Children's stories

I have a number of friends who tell stories to children for one reason or another. They work with kids, or they have younger siblings, or both, but it's not reading stories. They make up the stories as they go, and sometimes the kids are thoroughly entertained, and sometimes they can't sit through the first few sentences. It varies from person to person, kid to kid, whatever. The point is that they are able to completely improvise on the spot drawn out stories that have at least some kind of followable story, at least as far as children go.

This is actually something that I'm quite jealous of. I would love to be able to think that quickly on my feet, and especially when the day comes that I may in that position with my own kids. But, I'm not. For me, telling a story is a lot about thinking out the basics of a character in advance, for however many characters there are in a story, and then letting them interact with each other to let everything flesh itself out.

That doesn't exactly work for improvising. For improvising, you have to have a reason and a goal right off the bat, and you just kind of have to roll with it from there. At least as far as I'm aware. Again, I'm not good at it.

I remember when I was a kid, going to bed, my Dad would play a game with me where we would tell each other stories, one piece at a time. One of us would start the story, and the other would tell the next part, and we'd keep going back and forth until the story was over. I think I might be better at that. Especially if I let my kids start the story, because then I just have to react to whatever it is that they give me. I can do that much.

Funnily enough, I think the fact that my Dad did this with me is at least in part to blame for why I love to write today. It may even play a role in why I love to do roleplays with people, as it is all about that playing off of each other that made that game so much fun.

I think about these kinds of things sometimes because I want to be able to encourage my children to, if not write, than read. To enjoy stories and be able to find fun and joy in them. They may not want to read the stories I write, who knows, but I'm okay with that. I know that my stories aren't for everyone, but I trust that they will be for someone, even if that someone is only me.

I don't think I'll end up writing children's stories at any point in my life. My brain's just not wired in that way. I've spent too much time as a teenager, I think, to be able to put myself back in that frame of mind. Maybe one day I'll have my own kids and I'll be able to remember what it's like to think that way. Maybe that will encourage me to think that way and write that story.

I just hope that it won't happen too late for said kids to enjoy them.