I want to tell bedtime stories but don't really know how

[bearhug]

I have fond memories of my mother telling me + my siblings bedtime stories. She just made them up and told them. I've tried this but don't seem to be very good at it.

I am happy to read to my DS and do this most days, and we also often talk about our day before bed. This is nice, but not the same as telling stories.

How do I get better at this? Where do I start?

I clearly remember my Dad making up bedtime stories for us and thinking that they were the most magical, mythical fairytales ever and that he was some sort of genius... fast forward 25+ years and I asked him the secret..

He says that he just started with some characters - which I think he half made up and half nicked from other sources - two heroines and some baddies and took it from there. He also says that most of the time we would prompt him to include things in the stories, which helped, but that also he often descended into talking gibberish or repeating the same bits over and over again as we were falling asleep and so was he, and we never even noticed!!

How old are your DCs? Get them to help you create the characters but dont worry - whatever you go with i'm sure they won't be critical.

get your DS to help you tell the story.
start with a character or two and he can join in with what happens.

Or get a box and some cardboard cut outs or things like a king and queen, a knight, pirates or whatever. then add in things like castles, ship, island etc etc

You put your hand in the box without looking and use that as a prompt, after a few sentances you pull out another...you keep going until the stpry ends.

Some good ideas above.

Have you tried telling some well-known stories, like fairy stories, to get used to not having the book in front of you? You could try telling them from a different perspective to make them a bit more interesting/unusual e.g. from the wolf's or the witch's point of view. When you're more confident at doing this you can start branching out a bit more.

DH does this.....

PLACE (get your kids to choose)

GOODIES and BADDIES

WEAPONS/SPECIAL POWERS

ANIMALS?

etc etc

DS1 usually wants a story based on his favourite films

start with stories about him and something magical.
eg one day he found a magical - which enabled him to fly/turn into animals/have a wish/be invisible etc etc.
then base it on what he is really like, ie what would he really wish for, what animal would he really like to be.
or you ask him 'What did you wish for?' etc

And including your own kids in the story and people you all know. Sometimes mine dont respond much, but the next day they have remembered it and it all comes out. i remember feeling self conscious doing it and thinking i would die of embarrasment if an adult heard it.

and do things that make you laugh.
For a while we had Gordon Ramsey as the baddie in our story because he annoyed me so much on tv. he always got caught at the end and went to prison.
It gets easier once you have a theme too as you just follow the formula - I kept going for a long time with stories about a wolf and a witch who lived in a house in the forest and liked eating cake - every day I would just think of a different kind of cake and do a story about that.

Thanks so much for your suggestions! My DS is nearly 2 now, so maybe a little too young to choose his own characters yet.

I suppose I didn't expect to have to work at this, that it would come naturally.

dd used to love stories involving her, so it would be like "once upon a time there was a little girl called dd who was 6" etc.

Ha ha ha @ Gordon Ramsey as the baddie - that is a great tip!!!

Use his toys and hold them as you tell the story eg:One day Teddy went for a walk to see what he could see.The first thing he saw was a lovely red train so he hopped on for a ride...............lots of scope for vehicles,farm animals etc then at the end Teddy snuggles into bed with dc and they both go fast asleep.

When I do this in school to support kids with language difficulties I follow this plan who (characters), where, when (day/night, past/present/future), small event, what happened and how did everyone feel, 'and then' event that follow on from initial event, 'and finally' event that happened because of the first 2, the end (where are the characters now and how do they feel). Then I ask the kids to think of a title, always do that at the end.
Example. This is a story about a small boy called Bubba, he was at home having lunch when his Mum gave him a peanut, all of a sudden his face turned red and then his skin went blotchy and white spots started appearing. His Mummy dialed 999 and soon the ambulance arrived, the paramedic gave him Piriton and soon the little boy was fine again and went into the garden to play. His Mum felt very relieved. The end. You can pad the story out with feelings and descriptions of anxiuos mummy and dizzy itchy boy and how the itching drove him mad so mad he screamed so loudly the neighbours came over etc etc
you get the idea. Good luck with the formula, I have a picture that helps 7 yr olds recall the components but I think adults can recall the bits in order from memory.

Wasn't sure if I explained the components, from my example it goes: Bubba, home, lunch, small event-peanut, and then -symptoms, and finally -soon the ambulance arrived etc, the end including feeling of mum.

we base ours around a character that dh once created on the spur of the moment (who I will not name because he is immediately identifiable)

they always start the same way -
Once upon a time there was a little [animal] and his name was [Bob]. He had a little red hat and a little red rucksack, and his best friend in the whole world was called [Arthur] and he had lots of other friends too. One day...

'Bob' goes everywhere - on jungle adventures, to see Pingu, on boats, to shops, to the park with dd and her friends, to the supermarket, on spaceships etc.
He often has useful socially relevant problems eg someone pushes him on the slide, he has a tantrum because he wants another ice cream, he's scared of the noisy recycling truck etc etc
DH, however, tends to model Bob's day on his own ('and he used his great big drill to fix the wall') whereas I model him more on dd.

at the end he always ends up having a splishy sploshy bath, putting on his pyjamas and going to bed '.. and we say night night [Bob], night night [Arthur] and night night DD'

Tbh the more stories you tell from books the more ideas it'll give you.

You could start with a well-known fairy tale, and then embellish it/change it. Ask things like "what do you think happened then?" and either go with suggtestions or, if inspiration strikes, surprise them with that.

Give the characters your dc's names

I used to try this, but somehow without meaning to I found that every single story involved DD or DS rescuing a small animal.
EG once there was a boy named DS who was walking down the road when he heard a little voice, there was a baby seagull/ mouse/ puppy who had lost his mummy/ ball/ nest. All ended happily, often with DS crawling into a tiny mouse nest for tea before going home.
The stories seemed to go down well, but they must have been a bit monotonous...

I had never invented a story in my life, but one day when DS (4) was being awful I told him about a little boy called B (rhymes with DS's name) who was the naughtiest boy in the world. It was just a really exaggerated story of what DS was doing, and in the end something bad happened to him ("and that was the end of B"). DS LOVED it, and now asks for stories about B constantly. B has been the naughtiest policeman, fireman, knight (DS's favourite), and now DS is a character who is the best whatever, and always beats B in the end.

Kind of wish I hadn't started it now!

Oh, and his friends are all in the stories as well- a rhyming name for naughty characters, their real names for good ones.

ha, I just quote The Gruffalo/Where The Wild Things are verbatim.

seems to work

Turtle - sorry, that;s a strange analogy. Actually, it's not even an analogy, just confusing, sorry.

The thing is that we judge ourselves by our own standards, and children are far more forgiving - the young ones, anyway, and the older ones will tell you what they want a story about.

A three year old will probably be happy with a really simple story, especially if the character is named after them: "once there was a very clever little boy named Bob. Bob and his mummy and daddy loved going to the zoo. One day they went to the zoo and saw Bob's Best Friend, and they talked about what their favourite animals were and had an ice cream, before going home to bed, The End".

But if you want to get fancy, the structure of a story is:

Protagonist and other characters (Bob & his parents)
Scenario (going to the zoo, looking at all the animals, but why is the lion roaring so loudly? let's go and look and find out)
Conflict (the mummy lion was very upset because the baby lion had wriggled through the bars of the cage and escaped - cue lots of searching for Baby Lion in strange places)
Climax (just then, Bob heard a meowing noise coming from his backpack. He looked around and realised that the baby lion had jumped up and climbed inside to get his delicious meat sandwiches)
Resolution (lion returned to cage, Bob's mummy buys him an ice cream to make up for having no sandwiches, everyone goes home for tea).

My made up stories are always about a small blonde girl ("is it me Mummy?" "No, it's not you") with a naughty little brother ("It IS me isn't it Mummy?" "No, it's not you") and an enormous faithful dog ("Mummy! It IS me!!" "It's not you dd!") and a Mummy and Daddy who love her very much ("Like me Mummy?" "A bit like you I suppose Dd")

She LOVES that she's 'worked out' that the stories are secretly about her, even though I strenuously deny it...

I am not very good at this, but would love to get better. In fact, I'm going on a storytelling course in the Autumn to learn how to do it!

What has worked for me is a long journey tale, and I use the journey to give the story structure and prompt me for the next bit. For example, I use towns on the River Thames, and a duck who swims downstream from our town having adventures in all the places we know (he visits the Queen in Windsor and eventually ends up on the London Eye).

DH has riotous success telling fairy stories with only one tiny detail changed in a totally absurd way, e.g. Goldilocks as a robot called the "Goldilocks Cleanmaster 5000" but all the three bear action remains the same.

I would love to do this for my dd, and I have tried several times but she always says no mummy-get a book, please.

These modern children huh!

I told the story of Grace Darling on holiday last year while we were driving through France, and was desperate to stop all the quarrelling and fighting.The DC absolutely loved it. I used names for characters which I knew they would find appealing eg Rose Red for the heroine. I also added bits of mystery about a very special baby being on board the sinking ship. It later turned out he was the future king, and the heroine had saved his life.

It was a bit embarrassing when we visited the Grace Darling museum this spring, and the DC called out. 'Hey Mum isn't that the story you made up for us?'

I did the same for the Secret Garden, and they rumbled me on that too.