to start from the message you want to convey. From this you could write your story and associate it with characters that you consider suitable to interpret the role and situations. For example, if you want to write a book to promote friendship, it may be a good idea to use two dogs as protagonists, relying on the association with loyalty that we always have in mind.
It’s all there, it’s up to you to decide now what teaching you want to give to your little readers.
7. Reformulate a traditional tale
This idea is linked to the first section. As we said, it is not a bad solution to retrieve traditional stories and give them a 180 ° turn. Children will be able to quickly recognize characters they already know, grabbing their attention will be relatively easy. What happened to the Seven Dwarfs once Snow White left their home?
We can also change the characters of the story and the plot to create new adventures. What if Little Red Riding Hood was a kid and had to bring the tools to his grandfather in the forest, full of dangers and bandits? What if the Pied Piper of Hamelin, instead of taking away the rats, was kicked out of town for playing too much the flute? With the use of your imagination, you will surely find new ideas with which to write the perfect story.
8. Do a “lottery” of story ideas
What if you have a lot of ideas and don’t know which one to choose? In this case, one of the options available to you is to write all the ideas that arise on a small piece of paper, put them in an urn and draw (or have someone else draw) one at random. And it’s done! you have chosen your idea from which to start to develop your story.
With this system, in addition to choosing once and for all the starting point of your story, you can also discard ideas that were not really useful, but that you were not sure to delete permanently.
9. Transform a personal story
Another option you have for writing stories is to base yourself on something that happened to you, an acquaintance, a family member and turn it into a story. A summer story, the memory of a trip or the story of your day. Surely you have a story that deserves to be told and that can be translated into a story.
10. Fears can be excellent allies
Together with what has been said in section 6, remember that the second purpose of fairy tales has always been to help children overcome their fears. For this reason, the last idea we propose is precisely to exploit their most common fears and build your story from there. Fear of the dark, the typical monster inside the wardrobe or under the bed…
Starting from this we can create a story in which the characters end up triumphing over them, giving readers the hoped-for “happy ending”. As a final tip, always make sure you write the story by personalizing it to the audience you’re targeting. Writing for a 5-year-old is completely different than writing for a 10-year-old.