Great stories arise from well-drawn characters put in unique jeopardy. In fact, you could distill a tale into the following three points:
- Put your character in a tree.
- Throw rocks at him.
- Get him out of the tree.
How’s that for a three act structure?
Of course, you can apply this storytelling approach to all types of fiction, adult and children’s alike. For kids think Cannonball Simp and The Cat in the Hat. For grownups consider Apocalypto and Marty Supreme.
As these two distinct forms of fiction share a relentless stress regimen for their protagonist, you could feasibly take a children’s story and turn it into something more adult and vice versa. How would that alter stakes? Would it introduce humour or terror? Mix ingredients differently and you alter the flavour of the dish you serve.
Workshop
Activity 1
Think of a favourite adult or children’s story and translate the bare elements of it into the opposite. Make a children’s story into an adult’s story or vice versa. E.g. a boarding school story could become a prison story.
Activity 2
Sketch out your character and background.
Think about whether the character’s existing traits are what gets them through the rocks being thrown at them, or whether the rocks being thrown at them lead to them developing as a character, or a mixture of the two.
Activity 3
Outline three things that happen to your character. I.e. three rocks that are thrown at them.
Activity 4
Write out one of these events as prose, or all three as flash fiction, or as many as you like as a poem.
“Man in Tree” by What What is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Helen Keogh – April 2026
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