Hi,
I'm play-testing my homebrew Elthos game for publication soon. In the process I have been focusing on Fairytale style stories. I noticed that the game play, to my suprise and delight, may be producing what could be converted into actual fairytales and children's stories. I have written out some rough drafts of the plots as they occured for my GMing records, and I think that with some work they could be enhanced and polished up into very nice illustrated books.
Anyone have any advice on how to further pursue this? I guess the first thing would be to ask if anyone agrees / disagrees that said stories could be good fare for such a project.
Here's the latest adventure-draft:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/LRPGSW/message/1751
Again, this is just a draft of a mid-game session (#4 in the series so far) with GMing notes intermixed and not very well written. However, the question is - if polished and enhanced, would this make a good children's story? I'm imagining an illustrated book. What do you think?
Thanks!
Mark
There are some issues with it but there are some key questions first.
What age of children? It's quite a complex story and there is some violence.
Age really is key. The age of kids totally informs what they can and can't cope with. At 5 or less a story for a children's book really should have no more plot than someone does something, then repeats a similar thing 3 times then something happens and then three more things happen.
By 11 kids have really stopped reading picture books and read children's books Harry Potter et al.
Also the most sucessful children's books have children as the protagonists, children who's parents are unable to help them for some reason (Harry Potter, The kids in Narnia, The Golden Compass, The Hobbit ~Bilbo is basically a kid and Gandalf is his dad ~ etc etc ). This really helps kids associate with them.
On a more specific note I would say your story has a lot of elements that are somewhat confused, hey its an rpg what do you expect. There isn't really a great deal in there that is particularly original in narative terms. I might also say that the world itself feels a little flat.
I would recommend knocking it into shape a bit and tidying it up then reading it to a bunch of kids and seeing if they like it. If they enjoy a 15 minute episode of it then it might be worth pursuing
Quote from: jibbajibbaThere are some issues with it but there are some key questions first.
What age of children? It's quite a complex story and there is some violence.
Age really is key. The age of kids totally informs what they can and can't cope with. At 5 or less a story for a children's book really should have no more plot than someone does something, then repeats a similar thing 3 times then something happens and then three more things happen.
By 11 kids have really stopped reading picture books and read children's books Harry Potter et al.
Also the most sucessful children's books have children as the protagonists, children who's parents are unable to help them for some reason (Harry Potter, The kids in Narnia, The Golden Compass, The Hobbit ~Bilbo is basically a kid and Gandalf is his dad ~ etc etc ). This really helps kids associate with them.
On a more specific note I would say your story has a lot of elements that are somewhat confused, hey its an rpg what do you expect. There isn't really a great deal in there that is particularly original in narative terms. I might also say that the world itself feels a little flat.
I would recommend knocking it into shape a bit and tidying it up then reading it to a bunch of kids and seeing if they like it. If they enjoy a 15 minute episode of it then it might be worth pursuing
Thanks! That's a good idea!
The world, yes, does seem a little flat, but I think that may be because it's a draft of GMing notes, and not a draft in story form yet. The age of the children I'm thinking might like this would be 8 to 10, possibly. Anyway, I'll try to drum up a story version and see how to go about doing a reading or two. I have a few leads on that and I might be able to work it out.
As for the characters, in the main story they are, actaully, all kids.