I was reading a very entertaining article in my September issue of Wondertime about telling scary stories to your kids, and I immediately related to it. In the article, he author, put on the spot by his son to tell a monster story, was caught of guard. Because I am the designated storyteller in the house, I have had to become very adept at making up fiction on cue. It has taken many years of perfecting this skill, or curse on some nights, and I am still far from a master wordsmith.
I usually start with a base set of characters, and then have them get in some sort of harmless trouble. My first stories were about a squirrel named Sammy and his adventures getting from Central Park to upstate New York. Those stories lasted a couple of months and varied in degree of trouble this little squirrel could get in. I eventually got so good at coming up with scenarios that I couldn’t keep up with my son’s appetite for good action. At one point I was telling five to ten stories a day and quickly using up my cache before bedtime.
Wondertime article on storytelling.
