Oh yes! Much as I love CBeebies (especially the repeats of Come Outside with Nurse Gladys Emanumabel) I do miss some of the old stuff I used to watch with Sally years ago, and none more than the excellent Story Makers. Ok, so Jelly and Jackson could be a bit annoying, but the library setting, the magical story maker him or herself (my own favourite used to be Milton Wordsworth) and the story machine - plus of course, story (Blue Cow if I was lucky) - was a potent combination. 'Imagine, imagine, imagine a story' went the chant. And if you imagined hard enough, one would appear.
And that's pretty much how it works when you think about it. If you imagine something hard enough, it will appear (on the page). Ok, the words, the idiom, the rising action, narrative progression and the stylistic conventions are all important. Of course they are. But if you can hold something in your imagination clearly enough, for long enough, you tend to find the right words - in the right order - suddenly appear.
It's probably not escaped your notice that it's World Book Day this week. Well, to mark the occasion we (that's Dotterel Press) are organising a children's writing competition. There'll be more on the Dotterel Press blog on World Book Day itself (Thursday). But for now, get the grey matter working, kids. And imagine, imagine, imagine a story!
Fab! My son is constantly scribbling away at his latest 'novel', I'm sure he'd love to 'imagine, imagine, imagine a stooooryyyy'.
ReplyDeleteGill Fraser Lee
Excellent Gill! You must get him to enter - it's free.
ReplyDeleteThank you, thank you for reminding me of the Blue Cow - I have many fond memories of watching that at the end of a busy day! I'll def tell my niece about this - a budding author if ever there was one!
ReplyDeleteExcellent Hazel... the more entries the merrier!
ReplyDeleteI loved Story Makers - especially when Cat from Red Dwarf was the host.
ReplyDeleteDid she Steve? I've either missed that or forgotten about it... And - as I can testify from a weekend of searching - there seem precious few clips of this series on YouTube!
ReplyDeleteGreat idea. I'll try my best to get Amy involved. She's had a poem published once and does have her own blog where she writes very short stories. I'll have a word in her shell-like. Thanks for the opportunity.
ReplyDeleteCJ xx
She sounds a natural CJ! I hope you manage to persuade her.
ReplyDeleteI shall see if I can convince my niece Rosie to come up with something
ReplyDeleteWhat an excellent idea. My daughter loves to write.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea.
ReplyDeleteThanks Susan. Take a look at the details on the Dotterel Press blog today: http://dotterelpress.blogspot.com/2011/03/world-book-day-writing-competition.html
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