Ideas, Games, tips and Stuff to help you with your own stuff

1 Cards

Get some cardboard and cut out thirty cards. On ten of them write NORMAL, on ten write BIZARRE, and on ten write PLACE.

On the back of the NORMAL cards, write down everyday characters such as the Family Cat, the Postman (or woman) or My Teacher. On the back of the BIZARRE cards write down not-so-normal characters such as a Brontosaurus, a Spanner-Headed Alien or Edgar the Mad Haddock. On the back of the PLACE cards write down places such as the cinema, the beach or Greenland. Now turn all the cards over (in separate piles), swish them around a bit, and pick one from each. Now write your story using these characters and this place.

You can use the same method with different types of cards. For example, one set could be labelled TIME, and include different periods in history.

But it always good to being unexpected characters together. It also works to put everyday things, things you know well, with comepletely strange ones.

2 Get an account with the bank of ideas!

Ideas may come at any time. My first rule is, never lose one! Write it down, or record it, and put it in a file. Use the best ones as a starting-point for a story. However, I never start a story till I've let the idea brew, like a good cup of tea. Let's take this example: your starting idea is that a girl gives her gran a gorilla for Christmas. Then first think about gorillas. What do they eat? Where do they live? What are their habits? Some research may be helpful. The things you think about, or learn, will give you ideas for your story. Write them down in a bank of ideas. Do the same for the gran character, and Christmas, and anything else important in your story. Then start imagining your scenes one by one.

Of course, you may prefer to just start writing at this point, and I wouldn't argue against that. Often the best ideas come as you actually write. But at some point you will need to go back to thinking about where your story is going. Your bank of ideas will help with this.

3 Transformers.

Many of my stories involve gradual changes: in Mark 2, a strange boy gradually takes over another boy's house. In FS3 a cat hypnotises a family one by one. In Honest, a girl resolves never to tell a lie and bit by bit becomes an outcast of society. Why not write your own change story? Decide what the change will be and plot out the stages. To take a simple example, a boy gradually becomes a dog. First he starts scratching a lot, then he notices his sense of smell has improved, etc etc. You just need a reason why it has happened and an interesting way of resolving it, which brings me on to

4 Endings!

Imagine you're telling a joke and it hasn't got a punchline. It's a disaster. The ending is a crucial part of any story and needs a lot of thought.

Sometimes you can work out a good ending before you start, but sometimes you have to get into the story before you can see how it should end.

When I first wrote my picture book Daley B I had no idea how it would end. The story is about a rabbit who doesn't know what it is. A weasel appears and stalks it. Just as the weasel is about to jump Daley B discovers he's a rabbit. Now what? I went to my bank of ideas. Rabbits defend themselves by kicking. Ok, Daley B would kick the weasel away, but so what? In itself, that's not much of an ending. So I changed the whole story, getting Daley B to wonder what his feet were for. Now, when he kicks the weasel, he finds out! An ending is more satisfying if it answers the questions posed by the story, or gives a character their just desserts.

You might like to have a twist in the ending of your story – something which surprises the reader. It's not too hard to do this. You just have to hold back a vital piece of information which you only reveal at the end. For example, you could write a story which seems to be about a boy or girl, but is actually about a dog. Try some experiments. Don't write stories, just work out plots with satisfying endings. Then choose the best one to work on.

5 Start from a picture

Photos or cartoons make good starting-points for stories. Really look at the character and start imagining all about them. Put notes into your bank of ideas. Then imagine the character has a problem which they have to overcome. Think it through scene by scene.

6 Use video or tape

A great way to make an instant story is to get one or two friends and make up the story together. Start from a picture, then take it in turns to make up a sentence at a time. Record a head shot of each person saying their sentence, maybe with a suitable backdrop behind them. Keep going till the story is finished. But don't always accept someone's first idea. Discuss which ideas take the story in an interesting direction.

To build up everyone's confidence, you could start with a game I call 'the professor'. Each person takes it in turns to be an expert on something (eg the yodelling mountain maggot). That person cannot be wrong. Ask them lots of questions about their subject, accept everything they say, and maybe applaud or congratulate them on their brilliance.

One other game I sometimes use is called 'amnesia'. One person starts a story, but keeps having lapses of memory. The others suggest what it is they have forgotten. Eg “I went to the pet shop and bought a. . .um. . . “ (“piranha?” “squid?” etc) The storyteller chooses one and carries on.

I'll add some new ideas here from time to time, but for now, here are a pile of my old doodles which you can use for characters.