"It's MY turn to be the set designer." These aren't words you typically hear from a seven-year-old boy. I don't know where he learned the term, but he was employing it correctly; using my digital camera, we were shooting pictures for a story we've been working on. And his nine-year-old brother HAD been hogging the set designer job.
I've recently spent several days with my four youngest cousins, and our chief occupation has been making a movie using pictures from my digital camera. The five of us collaborated on a story involving malicious Lego men who kidnap a Barbie princess and tie her up in some bushes above their hideout. As each child has manipulated the plot, Barbie has escaped, fought off a gigantic spider, and made friends with a 3-foot-tall teddy bear. So far, so good. But now, we've run into a problem.
I've been told that the essence of writing good fiction is to create your character, stick him in a tree, throw rocks at him, and get him down. We were following the formula perfectly until we came to the getting her down part. Turns out my cousins invent malicious plot twists so well that nobody wants to release our poor Barbie from the tree.
Today, the conversation with Mr Seven-Year-Old went like this:
Me: We're running out of time. We need an ending. How do we help her get away?
P7: All right, I've got an idea. We can have the lego guys re-capture her and hang her by a string over a fire!
Me: That's not an ending. That's giving her more problems. And we don't have time to make a fire.
P7: OK, so then we could have the motorcycle guy come up to rescue her, only then he can turn out to be bad guy, so he cuts the string, and she starts to drop into the fire, only then her horse saves her.
Me: No, we're not doing anything with a fire. We need to do something different.
P7: OK. (long pause) I still like my idea. Does anyone else like my idea?
Me: I like your idea, but we're not doing it. We're not doing anything with a fire.
P7: Hmmm... I still like my idea. Megan, let's just do my idea.
Me(mostly to myself): We don't need a fire, we need an exit strategy!
His brothers and sisters agreed that a fire was too difficult. However, they suggested
- turning the decapitated spider into a snake which re-captures her, or
- having the bear betray her and turn her over to the Lego villians.
Posts
