Writing Tip nº4: THE FAIRY-TALE SALAD

If you've been reading my latest posts about books, you would certainly have  noticed a common theme (imprint?): the fact that some characters of a fairy tale, in some way, land in another one and meet its protagonist, giving birth to new tales or even novels.

It's the case of Hansel and Gretel in Gidwitz's book 'A Tale Dark and Grimm', but also of 'Witch Hazel' who moves from the story of Snow White to Hansel and Gretel.

But he most famous example, I can think of, is certainly the story of the ogre 'Shrek': a worldwide known case of fairy-tale salad.

Chapter twenty of 'The Grammar of Fantasy' by Gianni Rodari talks about this possibility of mixing different fairy tales to create new adventures and new developments of old and well-known stories. 

It's interesting because young readers have to deeply know the characters' inner worlds and the landscapes they move in to do this experiment of literature.

It's a good excuse for an accurate text analysis.

So, let your children think about what could happen if Little Red Riding Hood met Tom Thumb in the wood and if Pinocchio arrived at Granny's house: the Wolf would get every single tooth of his mouth completely destroyed!

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Writing Tip nº3: THE CASUAL SYNTAX

Chapter ten of 'The Grammar of Fantasy' by Gianni Rodari talks about Dadaist and Surrealist games to look for a 'fantastic theme' that will help your class to write stories.

An easy one to set up in the classroom is the Casual Sintax.

The students, one after another, have to secretly answer these 6 questions:

question 1: WHO WAS HE/SHE/IT?

question 2: WHERE WAS HE/SHE/IT?

question 3: WHAT WAS HE/SHE/IT DOING?

question 4: WHAT DID HE/SHE/IT SAY?

question 5: WHAT DID PEOPLE SAY ABOUT HIM/HER/IT?

question 6: HOW DID THE STORY END?

The first pupil answers the question and folds the paper like an accordion. He passes the folded paper to his classmate, who will answer the second question, fold the paper again and pass it to the third one and so on until the paper accordion will reach the sixth and last student of the chain. Once he has answered the last question you can unfold the paper and read the answers following the order of the questions. It'll be hilarious and perhaps you'll find material to write a whole story.

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WRITING TIP nº2 -The arbitrary prefix

Here we are, talking about how to inspire your students to write a story.

The second story-inventing game from Gianni Rodari's Grammar of Fantasy is called the arbitrary prefix.

In some way, it could be considered a variation of the Fantastic Binomial (link), and it consists of taking word and placing prefixes in front of them in order to create new inspiring concepts.

Just write down a column of prefixes and a column of words. Then try to connect each one and observe the effect on your brain. 

micro        elephant 

sub           town  

un            bomb  

e              gap  

super        bug  

semi         ghost  

non          playing  

hyper       headed 

or 

micro       town (are there any giants around?)
sub          ghost (ghosts with fish tales?)
un           headed (an horror story?)
e             bug (a spy story?)
super       game (something like the hunger games?)
semi        bomb
non         elephant (?!?!?)
hyper      gap (double hole, double adventure)

etc.

Has any of the connections above already stimulated a brilliant idea for a story?

So, once upon a time, there were two cities that were always fighting. They were constantly busy with their war. But it was a very strange battle. They were struggling to be the best place to live in and they were using weird weapons called unbombs: very expensive devices that improved citizen's life instead of destroying it. 

So each city was spending lots and lots of money to buy these strange bombs

that brought new parks, schools and some kind of services, at every explosion.

People were very satisfied in both cities and when they met, they never stopped showing off the many improvements they got every month, 12 months a year.

Unfortunately one day the hyper-headed guy who made the brilliant unbombs started to suffer an incredibly painful headache. He couldn't do anything a part from lying in bed all day long. The doctor said that he had spent too many years thinking about how to make citizen's happy and now his head was almost blowing up, so he had to rest as much as possible.

What do you think people are going to do now? What about introducing a wicked semi-ghost to create a bit of suspense? 

As always this is only the skeleton of a possible story and not a completely developed tale. I'm sure you can make the most of this tip with your class.

Enjoy it and have fun!

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