Forty story starters, for when nobody can think of one

The hard part of making up a story with a child is not the middle. It is the first sentence, and then the moment three chapters in when everybody looks at each other blankly.

Here are openings that actually go somewhere, and three questions that get you unstuck when they stop.

What makes an opening work

A good starter has something already wrong with it. Not a setting, not a character, a problem.

“There was a wood” gives a child nothing to decide. “Something in the wood has been moving the signposts” gives them everything: who, why, what happens when somebody follows one. The second one is not more imaginative than the first. It just has a question in it.

That is the only rule. Everything below is a question with a story attached.

Something has gone missing

1. Every clock in the house is four minutes slow, and only four minutes.
2. The dog has come back from a walk with somebody else’s collar on.
3. The last page of every book on the shelf has gone.
4. All the socks are there. All of them. Far too many of them.
5. Grandad’s shed key opens a door that is not the shed.
6. The tooth fairy has left a note asking for it back.
7. Somebody has been eating the wax crayons and leaving the wrappers.
8. The photograph on the hall wall has one more person in it than it used to.

Something has arrived

9. A parcel addressed to somebody with your name, but the wrong century.
10. A cat that comes in every evening at six and leaves at ten past.
11. A new boy at school who has never heard of anything.
12. A door in the garden hedge that was not there in the summer.
13. A map of your town with one street on it that nobody can find.
14. A hole in the playground that is warm.
15. A seagull that appears to be taking notes.
16. The ice cream van, at three in the morning, playing the tune backwards.

Somebody has a secret

17. Your sister has been going somewhere every Tuesday for a month.
18. The lollipop lady knows your name and you have never told her.
19. The quietest person in the class can do something extraordinary.
20. Somebody in the house has been writing in the margins of the books.
21. The librarian has one shelf she never lets anybody near.
22. Your best friend has a twin nobody has ever mentioned.
23. The bus driver takes a different route on Fridays.
24. Somebody has been putting the bins out, and it is not either parent.

Something is not behaving

25. The escalator in the shopping centre has started going sideways.
26. It has been raining, but only on one house.
27. Your shadow is doing things slightly before you do.
28. The moon has been full for eleven nights.
29. Every single traffic light turns green as you approach it.
30. The sea has gone out and not come back.
31. A puddle that does not dry up in August.
32. All the birds have stopped at once, and are all facing the same way.

Silly, on purpose

33. A sandwich that will not stop giving advice.
34. The world championship of a sport somebody has just invented.
35. A dragon who is extremely apologetic about everything.
36. Your teacher has been replaced by a pigeon and nobody has noticed.
37. A shop that sells things you have not lost yet.
38. Two brothers who have swapped, but only their hands.
39. A very serious detective investigating who ate the last biscuit.
40. The day gravity worked fine except on Tuesdays.

When you get stuck mid story

This happens to everybody, usually around the third chapter, and the fix is never “think of something bigger”. It is to ask a smaller question.

Who else is here? Somebody arriving changes everything, and a child can always invent a person. A neighbour, a sibling, somebody from school, a dog with opinions.

What can they hear? A detail unsticks a plot far better than a plot point does. A child who cannot tell you what happens next can almost always tell you what the room sounds like, and a sound leads somewhere.

What is the worst thing that could happen right now? Children are extremely good at this one and will cheerfully make things much worse than you would have. That is the engine of the story.

Then write it down properly

The reason this gets hard is not the ideas. Children have an unlimited supply of ideas. It is that turning “and then the door opens and there is the sea” into something worth reading back tomorrow night takes a kind of effort most of us do not have left at seven in the evening.

That is the bit Taleium does. You and your child decide, and it writes the chapter, at the right length and in the right words for their age. Then it reads it back to you, and tomorrow you find out what is on the other side of the sea.