100 topics · Read, check sources and follow your curiosity.

A little room to wonder

Storytelling

Shape characters, events and viewpoints into a story an audience can follow.

What changes when another character tells the same event?

A 1902 cover of The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, showing a rabbit in a blue jacket.
An early book cover combines a title and character image to introduce a fictional world.Beatrix Potter, 1902; scan via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. · Source · Public domain

Give events a relationship

A story connects events so they matter to an audience. A character may want something, encounter a complication and make a choice with consequences. This is one useful structure, rather than a rule every story must follow.

“A robot found a key. A door opened.” lists two fictional events. “The robot used the key to open a door it had been afraid to approach” gives those events a relationship and suggests a character question.

Choose what the audience knows

Viewpoint controls access to information. If the audience follows the robot, the room beyond the door may be a mystery. If it follows someone waiting inside, the same opening door can create anticipation for a different reason.

A narrator is the voice presenting a story; it need not be the author. Images, sound and editing can also guide attention. A silent panel showing a hand pause above a handle may communicate hesitation without naming the feeling.

Make a version you can revise

A storyboard arranges images or rough sketches in sequence. Stick figures and notes are enough to test whether an event is understandable. It is easier to change a small sketch than to rebuild a finished scene.

Revision can be a specific experiment: remove a panel, change the order or tell a moment from another viewpoint. Ask what the audience can now infer. Fiction gives you room to explore invented situations without using private experiences as material.

Only if you feel like trying

Tell one event twice

  1. Use the fictional event: a robot returns a mysterious key.
  2. Draw or write three moments from the robot’s viewpoint.
  3. Retell the event from the key owner’s viewpoint. Note one piece of information that changes.

Optional writing or drawing. Invented characters are welcome; no personal disclosure, performance or public sharing is required.