Posted on by Stephanie McGann

Exercise for a Storyteller #7: Start a Writing Club

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien belonged to many different storytelling groups throughout their lives, most famously overlapping in their membership of the Inklings. Considering they are two of the best-selling and most beloved authors of modern times, it stands to reason that the aspiring storyteller might want to replicate their group in some way.

Let’s consider the benefits of having a storytelling group and then see how it could be adapted for children.

Perhaps most obviously from the sheer standpoint of writing, the Inklings provided its members with instant feedback on their stories, and not just from anybody either. They got it from the brightest literary minds of their day, people whose opinions they greatly valued. Better still, they got to read their stories aloud.

(If you’ve ever written a story, then you know that reading it aloud to another is a lot more enjoyable and satisfying than waiting for someone to read it on his own and report back to you.)

It’s easy to imagine Tolkien reading his newest chapter of The Lord of the Rings and looking up periodically to note the expression and posture of Lewis, and Lewis doing the same when it was his turn to read. That kind of unspoken feedback is invaluable. After all, a good story is meant to move the reader, and there are many visible signs that a reader can observe in the moment.

According to Tolkien’s letters, Lewis and other members of the Inklings were moved to tears at certain points in his readings. Now, seeing that kind of reaction is a lot more compelling than hearing about it later on, no matter how sincere the report.

Of course, their meetings brought criticism as well. Tolkien disliked Lewis’s style of writing, often finding it wanting in beauty, and sometimes thought his stories needed more threading together. And Lewis had a number of suggestions for Tolkien, which seem to have been mostly rejected. Nevertheless, both men reflected on the thoughts of the other, taking from it what they would.

Although feedback was a highly beneficial outcome of their meetings, it was hardly the heart of why they got together. Rather, they met as friends with a common desire to know and love Truth, albeit through the lens of story.

Their meetings often lasted far past the final pages of whatever manuscript was being read. Lewis, Tolkien, and the other members would eat and drink and talk about all manner of other things, especially religion. In fact, Lewis credits these exchanges as leading him back to Christianity. Without that conversion, there would have been no Chronicles of Narnia, no Mere Christianity, no Great Divorce. He would have probably been a great writer still, as he had already established himself as such, but a Christian apologist? Certainly not in the same way, if at all.

So what does all this mean for the aspiring storyteller?

Although I think it goes without saying that getting feedback on your stories is always beneficial, the experience of the Inklings suggests that it should be the secondary goal of a writing club, the first goal being fostering friendship.

In my years of teaching, I have always made writing stories a priority in my classroom. But it wasn’t until last year that I started a writing club for students. We proudly called ourselves the Inklings in the spirit of Lewis and Tolkien. (I wanted to call it the Jinklings for “Junior Inklings,” but my students thought that sounded cheesey and preferred the original name.)

Partly, it took me so long to set up a storytelling club because of all the other things that needed to be done as a teacher. But in truth, the group would have formed without me. I had a unique body of students, eager to become true storytellers. The moment I let the idea slip in class, the kids jumped on it.

I tried to get away with one meeting a week, and they begged for two. I tried to limit the readings to recess, and they brought their lunches. So I brought mine, too.

We enjoyed countless wonderful stories together. But more importantly, we had a great time. My students were generally all friends in the first place, but their bonds grew stronger. It was incredible to watch them share their stories and grow as writers, but it was the growth in their ability to engage one another in a literary way that most impressed me.

Therein lies the most important lesson for an aspiring storyteller. No matter how polished your grammar and syntax, how gripping your plot, or how believable your characters, it’s the heart of the writer and how it connects to the heart of the reader that is the mark of a true storyteller.

Having a storyteller club can bring that relationship to life. I had about a dozen students in my club, but you only need one other person. It can be a mom, a dad, a brother, a sister, a friend, a classmate, or a teacher. (Of course, parental discretion is helpful here.) Chances are someone will be happy to listen if you only ask.

As a final note, I want to thank my students who joined me last year. They also listened to my stories from time to time, and that was incredibly special!

First Image Credit: The Red School House by Winslow Homer, 1873, courtesy of the National Gallery of Art., Washington, D.C.

Second Image Credit: School Time by Winslow Homer, c. 1874, courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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Exercise for a Storyteller #6: Use a Picture Prompt

When I was reading Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, I was astonished to learn the extent of Tolkien’s artistic side. He loved drawing from the time he was a young boy and continued to develop the craft into his adulthood, illustrating his own pictures for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Not only did he enjoy creating art, but he was also greatly inspired by it.  

Among Tolkien’s possessions was a carefully preserved postcard reproduction of Josef Madlener’s Der Berggeist (translated as The Mountain Spirit), which shows an old man with a white beard and wide-brimmed hat sitting on a rock in the wooded mountains. On the cover in which he kept it was written, “Origin of Gandalf.”

Of course, Gandalf is not simply the man in the picture. He is Gandalf the Grey. He is the leader of the Fellowship of the Ring. He is Mithrandir. He is the Balrog Conqueror. He is the White Rider. He is the embodiment of Goodness, Beauty, and Truth—a hero from time immemorial.

No one but Tolkien could have looked at Der Berggeist and imagined all that. Nevertheless, we have to wonder: Would Tolkien have created Gandalf the way he did without that picture?

Probably not.

And so the old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” may actually come up short with Tolkien. (The combined word count of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is close to 700,000, and Gandalf is one of the most central characters in those tales.)

In a similar fashion, I frequently use pictures as story prompts with my students. There are many great resources like The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg, which are specially designed as story prompts, but beautiful works of art can be used just as easily. I tend to choose ones that go along with something my class reads in History, Literature, or Religion.

When we read about the fire in Rome, I project this painting:

When we read Little Red Riding Hood, I project this painting:

When we imagine what Christ’s hidden life was like, I project this painting:

In every case, I have students look at the painting on their own for a period of time. Then, I guide a discussion on their observations. We consider the artistic elements of the painting, focusing on things like form, color, contrast, tone, light source, focal points, and small details.

Once we have seen the painting, then we consider its story elements. I ask the students what the artist may have been trying to say to us, the viewers. Inevitably, they have many different ideas, each colored by their own personal response to the picture.

Finally, students are ready to write their own stories, following the one scene in one sitting rule. What they come up with tends to be quite different from one student to the next, but the trace of the original picture remains in some form, although drawn anew with fresh lines.

One striking aspect of this kind of storytelling exercise is that it compels students to think in terms of visual imagery. Because they are immersed in the picture, they make an extra effort to draw it in their words.

And who’s to say how many words a picture will be worth to the aspiring storyteller?

I ran into a former student recently. No longer a pre-teen, she was headed to college and brimming with enthusiasm. She told me that she was still writing a story based on one of the pictures we had used as a prompt in seventh grade. That was one of the best things I’ve ever heard from a student.

To think that one picture stirred all that storytelling!

First Image Credit: Der Berggeist by Josef Madlener, c. 1925-2930

Second Image Credit: Nero’s Torches by Henry Siemiradzki, 1882

Third Image Credit: Little Red Riding Hood by Jessie Willcox Smith, 1911

Fourth Image Credit: Shadow of Death by William Holman Hunt, 1873

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Exercise for a Storyteller #5: Play with an Archetype

Understanding the role of archetypes in stories is essential for an aspiring storyteller. Not to be confused with stereotypes, an archetype is a literary term that refers to a “first type” or “fundamental type” of character or other story element. “Damsels in distress” and “knights in shining armor” are typical examples of archetypes found in the legend of King Arthur, which subsequent stories have come to replicate in various forms.

For example, C.S. Lewis has many knights in shining armor in his Chronicles of Narnia, albeit with his own distinct twists. Peter is a perfect example of this. Though a young boy and living in the mid-twentieth century, he is very much a knight, ready and willing to make personal sacrifices to save others. As for damsels in distress, Susan is the only one of his Narnia characters who fits this type, albeit in a spiritual rather than a literal way.

Tolkien also uses many archetypes from King Arthur in his telling of The Lord of the Rings. His truest knight in shining armor is Aragorn, although his entire fellowship—from Frodo to Gimli—could rightly fall into this type. Like Lewis, Tolkien’s a little short on damsels in distress, but he makes ample use of another of my favorite archetypes from King Arthur: the “hero’s dilemma.”

This one refers to when a hero must choose between two opposed, but seemingly equally worthy tasks. For example, should one of Arthur’s knights save a damsel in distress from certain death or catch a villain bound to kill untold numbers? Of course, he would love to do both, but he can’t—that’s the dilemma. 

In The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn faces a hero’s dilemma when he must decide whether to follow after Frodo and Sam and help them destroy the Ring, or try to rescue Merry and Pippin from their Orc captors. The heaviness of this decision weighs on the reader as much as it does on the characters.

(Luckily, for Middle Earth, helping Merry and Pippin in the short term ultimately helps everyone in the long term!)

While there are considerably more than these three archetypes, I find them to be the most useful starting places for my students. No matter what we’re reading, I can ask them a question like, “Is there a knight in shining armor in this story?”

Chances are, if the story is medieval, the answer will be yes. But if the story is more ancient, say a Greek myth or an Aesop fable, then the answer is a lot more nuanced. The same is true with a more modern story.

Take Huck Finn, for example. Is he a knight in shining armor? Though his ragged clothes would suggest otherwise, he does have a lot of the necessary characteristics. After all, he is trying to “rescue” Jim from slavery. Then again, maybe he’s a type of damsel in distress since Jim is rescuing him, too.

The point of asking whether Huck, or any character, is a knight in shining armor is not so much to force him into a box. Rather, it’s to show a child how archetypes define all characters in some way. Once a child understands that archetypes are part of a longstanding pattern in stories, then he can begin to adapt the pattern to his liking.

Here is an example of how I use these archetypes for storytelling in my classroom.

First, I have my students choose one of our two main character archetypes—a knight in shining armor or a damsel in distress—and create a new character based on it. Perhaps the new character will fit the original type closely (think Batman or Lad, a Dog). Or perhaps the new character will completely defy it (think Shrek or Princess Fiona). Either way is fine. As part of that process, I also have them interview their character as described in this previous post.

Once the new character is more or less imagined, I have my students create an archetypical “hero’s dilemma” that suits the character. The magnitude of that dilemma could be as serious as saving a life or as trivial as picking out shoes for prom. Again, it’s totally up to them.

Last of all, I have my students write the scene of their dilemma through the point when their character makes his or her choice. We always share as many stories aloud as possible, and this kind of story is a particularly fun one to listen to as a class. Because it contains a hero’s dilemma, we like voting on whether the hero made the right choice or not. Inevitably, there is a lot of disagreement among us, and that’s a sign that the dilemma was appropriately compelling.

Although it’s unlikely that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien ever sat down with a teacher and completed an exercise like this, it seems fairly obvious that they were thinking in these terms when they wrote their great stories. No matter the precise method, the aspiring storyteller will benefit tremendously from writing with archetypes.

And it’s fun and easy, too. After all, there’s no need to re-invent the archetype—just play around with it.  

First Image Credit: The Fight in the Queen’s Ante-chamber by Walter Crane, 1911

Second Image Credit: Huckleberry Finn and Jim on Their Raft by E.W. Kemble, 1884

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Exercise for a Storyteller #4: Re-invent History

There are many reasons history is recorded beyond simply keeping the record. Though we can’t go into all of them here, one touches directly upon a storyteller: certain people and events make their way into the historical record because they captured the hearts and minds of their contemporaries. Perhaps their story was particularly heroic or tragic. Perhaps it inspired something great or portended something catastrophic. Whatever the answer, there is a lot of material there for a storyteller to play around with.

As a teacher of medieval history, I have frequently been struck by the ways in which C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien wove some of that period’s key characters and events into their stories.

In The Chronicles of Narnia, Caspian the Conqueror is strangely reminiscent of the real-life William the Conqueror of England. Boromir’s death in The Lord of the Rings feels every bit as beautiful and tragic as the death of Roland, the legendary nephew of Charlemagne who also famously carried a horn with him into his battles. Of course, I have no idea if Lewis or Tolkien intentionally used these giants of medieval history in their stories, but the similarities are there nonetheless.

I frequently have my students write stories in connection to our history lessons. Those lessons combine storytelling lectures and primary source readings. Although I like to think that my lectures are extremely interesting, it’s the primary source documents that really get everyone’s attention.

Now, you may be thinking primary source documents sound far too difficult for a child. After all, most of us didn’t encounter them in a serious fashion until we got to college. But actually, with a little guidance from a teacher, kids of all ages can purposefully and effectively make use of such resources. Of course, the teacher needs to be the ultimate judge of how much to share with a child based on his maturity and stage of development. For example, it may make sense to focus on a single, significant sentence with a kindergartner, but an eighth grader can easily handle an entire document.  

As opposed to traditional textbooks, primary source documents put us directly in contact with the people we are studying because they were written by the people of the time. Better still, they tend to be a little “raw” and full of colorful details and authentic language. It’s this second quality that makes them so rich for a child storyteller.

Here is an example from my classroom of how we write stories from history:

When we learn about the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket, I don’t just tell the story of how King Henry II Plantagenet indirectly called for his death in a fit of rage and how four of his knights complied with his wish. We also read the record of it by Gervase of Canterbury, a monk who knew St. Thomas.

Gervase gives a gripping account of how the king’s men, whom he calls “butchers,” arrived at Canterbury and came upon St. Thomas as he was preparing for Mass. He describes their “hatchets,” “axes,” “two-edged glaives,” and “swords.” He tells how St. Thomas commanded them to “Depart, hence!” but that the knights replied with “Strike! Strike!” St. Thomas bravely stood his ground as the knights “added wound to wound” and eventually “dashed out his brains.”

Reading Gervase’s account is more like reading a crime fiction novel than what most students usually think of as history. By the end of it, the murder of St. Thomas Becket is more than an abstraction from the past; it’s a real-life event that they can bear witness to. The students are then ready to reinvent the scene of his death through their own storytelling. Some of my students imagine they are St. Thomas. Others become an altar boy or some other hidden onlooker. Some even assume the persona of one of the henchmen. No matter the perspective, writing from the primary source document makes for a riveting story.

Over the years, some of the themes from St. Thomas Becket’s murder have popped up in other stories by my students. That’s because his story has become part of their “cauldron of story,” as Tolkien would call it. I think this very same thing must have happened with Tolkien and Lewis. They may not have been intentionally writing from history, but they had a lot of material in their cauldron to sample in their stories.

And just imagine all the new stories a child will be able to dish up when his own cauldron begins to simmer with tidbits from history!

Image Credit: Thomas Becket by John Carter, 1 July 1786, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London

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Exercise for a Storyteller #3: Interview the Main Character

So far in this series of storytelling exercises, we’ve focused on ways to develop compelling plots. Now it’s time to think about the characters themselves. After all, even the most fascinating plot will fall flat if its characters are dull and one-dimensional.

To begin, let’s consider what character development means. We’ll keep it simple and say that it’s the craft through which a writer makes a character come to life. The better the character development, the easier it is for a reader to know a character inside and out. That means being able to picture what a character looks like and being able to imagine what he’s thinking at any given moment in a story. In other words, the character is more than his looks or his role in the story. He is the total sum of his words and actions, hopes and fears, and virtues and vices.

Many writers let those things develop organically in the course of writing a story, meaning they “discover” who their characters are as the story unfolds. The problem for a child, though, is that process requires a fair amount of revision, not to mention a serious time commitment.

To help my students really know their characters from the start, I like having them “interview” their main characters before writing a story. For example, when we finish reading Beowulf, students often write their own spin-offs. But first, I have them interview their main character. Many of them choose to interview Beowulf or one of the other minor heroes like Hrothgar or Wiglaf, but others choose Grendel or Grendel’s Mother or the Fire Dragon. Some even choose lesser characters like Unferth or Brecca or Aeschere.

I usually give my students a few standard questions and have them write the interview out in a formal fashion in their journals. They may answer the questions based on what the character seems like in the original story, or they may imagine the character in a new light. Here is a list of sample questions I like to use.

State your full name and age.

Tell me about your family.

What are your hobbies?

What is your biggest hope?

What is your biggest secret?

What is your biggest fear?

What is your best virtue?

What is your worst vice?

The list of questions could go on and on, but a short sample is plenty to get a child started. Then, I ask my students to come up with a few original questions, which allows them to expand on a side of the character they really want to develop.

The results of this are highly entertaining, and we spend ample time sharing our interviews with each other. I once had a student interview Grendel’s Mother and find out that she had a soft spot for “Baby Mine” from Dumbo. (The Grendel family descends from Cain and hates music, which made this twist very intriguing.) Another time, a student “discovered” that Hrothgar slept with a nightlight. (He is the king whom Beowulf saves from Grendel and Grendel’s Mother.) And who knew that Wiglaf’s greatest treasure was a fingernail clipping from the arm Beowulf tore off Grendel in their death match? (That was a comical, yet fitting treasure for a warrior who revered Beowulf as the greatest of all warriors.)

In true journalistic form, my students imagine they are getting the scoop on characters, and they are in a sense. All the while, they are learning to develop strong, believable characters for their stories. Whether they are working from an existing story or writing a completely original one, interviewing main characters is a great way to get started. As the character takes shape, the storyline itself will come alive more fully.

Image Credit: Illustration in Stories of Beowulf by H. E. Marshall. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1908.

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Exercise for a Storyteller #2: Write a Sequel or a Prequel

Alas! Some stories do not end quite how we would like them to. One of the starkest examples of this in my classroom is Hans Christian Andersen’s The Mermaid. Unlike in the Disney version, his little mermaid does not live happily ever after with the prince. She dies. Or rather, she gets turned into seafoam.

Is being seafoam any better than death? my students inevitably wonder.

Well, that really depends on what being seafoam means in the world of the story. If it’s just another form of death, then it really makes no difference in the end. If, as is the case in the story, it opens the door to some kind of new life for the little mermaid, then being seafoam is clearly much better than death.

The catch, though, is that Hans Christian Andersen never tells us exactly what the little mermaid’s new, foamy life will consist of. He leaves that for us to imagine.

That’s where the fun part comes in for the aspiring storyteller!

With a little prompting, my students come up with beautiful sequels, usually having the little mermaid gain an immortal soul and thereby live the kind of happily ever after that Hans Christian Andersen wanted his readers to aspire toward.

A sequel need not pick up from the end of a story either. If there’s something unanswered in the middle of the story, a child could run with that. Just think about all the potential storylines from The Snow Queen, another of my favorites by Hans Christian Andersen. Each of little Gerda’s adventures in her quest to save Kay includes fantastic characters and subplots that could be used to create whole new stories. The most popular of those characters with my students is always the robber girl, and I’ve gotten to enjoy many wild stories about her over the years.

Finally, just as some stories make us wonder what happens next, others make us wonder what happened before. Stories that begin in a fallen state are perfect for this. Some of my favorites for a prequel are Jack and the Beanstalk by Joseph Jacobs, Hansel and Gretel by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde. In each of these stories, tragedy is a premise. Jack’s dad is gone. What happened to him? Hansel and Gretel’s mother is dead. What happened to her? The giant is mean and selfish. What made him be like that?

The child who tries to answer one of those questions will have the makings of a whole new story without having to come up with everything from scratch. In the process, she will gain more insight into the original story as well. It’s a win-win for a teacher and a beautiful writing exercise for a child. 

In order to write a sequel or a prequel, I recommend a child start with fairy tales, preferably an early version by one of the greats like Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, or Oscar Wilde. (See some of my favorites here). Once she has read it, have her narrate the story orally to ensure she has the details down and to help her establish her storyteller voice. The next step is to think through or talk through what might have preceded the story or followed after it. As soon as she has an exciting thread to work with, she should begin writing her story, following the one scene in one sitting rule.

Sequels and prequels can be written for all genres of stories, and I recommend a child experiment with lots of them. Nonetheless, there is something particularly magical about fairy tales that makes them the perfect starting point for a child. Besides understanding a few basic fairy tale conventions, there is no expectation for a child to be an expert on anything in particular. All she needs is her imagination!

First Image Credit: The Little Mermaid by Ivan Bilbin (1937)

Second Image Credit: The Selfish Giant by Walter Crane (1888)

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Exercise for a Storyteller #1: Rewrite a Fairy Tale 

Fairy Tales are some of the “daintiest bits” in the “cauldron of story” that J.R.R. Tolkien described in his essay, “On Fairy Stories.” They tend to be more digestible in one sitting than many other genres of story, but they are no less meaty. For that reason, children can do all sorts of fun things with them.  

My students like making small twists to the storyline, such as reimagining a character or the setting or changing a key decision or the narrative perspective. Imagine what would happen if Little Red Riding Hood was a princess or the bird in Hansel and Gretel was actually the children’s mother. What if Jack’s beanstalk grew into the earth instead of out of it? What kind of story might unfold if the Miller confessed that he was lying about his daughter being able to spin straw into gold or if the Huntsman had actually tried to kill Snow White instead of taking mercy on her? How different would the story of the three little pigs be from the perspective of the wolf?  

The answer to each of these questions fundamentally alters the premise of each story. Ask a child one of them and presto! He has a brand-new storyline to work with. That’s so much easier (and usually a lot more fun) than coming up with everything from scratch.    

I recommend a child read an early version of any fairy tale he’s interested in, such as one by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, or Oscar Wilde. (Take a look at some of my favorites here.) Then, have him retell the story in its original form out-loud, preferably to an audience, to warm-up his storyteller voice and ensure he has a basic understanding of the storyline. Once he does, the child should start thinking of twists. Finally, he should begin writing when he finds a twist that’s exciting.  

Just as I said in the introduction to this series, rewriting the story in its entirety is not at all necessary either. The rule of thumb I use with my students is one scene in one sitting. At first, many of them race through their scene. Some, intent on their story, fly through scene after scene. Others, jot down a few sentences and call it finis long before the bell rings. No matter the extreme, both scenes end up undeveloped in many ways. The child who goes slowly through his scene, carefully setting the tone, describing the setting, developing the characters’ feelings, thoughts, words, and actions ends up with the most gripping scene, the scene that everybody celebrates when it’s time to share.  

So remember, a child should go slow and have fun with the scene. That will make him all the more likely to pick up the story on another day.  

Image Credit: A Child’s Book of Stories by Penrhyn W. Coussens, illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith. New York: Duffield and Company, 1911. 

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Inkling the Story: A Series of Classical Writing Exercises

When a child retires the toys of his imaginary world, as C.S. Lewis and his brother Warren did with their imaginary world of Boxen, and when he has finished drawing pictures that go along with it, as J.R.R. Tolkien did with the world of Middle Earth, it is time to take out a piece of paper and a pencil. Now, instead of playing with toys and crayons, the child will play with words.  

The most straightforward approach a child could take is to write one of the stories he’s come up with from beginning to end. While that may be straightforward, it’s not at all simple—even for a developed writer. After having imagined so much, getting all of it down on paper is really hard. It’s not that the child forgets what he wants to say; it’s that it takes so very long to write it all out. Put differently, what took minutes to tell might take hours to write. And so the child may skimp on imagery, shorten scenes, cut characters, or simply give up altogether.    

Writing a story is a weighty undertaking! 

With that in mind, I am going to share some of my favorite storytelling exercises that are more limited in scope and possible to finish in one sitting. These are not shortcuts to writing a whole story. Rather, they are ways in which a child might learn the art of writing stories in small chunks over a prolonged period of time. Here is the list of exercises.  

Rewrite a Fairytale 

Write a Sequel or a Prequel

Interview a Main Character

Re-invent History

Play with an Archetype

Use a Picture Prompt

Start a Writing Club 

The rule of thumb I use with my students is one scene per sitting, meaning a child should write one scene, and one scene only, but with as much development as possible. That being the case, a full story could unfold over many days. But even if the exercise only ever produces a single scene, it is still well worthwhile for the aspiring storyteller because it affords ample space to develop his writing style and voice.  

I’ll post each exercise over the coming days, and this introduction will serve as the table of contents. Whether you are a child aspiring to become a storyteller or a parent or teacher guiding a child along the way, this series is for you. And remember, it’s not how much you write but how beautifully.  

Image Credit: The Little Student by Julian Alden Weir (1890)

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The Third Habit of a Storyteller: Start with a Picture

Over and over again in his writings about The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis stated that the ideas for his series started with pictures in his head. Here is one example from Of Other Worlds: “At first they were not a story, just pictures. The Lion [, the Witch, and the Wardrobe] all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood.This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: ‘Let’s try to make a story about it.’ At first I had very little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it.”

Just as an artist holds an image in his mind when his pencil glides across his paper the first time, a storyteller must hold an image in his mind in order for his words to pour out.

In Lewis’s case, his picture had to sit and marinate a long while before it turned into something more, something with additional characters and a landscape and a storyline. No doubt, all that time he was filling up more and more on the “cauldron of story” J.R.R. Tolkien identified and adding to his picture on some deeper level. From this, we learn that the third habit of the storyteller is drawing. Without a picture, a storyteller can hardly have anything to tell.

Most children have at least a vague picture in mind when they begin telling a story, and that usually begins with a character. For example, children usually know to share character details like age, height, hair color, and eye color. That’s a good start, but it’s more of a rough outline than an actual sketch. Start talking about the shape of his frame, the look in his eyes, and the flow of his hair, and the picture will begin to come to life.

One way to help this process along is for a child to draw an actual picture of his character. Sure, the picture might not be museum worthy, but that’s okay. It’s the imagining that goes along with the drawing that matters.

“That’s not right,” the child might say over and over again as he draws his character on paper. And that’s a good thing. With each misplaced stroke of the pencil, he is forming a more perfect picture of his character in his mind. Ultimately, the actual picture is merely a creative vehicle for the imaginary one, the one that will be put into words.

The same should be done with the setting of the story. Here it’s helpful to think of J.R.R. Tolkien and the way he painted the landscape of Middle Earth throughout The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. With the help of his son, Tolkien drew countless maps of Middle Earth. This not only helped him visualize the world of his story, but it helped him develop the story itself. By his own account, his maps were an integral part of his storytelling process. In a letter to his publisher, he stated, “one cannot make a map for the narrative, but must first make a map and make the narrative agree.”

The child storyteller would do well to follow this example and draw his own maps. Again, it doesn’t have to be pretty; it just needs to be well-ordered, logically spaced, and labeled so that the child can visualize the spatial dimensions and terrain of the world he has imagined. From there, he will be able to picture its inhabitants and their comings and goings (aka the story itself) more perfectly.

Much like Boxening the story, starting with a picture has very little to do with writing at first, but it makes all the difference when a child eventually feels moved to put his story into words. The more developed the picture, the better the story.

We’ll take up the writing of stories in the next series. But rest assured, these three habits: filling up on the cauldron, Boxening the story, and starting with a picture will make the writing part of storytelling more beautiful and more fun.

Image Credit: Enfant Dessinant (Child Drawing) by Félix-Hilaire Buhot (1972)

Posted on by Stephanie McGann

The Second Habit of a Storyteller: Boxen the Story

When C.S. Lewis was a child, he and his brother, Warren, created imaginary worlds. His was called Animal Land, and Warrren’s was called India. Eventually, they combined their worlds into one big one called Boxen. They used toys to play out the life there and must have spent countless hours “building” its elaborate geography, history, personalities, and dramas. Not surprisingly, Boxen also became the setting of countless stories that Lewis wrote from approximately the ages of six to fifteen.   

At some point, the Lewis brothers stopped playing their game and stored their Boxen toys in a trunk in their father’s attic. Then when their father died and C.S. Lewis had the task of selling the family estate, he had to decide what to do with the trunk. He wrote Warren on January 20, 1930, and said, “The toys in the trunk are quite plainly corpses. We will resolve them into their elements, as nature will do to us.” A short time later on the afternoon of February 23, the brothers buried the trunk in the garden unopened, feeling that a final look at the toys would hardly measure up to their memories.

Clearly, the world of Boxen was meaningful. (After all, it’s not every day you hear about two grown men getting together to bury old toys.) We will never know all that Boxen symbolized to the Lewis brothers, but we do know that it was a world unto itself, deserving (in their eyes) a fate in keeping with the rest of humanity.

The building of such worlds is at the heart of storytelling and reveals the second habit of a storyteller. Namely, a storyteller plays with stories to get inside them.

Okay, not every child is C.S. Lewis. Then again, C.S. Lewis wasn’t exactly C.S. Lewis as a child. He was simply “Jack” to his friends and family. Still, is it reasonable for a typical six-year-old or a fifteen-year-old, for that matter, to create his own Boxen? Given the right inspiration, why not?

But easier (and perhaps better yet), children can pull whole worlds from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “cauldron of story” and play with those stories. Find a doll and play Cinderella or a tower of blocks and play Jack and the Beanstalk. For older children, reenact Beowulf or the quest for the Holy Grail with puppets or peg dolls. Through the act of playing, the world will come to life. Better still, it will be a new version of the other world, unique to the child creating it.

The real magic happens in the telling that goes along with the playing. After all, Lewis himself said in a letter to a Mrs. Ashton dated February 2, 1955, “a story is only imagining out loud.” Anyone who has ever observed a child playing with toys has seen him talking aloud, sometimes whispering quietly to himself, as he acts out whatever is going on. That is the natural course of play. We want our imaginary worlds to be seen and heard in order to make them real.

If we want to harness this with the goal of cultivating storytelling, then we could encourage the child to go a step further and perform his world for an audience. In this way, the child would put on his play, dramatizing it through his toys, or even without them at the dinner table or before bedtime.  

In classical speak, this is called the art of narration. In its most developed form, narration is a full-blown storytelling with all the dramatic flair a child can muster.

This is especially helpful for learning certain story phrases like “once upon a time” and “happily ever after” and story elements like “the turn” (aka the great reveal) and “the unraveling” (aka the dramatic fall after the climax). There are many other phrases and elements and so on, and a child does not need to know the technical terms for any of them. The main thing is that the child comes to embody the ideas reflected in the terms through imitation.

For example, the more a child repeats familiar story phrases, the more he will be able to coin his own. “Once upon a time” will soon turn into “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy” (Lewis’s opening line for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) or “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” (Tolkien’s opening line for The Hobbit).

No matter what the line turns into, it starts from the same model—once upon a time. The variation comes through the course of play as the child develops his own voice. Speaking his voice aloud attunes his ear to what is appealing and what is not. It compels him to compare what he is saying with what he has heard from familiar stories. He will naturally ask himself, “Does that sound right?”

Once he can answer with an enthusiastic yes, then he has become a true storyteller. The more he tells his stories aloud, the better he will eventually be able to write them. As C.S. Lewis said in a letter to a burgeoning storyteller named Miss Jane Gaskell, “always write by ear not by eye. Every sentence sh[oul]d be tested on the tongue, to make sure that the sound of it has the hardness or softness, the swiftness or languor, which the meaning of it calls for.”

And that’s precisely what a child will learn to do through play acting (aka ‘Boxening’ his stories) his stories.

First Image Credit: Baby at Play by Thomas Eakins (1876)

Second Image Credit: Child with Toys, Gabrielle and the Artist’s Son by Jean by Auguste Renoir (1985)

Third Image Credit: The Puppet Show by Théophile Emmanuel Duverger (1901)

Fourth Image Credit: Children Acting the ‘Play Scene’ from Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii by Charles Hunt (1863)