Creative Challenge #1

Your challenge today, your creative challenge, is to write a child's story. A little fairy story or a little parable for a small child. I don't know if you remember when you were a little child, you loved hearing stories, and little children love hearing stories. So if you've got a niece or a nephew, the neighbour's child, think of them and compose a story for them. And the way I want you to do this is I want you to think of a name, A person's name, a first name. It can be a boy or a girl. I want you to think of an animal, any animal you want. Then I want you to think of a place and write these 3 down: the name, the animal, and the place. So the name might be Jane or John or Daniel or Helen, and, uh, the animal might be a giraffe or a bear or a snake or a squirrel, and the place might be a palace, it might be a castle, It might be a theme park, it might be a bridge over a river, something like that. And then you work those into your story and you tell a story about a little boy or a little girl with that name. You involve the animal somehow and you involve the place and something exciting happens, something dangerous. The child gets into a scrape, into a difficulty, and then they find some clever way to get out. Most children's stories have a happy ending, but if you want to be really creative, you could have a really unusual ending. I want you to think of the story, go over it while you're driving, while you're walking today, and write it out. Write out the short story, and then if at all possible, find a child and tell it to them, preferably a child that you know quite well. Tell them the story and see their reaction. And typically their face lights up. Children love to hear a story, and it's a creative exercise. It's something anyone can do, and it's something I want you to do today.