If your child wanted to learn how to play the piano, and you gave them a keyboard, saying, “there you go, now you can make music!” what would happen? Most kids might play around for a few minutes, but quickly get discouraged, and walk away, believing they “can’t” play and should just give up. Learning to make music takes learning the basics, being trained, and lots of practice. If your child wanted to become a baseball player, you wouldn’t hand them a glove, ball, and bat, and expect them to become a major league player. They would need to learn the rules of the game, how to wear the glove, hold the bat, run the bases, and then it would take practice to become a real player. If they wanted to become a doctor… well, I think you get the idea.

Though no one hands a student a guitar and paper and says, “here, write a song,” students are regularly given a piece of paper and the assignment to “write a story.” No wonder they may be overwhelmed or frustrated! They need tools and practice to help them on their way.

This is particularly true because as our children get older, as their idea of being “successful” changes. As a small child, they think their scribbles on paper are masterpieces. Only they can know what it represents, but they don’t care. They created! They feel wonderful! But as they grow up, something changes. They begin to see that their dinosaur looks like scribbles on the paper compared to the picture in the book that inspired it. Many children get discouraged at this point. They want to give up, because they aren’t able to create what’s in their head. If they took some time to take some drawing lessons, learn a few basic rules, and practiced, they would (most likely) get to the point where their dinosaur looks like a dinosaur.

Stories are the same way. The babbling stories of a toddler give way to more thoughtful stories of a pre-schooler, and gradually dry up, as the desire to tell a story gets outstripped by the realization that they don’t know how to make all the parts fit, or the fear that someone doesn’t like their story. The fantastic story inside a vivid imagination doesn’t naturally come out onto paper in just the right way the first time. It takes practice. It takes learning some tips. It takes having the tools in your tool belt to build it just as you imagine. And then it takes more practice.

Becoming good at something takes time and practice. Not just any practice, but meaningful practice. And that means knowing the basics (or grammar) of something. For stories, that means learning the grammar, or basic elements of story. Here at Wondertale Press, we’ve identified over 30 basic elements that make up stories. A Pirate’s Guide t’ th’ Grammar of Story is a primer for those essential elements, not only teaching what they are, but giving the student lots of opportunity to play around with them (like practicing scales, playing catch, or memorizing body parts) until they become natural. Once they are natural, putting them together becomes easier.