I hope you had a fantastic movie night and came up with some ideas for your story and what kind of character you might want to write about. Did you figure out what they wanted, what was stopping them, and how they realized what it was they really needed?
Now, interesting characters are great, but they don't exist against a blank background. They're in a place, maybe a world like our own or something a bit different. They could have laser swords on space stations or live on a farm in the past. It's good for them to start off somewhere that is familiar to them. It doesn't have to be that way, but usually the opening of a story starts off with the familiar, and to go on a big journey, they have to go somewhere that is new to them.
But, before we start on some big, epic quest, we should probably decide how big of a story you want to tell.
We call that scope.
For instance, if you want to read The Lord of the Rings, you're in for a long haul, and to keep it interesting along the way, we have to introduce more locations and characters.
If you're reading a short story or a young reader chapter book, you probably want to focus on just a few characters and locations so you're not cramming too much into the story.
If this is your first time writing a story, I might recommend only having a few locations and a smaller cast of characters would be good.
Let's keep talking about scope and word count. After this week, we're planning on spending a week developing the story and writing an outline, which is like the map that will take you on the journey of writing your book together so you don't get lost. We just have to figure out how big that map is depending on how long you want the story to be.
Most of the books I write with my kids are about 25,000 words because we write middle grade together. If you've ever read something like The Magic Tree House, those books are about 5,000 words. Again, it's totally up to you, but as you take on this project, think about how much time you can put toward this on any average day.
An outline helps you to not get stuck, but even when I have an outline, I'm able to get about 750 to 1,500 words written in an hour when I can block off part of my day for this.
Let's not get in the weeds though, and just focus on if you want to write a big book, a medium book, or something very short. Let's plan on building out the number of characters in our cast and locations we visit accordingly.
Activity: Interview Walk
Since we're talking about locations, let's go for a little walk and talk somewhere nearby. It could be a backyard, your neighborhood, a nearby park, or even a drive around a familiar place. I prefer walking since it gets the whole body moving and gets the creativity going.
We'll have more walks ahead of us, specifically to gather ideas about your surroundings and how to capture them into your story, but find a time in the next day or two where you can go for a walk and talk before or after dinner perhaps, because it's time to sync up with your writing partner and see if there are some things you can learn about each other.
I randomly did this one day and it was a much more direct way to find out what she liked. There's an extra part of the workbook that can be implemented, and here are some of the questions:
What is your favorite story?
Who is your favorite character?
What is your favorite name?
What is your favorite animal?
If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?
What is a place that makes you feel safe?
What is a place that you find a little bit scary?
Who is your best friend?
Why are they your best friend?
What is your favorite color?
What is your favorite thing that is your favorite color?
What is your favorite toy? Why?
Feel free to continue this line of questions as it's designed to just get some conversation flowing. Encourage your child to ask some of the following questions:
What is the first book you remember reading?
What movie did you watch a lot as a kid?
Did you have a favorite TV show?
Was there a book you remember checking out from the library more than once?
Did you have ever do book fairs or BookIt (the Pizza Hut reading initiative)?
Did you have a teacher who encouraged you?
What are things you used to do with one of your parents?
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