Monday, January 20, 2014

Stumped? Let Big Bird help you learn to write a story.



Priceless, and timeless, advice from Big Bird, as he and Snuffy work on their first story; video after the jump.





Takeaways:

1. "Most stories begin with once upon a time." OR AT LEAST THE GOOD ONES DO.

2. Once you've got a hero who can survive your basic environment, he should have an adventure.

3. Never end your story until the end.

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Briane Pagel has little kids. Can you tell? (Also, he's sort of immature.)  When not watching Sesame Street, he writes stories, which you can find at lit, a place for stories and in books about murderous astronauts and demons and other stuff available on  Amazon


5 comments:

  1. Have you ever tried writing stories with your kids, Briane? I've done a couple with my son. Sometimes it's hard getting him to come up with ideas, but it's good writing practice for him.

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  2. From the man who doesn't watch videos? I can't pull it up on my phone. I'll have to check it later. When I'm at home

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  3. Sandra: Mr Bunches and I collaborated on a live-action story "The Story Of Batman," http://www.thinkingthelions.com/2013/10/the-story-of-batman-life-with-unicorns.html, but I really just served as the scrivener, there.

    Rusty: I didn't watch this one, either -- I listened to it as I wrote.

    Andrew:
    I'm going to take that as a compliment.

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  4. Well, I watched the video. Since I had to overcome the anti cell phone bias and catch it on my laptop, it took me a while. It reminds me, wasn't Snuffleupagass a mythical creature on the show for some time. It seems like no one ever saw him for a very long time and big bird just kept talking about his best friend and everyone felt sorry for him but thought he was a liar. Then one day out came the mastodon and folks were like, 'oh, he was real?'

    Or did I make that up?

    Regardless, I'm glad they boiled down storytelling to its simplest form: Princes in helmets making friends at the bottom of the sea. All stories should follow that archetype in my opinion.

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