Ready, Steady, Write - Day 4

What if………

What if?

Where do stories come from? I’ve been writing ever since I was your age and I still don’t really know the answer. And, the truth is, I don’t really want to know because I like to think that stories are magic. Stories are blown on the wind and fall from the sky like raindrops. Stories are handed from one person to another like gifts that only the storyteller notices. If you look carefully, there are stories reflected in puddles and caught in spider webs. Stories are everywhere if you choose to see them.

The first thing you need if you’re going to write stories is the ability to pay attention to the world around you. Next, you need just a dash of imagination. Then you need the secret ingredient which I’m going to share with you because I can tell that you are a storyteller too. The secret ingredient is this question: ‘what if?’

All stories begin with the writer asking this question. What if? What if a girl who lived in the fireplace got an invitation to the ball? What if a boy sold a cow in exchange for magic beans? What if there was a portal to a fantasy land at the back of the wardrobe?

Use the opener, ‘what if’, to start some sentences and see where your imagination takes you. If you write lots of sentences as a list, you’ll end up with an exciting poem. You’ll also end up with loads of story ideas.

Here’s one of mine. Notice that it’s written out in the shape of a poem but that the lines don’t rhyme. Poems don’t have to rhyme. But you can rhyme yours if you want to. You’re in charge of the pen and the poem!

What if children were in charge and adults did as they were told?

What if the bees whispered their secrets to the birds and the birds taught the leaves how to fly with only the wind for wings? 

What if love was piped through the radio waves?

What if you could buy hope as a supplement? 

What if we sprinkled gratitude on our breakfast cereal

and consumed the nectar of forgiveness as a bedtime drink?

What if politicians sang like a choir of angels

and peace was the ocean holding it all together?

What if this is a beginning and not the end - 

an egg cracking open, the world split apart, 

the light bursting through the cracks?

Now it’s your turn.