Storytelling

“Daddy, tell me a story!”

I’m sure that a lot of dads have heard that. My daughter used to ask me that all the time, and I started making up stories. One story got really elaborate and I think it took me three weeks, a little snippet each day, before the story was all told.

Over time, that verbal storytelling somehow morphed into a desire to try out National Novel Writing Month, which I successfully completed in 2011. Writing a novel in 30 days was a lot of fun and considerably more doable than people would expect. Of course, it took considerably longer than 30 days for that novel to turn into the first three 11 Quests books.

This past Sunday, I heard part of a TED Radio Hour episode about storytelling, which I found so interesting that I subscribed to the podcast and just finished listening to it. It was inspiring to hear great storytellers share their thoughts on telling the story.

When I was working with Mark Ramm on the TurboGears book, I had this desire to weave a fictional story through the code samples in the book. I wanted it to be there, lurking for people who were paying close attention, but never mentioned in the main text. Alas, we had our hands full just getting the book together. All I had time for was to write my 100 or so pages to help get the information out there for people who were trying to make good use of TurboGears.

I’m toying with an idea for a new technical book. If I do write it, I’m going to try to get more of a story into it, though my focus will remain on sharing the knowledge that I have in mind. Nothing wrong with sharing knowledge and trying to be entertaining, too.

Two more bits of storytelling on my mind this week:

  1. My wife has published “Mommy Pea and Baby Pea”, a 50 page story that my daughter wrote when she was 7. I think it’s a cute story, and my daughter came up with this neat device in which she color-coded which character spoke each line rather than having a constant “he said”, “she said” back-and-forth.

  2. This week, I finished the first draft of The Unicorn Guide, book 4 in the 11 Quests series. I’ve been posting first draft chapters here on Tuesday and will have the rest posted in a couple weeks. I’m not going to publish The Unicorn Guide until I finish writing the complete The Quests of the Lost Jungle trilogy, however, because I may need to change some plot elements as the remainder of the story works itself out.

I think the more leisurely pace of writing for The Quests of the Lost Jungle has helped the story, and I hope the children who read it like it as much as they have The Quests of Underice.