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This is adapted from an article that appeared on the Write Anything website on March 30, 2008. The original text can be found here.

Making it up as you go along…

In March, the UK’s Observer newspaper carried a story about author Ronny M Cole’s advice to parents that they should make up stories at bedtime for their children, rather than simply read them a bedtime story. This comes on the back of a literacy drive by the UK government to encourage parents to read to their children, after it was revealed that one in ten children are never read a bedtime story.

Some parent’s groups rebelled at this prospect, pointing out that it was bad enough parents were being stigmatised for not reading to their children, but now they were being made to feel like bad parents if they couldn’t invent a story too?

Famous books like Watership Down and The Hobbit started life as stories made up for the author’s children. But you don’t need to come up with the next classic of western literature to entertain the kids. Involve them in the storytelling, make the stories about simple things, and at first keep it short and entertaining. Only later, when confident should you expand the stories to include life lessons and morals.

When the Writer’s Write blog ran the story they made the observation that some people just aren’t natural born storytellers, so should continue to reach for a book of bedtime stories. However,

“... if you happen to be married to a screenwriter or author, well, you know who gets bedtime story duty tonight.”

Yeah... Yeah that’s a good idea...

That’s some advice that should be taken with a pinch of salt. Because the screenwriter or author you’re married to could well be me. Or someone like me. I’m not exactly child friendly. Consider what I did to Winnie-the-Pooh on my very first [Fiction] Friday. I turned him into an opium addict who had killed Tigger and was about to be "disposed of" by Piglet. Can you imagine the havoc I could wreak on a delicate child’s psyche if I was allowed anywhere near their impressionable minds? The horrible, terrible things that would befall childhood characters if I were allowed to interpret their adventures?

“And then one thousand demons descended on the handsome prince, stripping the flesh from his bones and consuming his soul. The end. Good night, sweet dreams...”

Is this a product of my own upbringing? And would children really be scarred by disturbing and twisted bedtime stories? Consider that “fairy tales” are popular bedtime stories for children. When I was a child, my father used to read my brothers and I bedtime stories. Our two favourite books for bedtime stories were collections of fairy tales. One by Hans Christian Andersen, the other by the Brother’s Grimm. These are real fairy tales. The original stories, unadulterated by the Disney versions we’ve come to know today. In the stories I grew up with, the Wicked Stepmother was made to dance to death in red hot shoes, the Little Mermaid died and tragedy befalls people without sense or reason. The lessons were not simply black and white. They were muddied, confusing. And frequently disturbing.

Despite this, I grew up to be a well-adjusted person. Maybe not a well-adjusted writer, but a well-adjusted person. Thanks dad!

I think everyone has it in them to tell a tale. Whether you make it up as you go along, or start with the story on the page and then deviate from the script (a favourite tactic of my father), see where the story takes you. And not just for children. In times past we as a society used to sit around fires and tell each other stories, to entertain, to educate and to connect.

What stories were you told as a child? Did your parents make up stories for you? And if you have children of your own, what do you read them or tell them?