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.

Posted on by Stephanie McGann

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

Posted on by Stephanie McGann

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

Posted on by Stephanie McGann

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

Posted on by Stephanie McGann

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 First Habit of a Storyteller: Fill-up on the Cauldron

In his essay, “On Fairy Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien likens the collection of stories told throughout history to a soup, all simmering together in a huge pot. He says that “the Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story, has always been boiling, and to it have continually been added new bits, dainty and undainty.” This metaphor explains in part why there are so many versions of different fairy tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood or Cinderella. Each of the different storytellers, as Tolkien’s line of thinking goes, sampled the soup and added to it. That’s why Red’s granny sometimes dies, and Cindy’s step-sisters sometimes live.

I would like to use this metaphor for the first habit needed to become a good storyteller. Simply put, one needs to fill-up on the cauldron and taste as many stories as possible. Let’s see how this lines up with our two premier storytellers: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

When I read Lewis’s Letters to Children, I eagerly underlined every book recommendation he made and soon realized I would never be able to get through them all—and those were just the ones he put down for kids! I had the same daunting realization when I read his fuller collection of letters, most of which were addressed to his brother, father, and scholarly peers, never mind culling through all the citations in his essays. Perhaps the most telling source of information on Lewis’s reading is Surprised by Joy. There he references countless stories that shaped his early life. Taken as a whole and much simplified, I think of his reading as fitting into the following categories: epics, narrative poetry, myths (especially Norse ones), romances (think Jane Austen), fairy tales, legends, fables, and Bible stories (though approached later in life).

Clearly, Lewis consumed the “cauldron of story” so fully that he was able to draw from it (however intentionally or unintentionally we will never know) in his own storytelling. Consider, for a moment, The Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan, a talking lion, is a direct representation of Christ (the Lion of Judah), yet he would fit just as easily into any one of Aesop’s fables. His great villain, Jadis (aka the White Witch), could stand up to the wickedest witch any fairy tale could dish up. What’s more, her physical characteristics line up very closely with Hans Christian Anderson’s Snow Queen. Then there are the children in his stories, all of whom have been disenfranchised in some way, much like many a famous child in the world of faerie (Hansel and Gretel, to name just two). Of course, there are overlaps with mythology as well, as seen through his many fauns and centaurs and talking animals. It’s no wonder that Lewis was a master storyteller. He hadn’t just filled up on the soup; he stuffed himself full of it over and over again.

Likewise, Tolkien had a voracious appetite for the “cauldron of story.” In the aforementioned essay, he indicates a preference for the taste of “faerie” above all else. But by his own account, that was not a dominant taste in his early life and only awakened as he got older. Nevertheless, the number of fairy tales he mentions in his essay is great. He gives the impression of having read all twelve of Andrew Lang’s fairy book collections, in addition to a good many more by the Brothers Grimm and innumerable others. He also makes casual references to countless myths and fables before closing out his essay with nuanced connections between the world of “faerie” and the Bible. He had eaten so much of the “soup” that it was oozing out of him not only in his essay, but in all his stories as well.

For example, Tolkien uses countless elements commonly found in these core materials in The Lord of the Rings, though with such a distinct flavor of his own that his recipe is wholly original. His elves are certainly not of the shoemaker type, and his dwarfs would hardly encase a dead maiden in a glass coffin (unless she had a precious stone inside of her). Tolkien’s hobbits and orcs feel altogether unique, even if one senses that some flavor, long forgotten, was conjured from the pot in their creation. Then there are human characters like Aragorn whose heroism has vague echoes of the likes of Beowulf and King Arthur but with a style all his own. There is no doubt that Tolkien filled up on the “cauldron of story” over and over again, and ultimately added many of his own “dainty bits” to it.

From Lewis and Tolkien we learn that filling up on the “cauldron of story” is an irreplaceable habit for becoming a good storyteller. Make plenty of room for epics, narrative poetry, the Bible, legends, myths, fairy tales, and fables as they provide the stock of most stories. If you eat enough of it, your own pot will soon begin to simmer.

First Image Credit: Boy Eating Soup (Enfant mangeant sa soupe), by Francois Bonvin (1861)

Second Image Credit: Soup, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1865)

Posted on by Stephanie McGann

The Habits of a Storyteller

Classical educators commonly hold up “the story” as its principal teaching tool. If you want to lead a student to learn Wisdom and Virtue, then read a great story together. The lessons in them are manifold, and their ability to catch even the most dispassionate student is well known. Similarly, if you want a student to demonstrate Wisdom and Virtue, then have him write a story.

Monsters or dragons? Hunstmen or knights? Damsels or shieldmaidens? The shape of a student’s story reveals far more than his likes or dislikes within a particular genre. It reveals the very drama of his imagination, which is the playground of the soul.

Yet, teachers often find it easier to help a student receive a story than to write one. Even the most gifted need a lot of help thinking about the sound and structure of a story, let alone developing an interesting plot. Classical educators have a few strategies that greatly aid in this area.

The first and, perhaps, most important strategy comes from the tradition of imitatio, which means “imitation” in Latin. Classical educators hold that imitation is the chief mode of learning. If you want to become good at something, then find a model of that something to replicate. It follows, then, that a student who wants to write a good story should find a good story to imitate. Better still, find a good storyteller, and imitate his or her habits.

Two of the best and most commonly read among my students are C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, so I recently dove into their writings to see what they had to say about telling stories. With any luck, they would have some kind of “recipe” or “formula” all laid out for aspiring storytellers. Although that did not turn out to be the case, they had many tidbits of advice and lots of habits in common in their approach to storytelling, namely: reading, playing, and drawing.

In the next three posts, I will explain the importance of these habits for aspiring storytellers, be they in the classroom or at home, and show how Lewis and Tolkien both made use of them. Here are the names of the posts and brief summaries.

Fill-up on the Cauldron (aka Read): In this post, I rely on Tolkien’s image of the “cauldron of story” to show the importance of reading and listening to great stories in the formation of a storyteller.

Boxen the Story (aka Play): In this post, I focus on Lewis’s imaginary play world of Boxen as a metaphor for the role of play in forming the imagination of a storyteller.

Start with a Picture (aka Draw): In this post, I bring together examples of how Lewis and Tolkien both used pictures to inform their writing.

Once this series is through, the next one will apply these habits to the classroom, and I will share some of the exercises that have been the most fruitful and enjoyable for my students.

I do want to offer two disclaimers. First, I am an amateur on Lewis and much more so on Tolkien. Though an immense fan of both, I have hardly tapped the well of their writings. Second, while Lewis and Tolkien possessed the habits I am highlighting, I am in no way saying they followed them as a rule or regimen. It is the teacher in me that likes to synthesize and organize and has therefore extrapolated something concrete for children and their families. But the writer in me also knows that habits, like good stories, form little by little and rarely in the order we intend. Creation, which is at the heart of telling stories, is an open door that one can walk through however one pleases.

Image Credit: The Story Book by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1877)