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How to Tell a Story to a Tiny Child

How to Tell a Story to a Tiny Child

And what we can learn through simple quest narratives

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Lucy Ayrton
Dec 22, 2023
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Lucy’s Substack
Lucy’s Substack
How to Tell a Story to a Tiny Child
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A slightly off-piste newsletter from me this week, but one I hope will be useful to some of you as you visit lots and lots of relatives over the festive season. One truly lovely way of bonding with small children is through storytelling - whether that’s reading them a book, telling them a story or collaborating on a story together. This last one is the hardest, but also the most rewarding of the three.

But how do you bloody do it?

How do you start ANY kind of story??

Well, that depends what kind of story it is. There are many arguments and theories floating around out there about how there are only seven basic plots, or maybe three, or maybe there’s only one, or twelve. It doesn’t really matter, I think. There’ a finite number. All stories share a similar shape. A protagonist has a problem. Will he solve it? How?

One of the most common story shapes, especially for young children, is a quest narrative. In a quest narrative, the protagonist’s problem is that she needs to find a thing. This basic shape is the blueprint for many of our most enduring stories, from Homer’s Odyssey to Lord of the Rings, from the tale of Gilgamesh to The Wizard of Oz. All of these stories are about a protagonist who needs to find (or do) a thing. They gather allies, they meet enemies, and eventually, they get it done. The elements may vary, but the story remains the same.

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