Over the 4th of July weekend Julie and I were in the neighborhood park with Ellie and we ran into a seven-year-old girl who lives up the street. We love this kid because she’s always so excited to share what’s happening that day but we’ve never talked to her for more than thirty-seconds. On this particular day while her grandpa was walking their dog nearby she spent ten minutes with us, talking non-stop, telling us story after story.In one of them an armed robber broke into her house but her dog saved her. In another she won a singing competition and was crowned queen of Armenia. In another, she was being bullied by a girl at school so she told the teacher. The teacher called the police who then arrested the girl, and it was only then that the bully realized the error of her ways and apologized but she still had to go to jail.At one point she included us in the narrative, telling us she’d been in this park by herself late one night and saw our dog Ellie there, so she rescued Ellie and brought her back to our house, evading another armed robber along the way. I was kind of awed by her imagination and the speed that she was able to conjure these stories up, but I was also impressed by her inherent gift for structure. Her stories had a beginning, middle, and end, with some twists and turns along the way, callbacks and comeuppance, there was romance (“this one boy was, like, so handsome”), danger, intrigue, and humor. At one point the robber demanded money from her and she said, “What the hell? I’m a kid, I don’t have any money!” We were howling.Two days later I spent a half-hour talking about story structure to a group of scouts over Zoom, having been invited there by my friend John Lawson. Knowing I had a very limited amount of time and not knowing the exact age range, I put together a short presentation distilling the most important points down to a simple half-hour lesson that I thought would stick.I thought I would do something a little different this week and pass that lesson on to you in case you know a kid who may be interested in this sort of thing. Maybe you're an educator or you run a children's theater program and you're looking for a simple way to teach these concepts. Or if you know someone who could use this feel free to share it.I put all of it in a PDF you can download below.(Adults who are not interested, I'll be back for you next week with some updates and new tools and exercises.)Thanks, have a great weekend!
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ELI5 - Basic Story Structure For Kids
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Over the 4th of July weekend Julie and I were in the neighborhood park with Ellie and we ran into a seven-year-old girl who lives up the street. We love this kid because she’s always so excited to share what’s happening that day but we’ve never talked to her for more than thirty-seconds. On this particular day while her grandpa was walking their dog nearby she spent ten minutes with us, talking non-stop, telling us story after story.In one of them an armed robber broke into her house but her dog saved her. In another she won a singing competition and was crowned queen of Armenia. In another, she was being bullied by a girl at school so she told the teacher. The teacher called the police who then arrested the girl, and it was only then that the bully realized the error of her ways and apologized but she still had to go to jail.At one point she included us in the narrative, telling us she’d been in this park by herself late one night and saw our dog Ellie there, so she rescued Ellie and brought her back to our house, evading another armed robber along the way. I was kind of awed by her imagination and the speed that she was able to conjure these stories up, but I was also impressed by her inherent gift for structure. Her stories had a beginning, middle, and end, with some twists and turns along the way, callbacks and comeuppance, there was romance (“this one boy was, like, so handsome”), danger, intrigue, and humor. At one point the robber demanded money from her and she said, “What the hell? I’m a kid, I don’t have any money!” We were howling.Two days later I spent a half-hour talking about story structure to a group of scouts over Zoom, having been invited there by my friend John Lawson. Knowing I had a very limited amount of time and not knowing the exact age range, I put together a short presentation distilling the most important points down to a simple half-hour lesson that I thought would stick.I thought I would do something a little different this week and pass that lesson on to you in case you know a kid who may be interested in this sort of thing. Maybe you're an educator or you run a children's theater program and you're looking for a simple way to teach these concepts. Or if you know someone who could use this feel free to share it.I put all of it in a PDF you can download below.(Adults who are not interested, I'll be back for you next week with some updates and new tools and exercises.)Thanks, have a great weekend!