Where can I find resources for bedtime story plots?
For past ten months, my wife and I have been telling bedtime stories of our own making to our older daughter (who recently turned 4). We do it on alternate evenings. The stories have a nearly-constant set of characters who face various situations (from real-life-like to quite imaginary).
Though it has been well-received by the audience, there is now an element of dread. Though some repetition is OK, and there is even explicit demand for some re-runs, we would like to vary stories to make it more interesting both for us and for our daughter. However, my wife and I are struggling to come up with somewhat novel plot hooks, and story elements. An extra complication is that to make stories relatable, we must avoid some of the richer elements of adult fiction. Also because of time constraints we construct stories mostly on-the-go.
Are there lists of story elements for young children? Any other resources to enrich oral storytelling for young children?
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You're looking for a random story generator
There are lots of those on the internet. The first one I found Plot Generator. It gave me quite a few prompts that weren't child-suitable, but I hit gold when I randomly generated a Fantasy Blurb.
Garth Butterscotch, the Troll
A Fantasy Novel
by Untitled writerIn a cave there lived a beautiful, bendy troll named Garth Butterscotch. Not a magic sensational, killer cave, filled with soup and a false smell, nor yet a pink, minuscule, violent cave with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a troll-cave, and that means shelter.
One day, after a troubling visit from the dragon Charity Wu, Garth leaves his cave and sets out in search of three giant trousers. A quest undertaken in the company of girls, people and fluffy robots.
In the search for the dragon-guarded trousers, Garth Butterscotch surprises even himself with his intelligence and skill as a housekeeper.
During his travels, Garth rescues a kettle, an heirloom belonging to Charity. But when Charity refuses to try shouting, their friendship is over.
However, Charity is wounded at the Battle of Blenheim and the two reconcile just before Garth engages in some serious shouting.
Garth accepts one of the three giant trousers and returns home to his cave a very wealthy troll.
I also found the Scholastic Story Starters, which are completely kid oriented, and should generator child-friendly plots.
Look for Mythology collections for kids
Generally speaking, myths and legends tend to be the opposite of child friendly. But a lot of work has been done collecting the less adult myths (or sanitizing the more adult myths) and collating them together for children to read. As a bonus, this gives you a good opportunity to introduce your child to other cultures they might not interact with on a regular basis.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34512. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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I gave your question some thought, and I figure the best source of inspiration for you would be an encyclopaedia. Let me explain: your regular characters can travel to distant lands where they'd encounter new views, customs, wildlife etc. They can travel back in time to various interesting historical periods. They can pop into famous fairy tales (like Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood) and shake things up a bit.
You can then shape the plot around where you threw the characters this time, and what you'd like to tell your daughter about that place/period/whatever. For example, send your characters to Japan, and you can have something centred around the Hanami.
Good luck! Bedtime stories are awesome.
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